With all eyes on the 2022 midterm election, eight Oxy students canvassed, coordinated, and cold-called their way through the political process in six battleground states
As campaign fellowsÌęfor Democratic incumbent Angie CraigÌęin Minnesotaâs 2nd Congressional Districtâhistorically a swing district just outside of the Twin CitiesâAva Wampold â24 and Ella Rubin â24 spent much of their time canvassing in the field,Ìętraining volunteers, coordinating the internship program, and posting on social media. But the main thing that took up most days was âother duties as assignedââwhenever any part of the campaign needed something to be done, they got to do that.
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That led to âsome really interesting experiences,â saysÌęRubin, a politics major from San Franciscoâlike going to the Half-Way to St. Paddyâs Day festival in the tiny Le Sueur County city of Kilkenny (complete with toilet bowl races, fireworks, and a 3-mile Leprechaun Fun Run).
Less than five weeks before the election, the death of third-party candidate Paula Overby (running on the Legal Marijuana Now ticket) threw a wrench into the contest. A GOP-leaning super PAC bought ads encouraging Minnesotans to vote for Overby posthumously, potentially siphoning votes away from Craig and tipping the election toward Republican challenger Tyler Kistner. While Overby ultimately garnered 3.3 percent of the vote,ÌęCraigÌęwas elected to a third term with 51 percent of all ballots castâbeating Kistner's 46 percent.
Not only were Rubin and Wampold in theÌęwar room with senior staff on election night, they were doing data entry as the returns came in. âThe districts that Ella and I were inputting are the ones that ended up winning us the campaign,â says Wampold, a religious studies major from Mercer Island, Wash.ÌęâThat moment was totally surreal. It was the coolest night ever.â
Swept up in âObamamania,âÌęa number of Occidental students were eager to campaign for first-term Senator Barack Obama â83 when he ran for president in 2008. Politics professors Peter Dreier and Regina Freer encouraged their effortsâeven if they initially disagreed on what the best approach would be.
âI said, âQuit college for a semester, go work, and live on somebodyâs couch,ââ recalls Dreier, who left Syracuse University in 1968 to work on Robert F. Kennedyâs presidential campaign.ÌęFreer suggested an alternative: giving students credit for their field workâwhich would likely appeal to parents who didnât want to see their children drop out of college. Seventeen students wound up working on campaigns that fallâmostly for Obama, but for Senate and Congressional races as wellâand Campaign Semester was born.
Since 2008, more than 125 students have participated in Campaign Semester, which gives students a full semester of credit (16 units) to work on a political campaign. (Oxy remains the only college in the country with such a program.) Participants choose which campaign to work for, with the only requirement being that it must be a âbattlegroundâ or âswingâ contest.ÌęâWe consider this to be akin to an immersive abroad experience,â says Freer, adding that the International Programs Officeâs ongoing support of the program has been âamazing.â
After 10 weeks in the fieldâculminating in Election Dayâparticipants return to campus for an intensive five-week seminar with Freer and Dreier examining issues such as campaign finance, voter turnout and suppression, and how voters' age, race, gender, and class shape elections. âWe want to give students the chance to put their on-the-ground experiences in a broader perspective,â Dreier explains.
While COVID-19 restrictions relegated the program to a mix of in-person and remote experiences in 2020, Campaign Semester returned to the field in 2022, with eight students traveling to six battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington) for the midterm elections. Common themes cropped up across the country as key campaign issues, including inflation, abortion, health care, andÌęcrime and safety. OthersÌęwere more regional in nature, such as water policies and the border crisis in Arizona.Ìę
In choosing to canvass for Craig in Minnesota, Rubin and Wampold worked alongside campaign manager Wellesley Daniels â17, who has shepherded seven political campaigns since 2018, including four congressional races. âElla and Ava ended up being such an important part of the community, which I think is awesome,â she says. âIt would be easy to come into a space like that and not really know where you fit, and just be kind of shy, but I donât know what the campaign would have been like without them.â
Kate Reinhard â25 worked for Congresswoman Kim Schrier, a pediatrician who was first elected in 2018 and was running for re-election in Washington Stateâs 8th Congressional District. Washingtonâs bipartisan redistricting commission redrew the district in 2021, potentially tipping the balance toward Republican challenger Matt Larkin, making it a battleground race.ÌęâIt created what was anticipated to be an even closer race because a huge rural part of the district had been added,â saysÌęReinhard, an urban and environmental policy major from Campbell,ÌęCalif., who worked as a field organizer for Schrierâs campaign.
âThe main reason that I chose to do Campaign Semester was because I felt like I didnât really have a full understanding of how politics works,â she continues. At first she found it scary to cold-call prospective volunteers to get them involved with the campaign, but soon those calls became her favorite part of the day.Ìę
Schrier won with 53 percent of the voteâeven better than her previous elections.ÌęAs sweet as that victory was, Reinhardâs favorite moment of the campaign happened on the day before Election Day, after her get-out-the-vote efforts in rural Covington, Wash., were cut short when a volunteer fell into a ditch and shattered his phone. (âThis is kind of a sad story at first, and then it gets better,â she promises.)
After making sure that their volunteer was OK, she and a co-worker drove past the Covington Library, âwhich is where the ballot drop box is in that part of our district,â Reinhard says. There they watched from a distance as voters queued up in their cars to drop off their ballotsâa validation of their efforts and âa really cool, surreal moment,â she adds.Ìę
According to a September 2022 study byÌęPolitico,Ìęnationwide redistricting resulted in 79 competitive districts out of 435 (a dip of 11 compared to a decade earlier). Because of redistricting,ÌęElissa Slotkinâwho had served two terms representing Michiganâs 8th Congressional Districtâfound herself running in 2022 against state Senator Tom Barrett in the neighboring 7th Congressional District.ÌęâThere were tons of new voters who hadnât seen our candidate before,â saysÌęNoah Weitzner â25,Ìęan urban and environmental policy major from Washington, D.C., and one of eight field organizers for Slotkinâs campaign.Ìę
A self-identified âdemocratic socialist,âÌęWeitzner was assigned to rural, red Shiawassee County,Ìęwhere his role was to recruit and manage a volunteer base of canvassers, phone bankers, and text bankers. He quickly learned how to make lists and target voters based on public records and information from the Democratic Party. He also attended many small community meetings to learn about the area and recruit volunteers.Ìę
When all the ballots were counted, Slotkin sailed to victory in the redrawn district with 52 percent of the total vote. She tallied 42.8 percent of the votes in rural Shiawassee Countyâa seven-point jump from the Democratic candidate in 2020âwhich contributed to her overall margin. And, much to his surprise,ÌęWeitznerâs personal politics never became an issue: âI actually developed a lot of respect for moderacy, which I never thought Iâd say.â
Sunari Weaver-Anderson â24,Ìęa politics major from Richmond, Calif.,Ìęworked with Unite Here Philly, the hospitality and food service union of the Philadelphia region, whose members are primarily women and people of color. The organization aimed to help elect Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania, including John Fetterman, who won his U.S. Senate race over Mehmet Oz.ÌęâI came in with an interest in labor and in the labor movement, for sure,â she says. âIt was one of the reasons why I picked being a part of this campaign over doing an individual candidateâs campaign.â
As a community canvasser, Weaver-Anderson knocked on anywhere from 60 to 120 doors a day, with a focus on working families inÌęPhiladelphiaâs Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods. (All totaled,ÌęUnite Hereâs effortâcalled Philly Workers to the Frontâknocked on 980,000 doors inÌęthe Pennsylvania 2022 midterms.) In one memorable encounter,Ìęshe met a 25-year-old single mom named Ariel, whoâafter initially asserting that she didnât vote because she âdidnât careâ about politicsânot only registered but made a plan to go vote on Election Day with her mail-in ballot. âThat was really awesome,â Weaver-Anderson says. âI was able to have a lot of experiences like that.â
Her Campaign Semester experience upended her perceptions about the prerequisites needed to run a campaign.ÌęâMy supervisor was a bartender who worked in New Orleans and then rose up and headed a labor union,â says Weaver-Anderson, who worked alongsideÌęcooks, servers, and other hospitality workers from all over the country. âIt definitely made me think, you can be anyone and participate and make a difference,â she says. âThat was really inspiring to me.â
Noah Sullivan â24Ìęworked on Mission for Arizona,Ìęthe Arizona Democratic PartyâsÌęcoordinated campaign to elect Democratic candidates. Founded largely in support of incumbent Senator Mark KellyâwhoÌęwon a special election in the increasingly swing state toÌęfill the remainder of the late John McCainâs term in 2020âthe campaign also aided candidates running for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Congress, and even legislative district races.ÌęThe Democrats won every statewide seat.
âYour job is like managing 20 to 30 relationships at any given time,â says Sullivan, a politics major from Petersburg, Alaska. âIt was still harder than what I had expectedâit took some getting used to.âÌę
Sullivan learned about Mission for Arizona after regional organizing director Sarah Young â20 reached out to Oxy asking for help on the campaign. A diplomacy and world affairs major, Young had previously been a field organizer for several campaigns in Virginia and Michigan, âbut we just happened to cross paths in Arizona this year,â Sullivan says.Ìę
Staying in touchÌęwith the other Campaign Semester participants made Sullivanâs work easier, Sullivan adds, because they could relate to one anotherâs experiences. âI would send a screenshot of what I was doing, and someone would be like, âOh, I recognize the app youâre using.â Weâre sending texts, or we're knocking on doors with the same infrastructure, basically.â
Thomas Carney â25Ìęworked as a field organizer for Congressman Greg Stantonâs re-election campaign in Arizonaâs 4th Congressional District. He recruited volunteers to do canvassing and make phone calls. âMy favorite part was working with the legislative districts, not just with the top-ticket folks,â says Carney, a politics major from Washington, D.C.Ìę
Democratic candidates Stacey Travers and Patty Contreras, running in state Legislative District 12, were first-time candidates on the ballot. âIt was really helpful to get that connection going early in August and September and then fold in with Mission for Arizona and get more resources and volunteers,â Carney explains. âWe really helped them get the word out about them.â Both Travers and Contreras won their races.
In one of the most heated contests in the country, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake lambasted her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, as âchickenâ for refusing to debate her. At a campaign event hosted at Mission for Arizonaâs office in October,ÌęHobbs had just been introduced when a cluster of Lake supporters dressed as chickens tried to storm the door.Ìę
âThey probably spent $20 on these costumes,â says Carney, who was staffing the event alongside Sullivan.ÌęâOne of our colleagues had to run across the room and hold the door shut while their people were trying to get into this event. I was holding signs in front of the windows to block them.â The episode was âfun,â he adds, âbut also a little traumatizing. Afterward we all got food and were pumped up on adrenaline.â
Having gone through eight election cycles now,ÌęCampaign Semester has generated a pipeline of former participants who have continued their work at the professional level, fostering meaningful connections and resources for the program to utilize. (Senator Claire McCaskillâs re-election bid in Missouri in 2018 had three generations of Campaign Semester alumni working on the campaign.)
Win or lose, itâs hard to put a price on the Campaign Semester experienceâeven when the outcome (as with the McCaskill campaign) doesnât turn out as hoped.ÌęAs a campaign fellow for Stacey Abramsâ gubernatorial campaign in Decatur, Ga., Violet Appelsmith â24Ìęworked as a digital organizer and co-managed a program named Students for Stacey,Ìęorganizing at high school and college campuses across the state.
âThere were some incredible opportunities for meeting people,â says Appelsmith, a politics major from Sacramento. âIf I decide to work on another campaign, I will have an incredible network of some great political minds and people whom I can reach out to for that.â
While her Campaign Semester peers ultimately participated in winning campaigns, Appelsmith knows what itâs like to be on the other end of the projected call: Abrams lost to Republican incumbent Brian Kemp with 45.9 percent of the vote, a larger margin of defeat than in her 2018 run.
Appelsmith texted all of her student volunteers after the election, âtelling them how much I appreciate all the work they did,â she says. (One of them texted her back and said, âRegardless of the outcome, Iâll always be a Student for Stacey.â)
Two days after the election, when the Abrams team were having their final staff meeting at campaign headquarters,ÌęâEveryone was a puddle of tears and kind of a mess,âÌęAppelsmith recalls. âTo have put all of that work into something like that and not have it turn out the way you hoped was incredibly difficult.âÌę
That day, Abrams came and spoke to everyone in the office. âShe told all of us, âSometimes in life you are holding the gate open and that means that you donât get to go through it, but that doesnât mean that you close the gate and you donât let anyone else through.âÌęThat was one of the most powerful moments from my entire tenure thereââand a Campaign Semester memory that will last a lifetime.Ìę
Haley Jones â22 is a reporter forÌęThe Lancaster NewsÌęin South Carolina. This is her first article forÌęOccidentalÌęmagazine.
Top photo: Ella Rubin '24, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Ava Wampold '24 at Angie Craig's campaign headquarters.