Skip to content

History Helps Win Contest

The winner of Roll Call’s Biennial Adjournment Contest is Karl Kaufmann, an attorney with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.

Kaufmann guessed that Congress would adjourn sine die at 6:34 p.m. Dec. 11 — just two days from the actual Senate adjournment at 7:33 p.m. Dec. 9. The House adjourned at 9:40 p.m. Dec. 8.

“I normally don’t win these types of things,” said the 31-year-old Kaufmann. “I submit an entry and expect never to hear about it again.”

The Yale University graduate of political science didn’t have to look into a crystal ball to select his date. His method was really quite simple: He looked at Congressional history.

“Basically Congress has a track record of going on into December,” Kaufmann said. “I just wanted to pick a date in December that was plausible even though, at the time, Congress was talking about adjourning in mid-October.

“There was nothing magic in the date,” he added.

Kaufmann admits that his experience on Capitol Hill — he worked for four years for former Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) and is a lobbyist for MasterCard and TransUnion — played a small part in making his decision.

“I knew not to believe that when [Congress] was talking about mid-October adjournment — it was unrealistic,” he said.

Kaufmann was one of 194 people to enter the contest and one of only a few who did not choose a date before Thanksgiving. Eighty percent thought Congress would adjourn before Thanksgiving, even though adjournment didn’t come until December the past three years.

Kaufmann won a pair of round-trip first-class tickets to any destination served by Northwest Airlines in the continental United States. He plans to take his wife and 1-year-old daughter to visit family in either Florida, Tennessee or South Carolina.

Recent Stories

Deadly Texas flooding puts Trump’s past talk of eliminating FEMA to the test

Senate NDAA would hike defense spending by $32 billion

Should we talk about the weather? — Congressional Hits and Misses

Photos of the week | July 4-10, 2025

Appropriators advance Legislative Branch bill without GAO cuts

FBI headquarters fight stymies spending bill in Senate