Kellie Chong Joins Rep. Dan Newhouse's Office as Senior Policy Adviser

Kellie Chong, a Capitol Hill staffing veteran with experience across both chambers, has landed as a Senior Policy Adviser in the personal office of Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA-4), according to congressional records. The Kellie Chong staffer appointment, effective March 1, 2026, adds a policy adviser with a cross-chamber résumé to a member office that sits at the intersection of agriculture, appropriations, and public lands policy.

Who Is Rep. Dan Newhouse?

Newhouse represents Washington's 4th Congressional District and carries a notably broad committee portfolio. He sits on the House Appropriations Committee, including its Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Homeland Security, and Energy and Water Development subcommittees. He also serves on the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

His 119th Congress legislative agenda reflects those assignments. Bills he has introduced include the Meeting Demand for Organic Produce Act, which would give producers an option to confirm the absence of prohibited substances through testing; the Specialty Crop Research Initiative Matching Funds Waiver, which would authorize the Secretary of Agriculture to waive matching fund requirements for certain research grants; and the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would strip the president's unilateral authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act. He has also introduced the Keeping Public Lands Out of Adversarial Hands Act, which would add the Secretary of the Interior to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

All of Newhouse's 119th Congress bills remain at the introduced stage.

Kellie Chong Staffer's Path to the Newhouse Office

The policy adviser appointment follows a career that has moved steadily upward through Republican personal offices. Chong previously served as Legislative Director in the office of Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23) from October through December 2025 — the most senior policy role in a member's personal office. Before that, she held a brief stint as a Legislative Assistant in the office of the late Rep. Don Young (R-AK) in August 2022, and served as a Legislative Aide in the Senate office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) for approximately three months in late 2021.

No specific policy issue areas are listed in congressional records for any of her prior positions, though the offices she has served span agriculture, appropriations, natural resources, and border security — portfolios that overlap substantially with Newhouse's current committee work.

Chong holds a Master's in Legal Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, completed in 2022. No lobbying disclosure records were identified for her in the available data.

Legislative Staff News: What the Committees Are Working On

As a matter of congressional staff movement, Chong's arrival places her in the orbit of several active committee tracks. Newhouse's Appropriations subcommittees have been among the busiest on Capitol Hill. During the 118th Congress, the Agriculture, Rural Development, and FDA Subcommittee held a Member Day hearing and a full subcommittee markup of the fiscal year 2025 spending bill, as well as a joint oversight hearing with the Agriculture Committee examining severe food distribution shortages in tribal and elderly communities, with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack appearing as a witness.

On the Natural Resources side, Newhouse's own legislation was the subject of hearings in the prior Congress. A Federal Lands Subcommittee hearing examined his Root and Stem Project Authorization Act, which would authorize landscape-scale forest restoration projects. The committee also held an oversight field hearing on wildfires and forest management at Yosemite National Park, and an oversight hearing on the Department of the Interior's fiscal year 2025 budget request featuring Secretary Deb Haaland.

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