"The floor's beautiful, but it's a b- to walk on," says lobbyist Angela Zaydon, who swears she'll never be caught dead in the halls of government in any shoes (and she boasts 500 pairs) with less than three-inch heels.
"It's uneven, it's slippery. It's not practical for heels," says Zaydon, who works for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and previously lobbied for optometrists' and insurers' trade groups.
Almost every longtime female lobbyist in Harrisburg has a war story to tell, and - blisters to bunions - the battle scars to back it up.
'The Shoeless Lobbyist'
Holly Kinser, executive vice president for lobbying powerhouse S.R. Wojdak, has logged many a mile in Capitol corridors atop sky-high heels. Her client list includes the City of Philadelphia.
Kinser - who favors Prada pumps and Christian Louboutin red soles - says traversing the tiles led to painful knee injuries early in her career. She also remembers breaking a heel (on her shoe, not her foot) in the 1990s, in the middle of a busy legislative session day.
Those are the days when lobbyists are most on the go: Bills are being voted, amendments attached or squashed. "I had legislation moving and no time to get new shoes," Kinser recalls. "I had to lobby the rest of the day barefoot. Some people still call me the shoeless lobbyist."
Heidi Prescott, lobbyist for the Humane Society of the United States, went to a podiatrist in 2001 for pain in her Achilles tendons.
"When I told him I walked on cobblestones all day, he said, 'Cobblestones!?' Then he yelled at me about my heels," Prescott recalls.
The diagnosis was Achilles tendinitis. "It was very painful and took a year to heal."
