Series of Political Memoirs

by Helen

I am contemplating writing several blog posts on my various political moments for kicks.  If I ever write a book, I feel like I'd go back to these stories and use them. 

I'm sure lots of people will find it boring, but it will be a great closure to my political career as a consultant and staffer and I think it will help me prepare for school mentally.  I will probably take out candidate names and staff names to protect people.  Hopefully, the stories are colorful enough that they won't need names to be better.  

So without further ado, here is my first political memory. 

How I Entered and Stayed in Republican Politics 

It was Spring 2008, I was a senior in college and was interning on my first campaign.  I drove from UCLA to Orange County and then back to Porter Ranch (home) three times a week to work for a candidate who was competing in a Primary for a CA State Senate seat.  Based on his website, he was a fiscal conservative and was well educated as well.  Those were all positives in my book and they agreed to let me help, which I thought was really nice of them.  At UCLA's Career Center, they forgot to tell me that free labor is always welcome, so I felt honored to be given a chance to staple signs three times a week and answer phones. 

Anyway, one day I was answering phones and a very nice lady called and asked if the candidate was pro-life or pro-choice.  I put her on hold and asked the campaign manager (who was maybe 23 and seemed very experienced and wise to me).  She looked at me like I was an idiot and said "he is pro-life of course." So I politely answered the question and hung up the phone.

I went to pack my bag and the campaign manager asked me what I thought I was doing.  I said that I am pro-choice and it is against my morals to work for a pro-life candidate.  She asked me to give her a second to go find the candidate's policy director (the candidate was already in the State Assembly).  So the policy director sat down with me for a good 15-20 minutes and discussed with me what issues were important to me and why I defined myself as a Republican.  So I talked about affirmative action, fiscal responsibility, effective programs for those in need and not wasteful ones, etc. He then went over how many bills come up for consideration in CA legislature every year and how many become law.  The number is staggering - something like 1000 bills are introduced every session and 400 become laws. And of those, there are usually 2-3 bills every year come up that deal with the issue of life and even those are usually done for posturing by one or the other party for the sake of scoring political points. 

He reminded me that California is a heavily pro-choice state and perhaps if my issues were fiscal, I was still in the right camp. 

I will never forget that day. The time the policy guy took out of his day to talk me through this and make me understand that I am not a single issue voter and mind. 

I stayed.  The candidate won.  Now he is actually a Congressman. 

Comments

[Irene]

this is cool, I look forward to other stories...

[Allen]

Hi

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Allen
http://www.mbanerds.com
allen.lin@mbanerds.com