For the previous few weeks, Matt Klapper has spent his days as Senator Cory Booker’s chief of workers wrangling with congressional aides over advan
For the previous few weeks, Matt Klapper has spent his days as Senator Cory Booker’s chief of workers wrangling with congressional aides over advantages for emergency medical technicians.
At evening, he strapped on his personal masks and isolation robe — the identical form he’s making an attempt to safe within the tens of millions for first responders.
As Washington grapples with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Klapper is the uncommon political operative within the room — and the ambulance — the place it occurs. An aide to Mr. Booker for the reason that New Jersey senator’s days as a metropolis councilman, he’s additionally a former skilled firefighter and a former crew chief for an ambulance squad in Springfield, a northern New Jersey city caught within the wave of coronavirus-stricken New York Metropolis. When the New Jersey governor referred to as on retired and inactive medical professionals to return to their former work in March, Mr. Klapper answered the decision — whereas conserving his day job in Congress.
For Mr. Klapper, 37, working within the midst of a pandemic took on a wierd, largely sleepless rhythm. Days have been spent navigating constituent requests, the federal wants of his hard-hit state and a flood of latest laws in Washington, in addition to serving to handle an workplace that, like so many, made the troublesome transition to all-remote work. At evening, he disinfected ambulances with hand wipes, answered emergency calls and tracked affected person information. In free moments, he borrowed an E.M.S. truck to select up groceries for his mother and father and be a part of his household for dinner — consuming out on the deck, with a glass window between them.
Mr. Klapper is the rare policymaker who has lived in both those worlds.
“The most impactful thing of having these dual experiences was just seeing the expanse of how this virus is hurting people,” he said. “There are millions of first responders who are going to be answering these calls for months, if not longer. This is something that doesn’t stop at the door of work. It is going to come home.”
The need for medical workers grew so severe that Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey requested 100 ambulances from across the country to help, along with former medical professionals to join the effort. Mr. Klapper returned and, wanting to avoid infecting his parents, wife and 17-month-old son, moved into a high school friend’s pool house.
“The call volume had spiked so high and the staff is what the staff is; there’s no magic potion that creates more E.M.S. providers for you,” said Mike Bascom, the E.M.S. task force leader in New Jersey. “Matt felt a sense of duty to come back and help.”
Almost immediately, Mr. Klapper said, his days and nights became consumed with the virus. Before his first E.M.T. shift in early April, he spent the day with the governor, Mr. Booker, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police and the state health commissioner as they met — masked, of course — for a video conference with Vice President Mike Pence. That night Mr. Klapper drove an ambulance to his first coronavirus call.
“Matt came back and his attitude was that ‘since I can only help you for a few weeks, just run me into the ground,’” said Apu Mullick, the chief of the Springfield First Aid Squad, who said Mr. Klapper was on duty for about 60 hours a week, largely overnight. “He made a tremendous difference. We never had to rely on outside help.”
Mr. Klapper’s double life involved a few, admittedly minor, sacrifices for Mr. Booker, as well. On several occasions, Mr. Klapper hung up on his boss to answer a literal — rather than their more typical political — emergency.
“You heard about him playing the, ‘Oh Cory, I can’t talk to you right now because I’m saving lives,” Mr. Booker said with a laugh. “How many times is he going to use that card on me?”
Mr. Klapper is, perhaps, a good fit for Mr. Booker — a professional rescuer working for a politician known for his dramatic and much-chronicled rescues.
Several years ago, when Mr. Booker came across a car crash on the Garden State Parkway and jumped out to help, Mr. Klapper followed. At one point, Mr. Booker said he grew nervous as the car filled with smoke.
“I’m not going to stay here if this thing blows up,” Mr. Booker recalled telling Mr. Klapper, who was working to stabilize the driver. “And he tells me, ‘Cory, that’s dust from the airbag.’”
In Washington, with Mr. Booker more confined to the halls of the Capitol, the press-shy Mr. Klapper has kept his emergency responder experience mostly private, according to those who’ve worked with him.
“Someone with his chops, especially in Washington, who does something like that — you would expect them to work it into every other sentence, and he just doesn’t do that,” said Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, who called Mr. Klapper “a genuine mensch.”
Mr. Booker said Mr. Klapper’s experience enriched his response to the virus.
When Mr. Booker sent out a letter asking for more masks and gloves, Mr. Klapper added a request for isolation gowns, as he watched his squad source small orders of equipment from across the globe. In discussions with the state health commissioner, he flagged how the long wait times at hospitals left E.M.T.s sitting in closed ambulances with coronavirus patients for hours, increasing their exposure.
This week, his office introduced a bill with Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, amending federal law to make emergency medical workers who contract the coronavirus eligible for the same death benefits as those who die in the line of duty.
The fire platoon and emergency squad, Mr. Klapper said, are “my family” — friends who saw him grow up, stood together in deadly situations, and even signed him up for the online dating site where he eventually met his wife.
“These are folks I’ve known for decades and I could not have more respect or love for,” he said. “It was a time of need for them. If it was going to be helpful for them, I wanted to be there.”
Mr. Booker, too, is a kind of family to Mr. Klapper.
“I consider him a real soul connection because he has always been like Jimmy Cricket to me — he’s always been there in my life to remind me of the values at both our cores,” said Mr. Booker, who added that Mr. Klapper was his first phone call in the morning and his last before bed.
Mr. Klapper first met Mr. Booker at an assembly at his high school to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., impressing the politician, then a city councilman, with a documentary about the civil rights hero. Around that time, Mr. Klapper also applied to join the ambulance squad, a dream since he was a boy obsessed with fire trucks and ambulances.
In college, he worked for Mr. Booker and trained as a firefighter during the summers. During law school at Yale, he commuted home to volunteer for the fire crew and helped Mr. Booker navigate a fiscal crisis. And after graduating, he returned to City Hall in Newark as Mr. Booker’s chief policy adviser and, having been hired into a full-time position, as a professional firefighter. With Newark in the midst of deep budget cuts, he drew no salary from the city, supporting himself as a firefighter and through a part-time job at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
After Mr. Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013, Mr. Klapper moved to Washington to help with the demanding needs of setting up a new Senate office. When Mr. Booker announced his presidential campaign last year, Mr. Klapper moved back to Newark to serve as a senior adviser.
With virus cases beginning to fall in the state, Mr. Klapper is wrapping up his time with the squad, quarantining for two weeks before rejoining his family and returning to Washington, where the Senate has returned to session.
“I’m still going through my day thinking about what is sitting on surfaces inside the squad house, what I’m tracking into the house I’m staying in,” Mr. Klapper said. “I have a much more expansive view of how this is going to rip through the ranks of emergency services.”