WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike Haridopolos has been averaging 15,000 steps a day during the shutdown, and his years of being a history teacher have come in handy.

With staff-led tours of the Capitol on pause until the government reopens, the Florida Republican has led more than 20 tours of his own this month.

“As a former history teacher, I love doing them, actually,” he said. “I love telling people the story of the building of the Capitol, some of the famous figures.”

The reaction from his constituents? The House floor seems bigger on TV.

On a normal day, the building is filled with groups of tourists snaking through the maze-like hallways, led by expert guides from the Capitol Visitor Center or junior congressional staffers. Now, lawmakers are the ones rattling off facts about the height of the Capitol Dome (287 feet) or the year the British set it ablaze (1814).

Haridopolos said he likes to highlight Henry Clay — a favorite political figure of his, despite never becoming president. Walk around the Capitol with the freshman congressman, and he’ll go places that an ordinary tour guide wouldn’t, like the House Republican Cloakroom. He draws on what he learned from watching C-SPAN’s “The Capitol” series and a few pages of handwritten notes.

On a recent Thursday, Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was right in the middle of a tour when he had to pause and run off to vote. He turned it into a teaching moment, returning to the Ohio Clock Corridor to explain to the group how senators cast their votes in the chamber by pointing a finger up or down.

“I don’t know how many I’ve done over five years, but I occasionally do them. I’ve done two this last week,” he said of the tours.

While members of Congress are free to give tours whenever they want, it’s usually below their pay grade. That’s changed now that the Capitol Visitor Center is shut tight during the current funding lapse and tours led by congressional staff are officially banned, according to guidance from the House Administration and Senate Rules committees.

So these members are taking things into their own hands, framing it as a way to connect with constituents, even during a rough patch for Congress.

“So many of us have been actively looking for opportunities to make sure that we were there for our constituents who came to town,” said Democratic Rep. Laura Friedman, who last week led a group of more than 80 eighth-grade students visiting from her Southern California district.

The group had scheduled a staff-led tour with Friedman’s office, with the congresswoman planning on greeting them beforehand. When the shutdown came, she decided to lead it herself rather than cancel.

“These kids who have waited all year to come on this trip and been very excited about coming to Washington, D.C., already were disappointed that they couldn’t go to the Smithsonian museums,” she said.

Studying up

Members have been putting their own stamp on things. Friedman, for example, pointed out the Women’s Reading Room, a suite that was repurposed for female members in the 1960s.

“For a lot of the young girls that were there, it didn’t occur to them that the building was built without any bathrooms for women and that there was a time when there were no women in Congress,” she said.

For freshmen who are still new to the place themselves, the trick is navigating the labyrinth of corridors, including tunnels that branch away to the House and Senate office buildings. “I still get lost in the tunnels, so I brought some of my staff with me, and a couple of tour books so that we did a little studying up ahead of time,” Friedman said.

Tours have been a hot topic on House text threads recently, she added. Members have been comparing notes — and sometimes running into each other on the job.

This week, a group of 170 middle school students and their chaperones, led by Alabama Republican Rep. Barry Moore, crossed paths outside the House chamber with a smaller group of students led by Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Gabe Amo guided a group who were part of a program providing pathways to college for low- to moderate-income students. He made sure to show them the House chamber.

“As someone who’s been in Congress for 23 months now, it’s still, every time I’m on there, I feel the great importance of the place,” he said of the floor. “To share with these young people, many of whom will have backgrounds that are similar to mine … brought certainly a great amount of gravity to this moment.”

Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House out of session and committee hearings on hold this month, saying the work of funding the government now lies with the Senate after his own chamber passed a GOP-led continuing resolution in September. But with these tour groups and more, the visitors passing through have brought a low hum of activity to the otherwise empty halls.

On Tuesday, a man in a quarter-zip sweater stopped in the rotunda and pointed at the frieze of American history that wraps around the dome.

It was Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore, almost blending into the crowd without his usual tie and jacket. He turned to his tour group, explaining how the frieze traces Christopher Columbus’ arrival to the first flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Under normal circumstances, he would have briefly welcomed the constituents before having a staffer lead the tour. But during a shutdown, he got more time.

“I would have been able to interact with the group. I wouldn’t have been able to maybe spend an hour and a half,” Moore said.

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