Tonko again finds best seat in House for State of the Union

Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, greets President Barack Obama as he enters the House chamber prior to the State of the Union Tuesday night. Tonko explain he staked out the back-row seat four hours before the address; some congress members arrived early i...

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As far as seats go, it wasn’t the best — back row, center right. But it was on the aisle.

And it was great for getting on TV and securing the all-important handshake.

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko is good at that.

There was the Amsterdam Democrat on all the news networks Tuesday night, shaking President Obama’s hand and getting a few words in as he entered the House of Representatives prior to the State of the Union address.

“I specifically said, ‘On behalf of all the children in our country, thanks for the child tax credit. Let’s work to make it happen,’ ” Tonko recalled telling the president.

“Let’s get it together,” Obama responded, according to Tonko.

Then there was Tonko again on all the networks Tuesday night as Obama exited at the conclusion, getting another moment, and an autograph on a copy of the printed version of the address.

Good seat.

“It’s a fun thing to do. It’s a little bit of fun you can have with a job,” Tonko said Wednesday. “But anytime I can connect my district with the president of the United States, I will do so.”

He added that the party of the president is irrelevant.

This was the seventh State of the Union address for Tonko, who entered Congress the same year Obama entered the White House. Tonko said he was able to shake hands with Obama several times before or after addresses, including last year, when he was seated closer to the front.

“Sometimes I was two or three seats in” off the aisle,” he said.

So how did Tonko score the relatively prime back-row seat this year?

The congressman insists he is not an “aisle hog,” a phrase popular among the Beltway media for members who will stake out a seat as early as the morning of the State of the Union, just to ensure they get face time with the president and screen time on the networks. Numerous stories have been written about U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Bronx Democrat who for more than a quarter-century has arrived at the chamber at around 8:30 a.m. to claim a prime seat.

“Some people will go down early in the morning,” Tonko said. “I will not do that.”

What he did do Tuesday afternoon was testify at the House Rules Committee, located one floor above the chamber. He said he came down in the late afternoon.

“I went by around 5 o’clock. I said, ‘Who is sitting in the back row?’ ” he said. “They said if you are in the seat when Secret Service clears it, sweeps it,” you can claim it.

Congressmen have to be in the seat at the time to claim it; they can not place reserved signs. There is a free-for-all quality to the process.

“It really wasn’t that much time,” Tonko said.

He said he did business via his iPad. Secret Service came and did a security sweep an hour or so later. By 7 p.m., he was back.

It all worked for Tonko. He got in his words, his screen time, his autograph. Will he look to claim the same primo seat next year? Tonko said he won’t be setting his alarm clock to get there early in the morning.

“It’s all hit-and-miss,” he said.