Georgia’s 7th Congressional District has flipped between Republican and Democratic members since 2020, but one constant has endured: a team of customer service liaisons helping constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy.
These government employees work long hours, carry a caseload in the hundreds, and these days, have the added burden of doing it all with no guarantee of when they will see a paycheck because of the shutdown.
Vesna Kurspahic, the constituent services director for U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, has worked under Republicans like former U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democrats such as U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux.
Rather than pay attention to the political party her boss belongs to, Kurspahic focuses on how she can help the people desperate to push past the red tape.
One of her current cases involves a man trying to navigate the immigration system so that he can get a visa in time to see his wife deliver their baby in Georgia.
“I think that’s what you’ll see from a lot of staffers all across the country, whether it’s congressional staffers or staffers at the federal agencies,” she said recently. “I think they’re more focused on the day-to-day task than they are about what’s happening in Congress right now.”
But she is all too aware of what is happening — or is not happening — these days. The government shutdown, now in its third week, not only means caseworkers are working without pay, but they have new limitations on how they do their jobs, with some agencies’ liaisons no longer accepting new requests for help or responding to existing ones.
Every member of Congress, including all 16 members of Georgia’s delegation, has caseworkers like Kurspahic who help constituents resolve issues with Veterans Affairs, Social Security, Medicaid, immigration services and the State Department.
“I’m not getting paid, but the job doesn’t stop and the duty doesn’t stop,” said Sheila Robinson, who specializes in assisting veterans as a member of Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s caseworker team. “I was hired to do a job, and so I’m going to continue on doing that job to the best of my ability.”
Credit: Handout/U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock's Office
Credit: Handout/U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock's Office
Robinson’s military background and long-standing connections at the VA have made her a constituent services legend in Georgia. She first began working for U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson in 2012 and stayed on after voters elected Warnock to the seat. Former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, who focused heavily on providing resources to current and former service members while in office, trusted Robinson so much that upon his retirement, she was the person he called when he met a veteran in need.
“A few days before he passed away, he reached out to me for assistance, and he told me how much he appreciated all that I had been doing for him,” Robinson said. “He was still working for constituents in the state even during his last days on Earth.”
Senate offices receive requests from across the state. Robinson says she receives anywhere from 10-20 calls a day and has roughly 500 cases at any given time. Through early September, Warnock’s entire team had closed 6,625 cases this year.
Last month, his office was awarded the Congressional Management Foundation’s 2025 Democracy Award for constituent outreach. U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath’s constituent services team was recognized by the same foundation in 2024.
Many members of Georgia’s delegation say they pride themselves on having a responsive team, and they have the letters and thank-you cards to prove it.
When he took office in 2021, Sen. Ossoff brought in a Delta Air Lines executive who specialized in customer service to help train his team.
Ossoff reported helping Georgian residents and businesses recover more than $14 million owed to them by the IRS and other federal agencies during each of his first three years in office. That number is already above $17 million this year.
U.S. House members tend to only accept requests from people who live or work in their districts. But that still means thousands of cases a year.
U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, reported that his staff completed 1,519 cases in 2024, getting results 87% of the time. That includes recovering $4.5 million for constituents.
U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, R-Augusta, had a total of 2,069 cases as of early August and had found resolution for 75%, returning nearly $5 million back to constituents.
During that same period, Democratic U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson’s office opened 1,157 cases mainly dealing with citizenship and immigration services, Social Security and the IRS.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, who has caseworkers in three offices to serve his 30-county district, said the shutdown has made it harder to get the answers people seek.
“If nobody is at work at the agency or no one answers the phone and nobody responds to the email, it adds an additional delay to what the constituent has already experienced,” said Bishop, Georgia’s longest-serving member of Congress. “Because usually by the time they call our office, they have exhausted all of the other avenues.”
Toni Pickel has been handling constituent services out of Bishop’s Albany office for 22 years. One of her most memorable cases involves helping a man move his children from Haiti to the U.S. after their mother died. It took about six years of working the phones between the two countries, but the family was ultimately reunited.
“It was probably two months after they got here, and I was at an event, and he brought them to the event,” Pickel said. “I heard my name, and I turned around and looked, and he stood there with all the kids.”
It can be a tireless job, it can be stressful, and the caseload is constant, but Kurspahic believes it is her calling.
Her family immigrated from Germany, and she arrived at age 9 not knowing English. Her mother once needed help getting Social Security disability benefits after a serious accident. Kurspahic knows what it’s like to need help from the government and empathizes with the people who call her office.
“I’ve said to constituents, ‘I don’t have to meet you to care about you; I just simply do,’” she said. “I don’t care if you voted for the person that I work for or not. I don’t care about your race, gender, religion or politics. I just care.”
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