By Paige Clark TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – One speaks for liberals, the other conservatives.

One is a Democrat. One is a Republican.

But both start long, unpredictable days with a cup of coffee.

They are communication directors in the Indiana Statehouse. Only one, though, is in the majority.

Lindsay Jancek sits in her office or “the cave.” Any other day at 1 p.m., she’d be on the Senate floor. But today is Friday and the senators are home. So today, she sits in her cave.

Lindsay Jancek, communications director for the Indiana Senate Republican caucus, is leaving her post at the end of this week to take a Congressional job in Washington D.C. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com

“People think I’m crazy because I moved my office down here,” she joked from her basement headquarters. “I used to have this huge office bigger than this whole room, but I moved to be closer to the press.”

She throws a handful of microwaved popcorn into her mouth, chews a few times and looks up to answer the knock on her often open door.

She stops chewing, puts her face in her hands, elbows on her desk, and squints at the large computer monitor separating her from guests. She politely, but sternly yells at one of her six press secretaries that there is a technology problem he needs to deal with.

“I’m tough on them, and I expect a lot out of them,” she says with a warm smile. “But they don’t make a lot of mistakes.”

Jancek is the communications director for the Senate Republicans. At least for now. On Friday she leaves Indianapolis for Washington D.C. where she’ll serve as the press secretary for U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-2^nd District.

But Jancek waited to announce the job change until the session ended so she did not disrupt the work she and her staff were doing.

“I serve 37 members of a caucus and one of those members is the Senate president. And everyone has a different agenda,” she said. “I’d say I’m very good at juggling.”

The other is in the minority.

John Schorg, communications director for the Indiana House Democratic Caucus, listens during a press conference the day after lawmakers adjourned the 2014 legislative session. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com

John Schorg smells the greasy, half burnt popcorn wafting into his office from the Statehouse’s snack shack. Stacks of papers, posters, and random toys, sure to have some inside story or joke to the members of the office, surround him and his desk.

He walks down the hallway silently. There is no clacking of dress shoes to announce his presence. He strides in jeans and tennis shoes, around the corners of basement cubicles.

“It is a lot different than it used to be,” said Schorg reflecting on his years spent at the Statehouse. “We were the generators of lot of what was going on here, now we’re not as much.”

Schorg is the communications director for the House Democrats, who hold just 31 of the chamber’s 100 seats.

“Some days are slow,” Schorg said fiddling with his I.D. badge. “It’s a little different when you only have a 31 member minority than it was when he had majorities.”

“The roles are a lot different now we’re the opposition,” he said.

***

Both have routines.

One has a dog, the other cats.

“At home there is a definite schedule of what I have to do,” Jancek said. “So I get up at about 6, and I read news clips from all the national outlets. And then I let my dogs out. Once I get here there is no routine.”

“Today, has been –, “she knocks on wood, “Not too bad.” She nervously laughs, saying Fridays are usually her busiest days.

On the other side of the Statehouse basement, Schorg details his mornings.

“I feed my cat, I take a shower, and I get ready and I drive in,” he says, laughing as he speaks. “I bitch about the traffic.”

He cracks several jokes, making eye contact for approval. He laughs for a minute or two and slowly slides back into a serious tone.

***

Both had other dreams.

“This is not what I wanted to do,” started Jancek.

“When I was little, I wanted to be an artist” and my mom and dad said, ‘We’re not paying for you to go to school,’” Jancek said with a small smile. “But I got into art school – Chicago Art Institute, it was $100,000 tuition.”

Her parents quickly said no to Jancek’s art dreams.

“Then I wanted to be a vascular surgeon because I really liked science,” said Jancek as she rocked casually back and forth in her chair. She enrolled at Butler University in the honorary science and pre-med program.

“You have to take a writing class”, she said. “So I was in (Butler’s) new journalism building. And I thought, ‘this is kind of cool. I kind of like writing.’”

After that, Jancek visited friends at Indiana University and visited the school’s journalism department. She ran into a professor wandering around the halls.

“He showed me the news room, and it looked like a real news room,” Jancek said with a bit of enthusiasm rising in her voice. “That was it. I transferred the next year.”

“I thought I was going to be a reporter,” she said.

Jancek covered the Indiana General Assembly at the Statehouse in 2005 for the Indiana Daily Student, reporting on Mitch Daniel’s first year as governor.

After graduation, she had a job lined up in Washington D.C., but her dad unexpectedly died, causing her to hang back in Indiana.

At the funeral, Jancek ran into her former government teacher, also her state representative. He asked her to intern for him at the Statehouse.

“I don’t wanna work on that side, it was annoying. They wouldn’t return my calls,” she recounted her conversation with her former teacher. But, he insisted.

“So I did,” she said. “And I haven’t left.”

Schorg thought he was going to be a sports reporter.

“I hated politics,” he laughed ironically.

Schorg stops. He slightly bites his lip, and begins looking up towards the ceiling. He closes his eyes for a moment, searching for a date.

1988. Or 1989. Ball State was fighting to go to the California Raisin Bowl – the last sporting event Schorg covered.

Right after college, Schorg became the editor of a weekly newspaper in Kokomo.

“I had dabbled in editorial sides. I was a typical snot-nosed kid from college who had opinions on everything,” Schorg said. “People were dropping subscriptions because I had a big mouth and I wasn’t shy about it.”

Schorg said he was forced to cover government. Then the legislature. Then more. Then he said people noticed.

“I thought I would do it and it’d help me understand to become a better reporter,” Schorg said.

But he acknowledged that government reporting is not for everyone.

“If everything you see sickens you to the point that you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. I don’t begrudge anyone who comes here who is nauseated by the experience or sickened by it. Or find the way that things get done here makes you want to…,” he said, making a gagging motion.

“Hell, I never thought I’d put that to good use,” Schorg smiled. “Now, I can’t imagine ever going back.”

Not every reporter can see themselves on the other side though. Chelsea Schneider, the Statehouse reporter for The Courier & Press in Evansville, sits in her corner office drinking a large polar pop from a straw. She looks up through her black, square-framed glasses and waves at other reporters that walk by.

“I don’t think I’m chipper enough to be a PR person. And I don’t dress well enough,” Schneider laughed. “But hey, the hours and the pay, I can see why journalists do it. I just probably never will.”

***

Both talk to the media and don’t hate reporters – contrary to popular belief.

“I serve a lot of different people,” said Jancek, ticking off her members, the Senate president, the legislative assistants. “And then I have this whole other group of people in the basement called the press.”

“It’s the media’s interests versus my members’ interests. And usually they’re doing this –,” Jancek makes both of her hands fists and slams them together making a solid, clapping sound.

But Schneider said Jancek manages the balance well.

“I think the reason she’s good at her job is because she has a background in journalism,” Schneider said as she reached for her drink. “She understands what reporters need and know what makes a good story. I also think she’s more truthful.”

Schorg laced his fingers over his chest and smiled. He said he likes his job because he likes people.

“I like working with reporters. I like working with people in our caucus,” said Schorg confidently. “It’s nice working with people who say thank you, and more people than you think say thank you.” Schorg embraced a reporter as he said this.

“And it’s not just the reporters,” he chuckled.

“There are too many jobs where people just don’t say thanks. I’m not old enough that I don’t appreciated being thanked for the work I do,” he said as he leaned back in the half-broken folding chair pinned against the wall. “They appreciated the time you put in; they appreciate the work you do.”

Both Schorg and Jancek‘s offices are in the basement. That’s a key to their success, said Statehouse reporter Niki Kelly, who has a glorified cubicle that’s an office in the basement.

Kelly has covered 15 legislate sessions for The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne. Her eyes left her computer screen and her school bus story to focus on the conversation.

“You can also just chat with them. Sometimes it’s just like ‘Hey, how’s your life going? How’s your mom? How’s your cat?” Kelly said with a laugh. “They’re both pretty open people so it helps.”

***

Both use social media. A lot.

“I have a lot of flexibility and freedom to try new creative tools – branching out the new website, maybe changing up how we got staff positions arranged,” Jancek said. “I don’t like redundancy and I don’t like people doing the same thing for more than once.”

Jancek says she and her staff look at new technology, social media, and other outlets to get their messages across.

“I’m a big believer in using strategy to get your message out,” Jancek said proudly. “Sky’s the limit. Yeah, I like that.”

“We’ve got radio feeds; we help them with Facebook, Twitter – those types of things,” Schorg said. But in the minority now, “We have to pick and choose what we want to do.”

“We try and do what we can to get other points of views across,” he said. That’s helped by a leader – Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan – who is “really good at media.”

“He is not shy about doing it,” Schorg said. “He does it well when he does do it. And it’s a big help.”

***

Both are friends with the legislators.

“You spend a lot of time with them and you work with them, day in and day out,” Jancek said. “You see them everywhere. They’re at the table next to you at dinner. They’re grabbing coffee. It’s going to happen when you’re in the same building with them.”

“Do we spend all our time together? No,” Schorg joked.

“You have a certain relationship where you enjoy talking to them. And as you get to know them, you get to know them beyond just being merely a state representative,” Schorg said sincerely. “They’re nice people. They have a lot of burdens that I’m not sure a lot of us would like to have, but they do the best they can.

***

Both have opinions. But sometimes they’re not expressed.

“I think at the end of the day, you work for the senator, so you need to keep your opinions at home.” Jancek said, more serious now. “So it’s whatever he or she wants.”

But Jancek said she’s also blessed to have a boss in Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, who “lets me speak my mind. He wants me to speak up, sometimes he goes along with what I have to say and sometimes he doesn’t – at least he hears me out.”

Schorg paused. He looked down at the Pacers lanyard hanging around his neck.

“There are certain social issues that some people in our caucus have a point of view of that’s different view than mine,” he paused again and apologized for being vague.

“I have written press releases, speeches, and public opinion columns that I do not agree with. But I cannot think of a single instance where the request for help wasn’t made from the genuine sense of ‘I need your help.’”

“I won’t say it’s ever easy,” Schorg said. “You get used to it. It’s part of the job.”

***

Both get paid, and don’t complain too much.

Jancek lets out a long, care-free laugh. “Can I say no comment?” she jokes.

“I’m blessed with my salary. I’m always humbled when I have discussions with my salary with my bosses,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m always worth it. I am my biggest critic, I always have been, and I always will be. I live to work.”

“I didn’t like that salary question,” she said later. “But, it was a good question.”

Schorg doesn’t hesitate like Jancek. He said he thinks his salary matches his work.

“Especially, compared to –,” he paused and pointed at a reporter.

***

Both go home after a long, long day.

“I’ve already maxed out on overtime,” Jancek said earlier this month, when she still had two weeks left in session. “In the last week of session, 14 to 15 hours is not unheard of.”

“When I go home, I don’t talk. Because all I do all day is talk. It’s a good day if I go home and don’t have to talk,” she said, speaking more with a hushed tone now.

It’s not uncommon to see Schorg leave the Statehouse past 10 p.m.

“It’s different,” he said. “We used to stay in session until midnight. We got through it though. I don’t know what kind of condition we were in, but we got through it.”

“Whatever’s necessary we go from there,” Schorg paused and chuckled a little. “Then we go home and drink.”

Paige Clark is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.