Graduation Day, Inauguration Day

Legislators are growing up so fast these days…

By Allison Ehrich Bernstein, Brown University

Have you ever complained about something in your college town and said, “Why don’t they just do X?” Well, you’re not the only one, but some students and recent graduates have actually decided to get involved and put their ideas for improving the community to work. But they’re not taking the typical community service route; they’re running for public office. In Providence, Rhode Island, Ethan Ris, 23 is running for the Democratic nomination for a city council seat soon to be vacated by David Segal, 26, who is leaving to run for the state legislature.

Segal, who graduated in 2001 from Columbia University in New York, only lived in Providence for a year and a half before he was elected to represent the city’s first ward. Ris decided to run just months after he graduated from Brown University in Providence last year. Both young men actually come from Maryland.

This isn’t only happening in Providence. Patrick Schmitt, a 2006 graduate of Georgetown University is returning to his hometown of Westerly, R.I., to run for state senate at the age of 22. At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, College Democrats and College Republicans arranged for almost two dozen of their peers to run for municipal positions in last year’s elections. And in Norwalk, Conn., Lex Paulson is running for State House after graduating from Yale University in 2002.

Unlike Segal and Ris, Schmitt is running in his home district. Schmitt followed the issues of Rhode Island’s 38th Senate district while he was at Georgetown, and he decided to run for the seat even before he graduated. “It’s important to remember where we’re from and not go off to college and forget the community you left,” Schmitt said. “These issues are serious—they’re not abstract like flag burning. It’s the gritty issues I want to tackle.” Though his previous political experience lies in national policy areas, with organizations such as Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) and AmeriCorps, Schmitt said he is prepared to apply those skills to state-level problems.

Each candidate had a similar outlook on his unique situation. They encountered minimal, if any, opposition or detraction based on age. Even Ris’ 38-year-old opponent for the Democratic nomination, Seth Yurdin, agreed. “Age is just a number,” Yurdin said. “The city council is probably not an entry-level job, but, that being said, some people who are young have had an impact. I think it takes a pretty unique person to jump into that at that age.”

For Rhode Islanders, this is no new phenomenon. Brown students and graduates have run for city- and state-level positions before. Ris pointed out that both of the state’s congressmen got early starts—Patrick Kennedy ran for a position in the State House in his 20s while a student at Providence College, and Jim Langevin was around the same age at the University of Rhode Island when he ran for statewide office while already a member of the Warwick, R.I. City Council.

“Starting early definitely has its advantages—energy, fresh ideas, and you work your way up pretty quick,” Ris said.

The Providence City Council is a full time position, and the state legislature can be intense at certain times of year, but other positions are lower-impact and carry fewer questions of legitimacy for outsiders. For students at Penn who won election monitoring positions, the time commitments are smaller. “The thing about being in charge of elections is that you’re … just making sure people are following rules,” said Hershel Eisenberger, Penn ’07, an election inspector in Philadelphia. “I don’t really have to represent anyone so much as ensure the integrity of the electoral system.”

Ezra Billinkoff, Penn ’07, a judge in the same area, said their district, Division 18 of Philadelphia’s 27th ward, contains “all of two residential buildings.” Nearly all of Billinkoff and Eisenberger’s constituents are fellow students—plus the university president.

Billinkoff, who hails from New York and Bucks County, Pa, said representatives of the Penn College Democrats approached him last year, saying they had been facing trouble getting Democrats to run polling locations. “West Philadelphia is Democratic, but no one was stepping up,” Billinkoff said. As a result, he said, seemingly eligible voters were being turned away from polls, and the students were looking to change that.

Billinkoff ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, and his Republican opponent in the general election remained a good friend despite Billinkoff’s 49-1 victory. “There was no tension,” he said, and campaigning largely consisted of handing out fliers at the polling station. “I don’t know that there’s anything that qualified me more than anyone else,” he said. “But when we’re looking at neighborhoods that are solely college students, I think its right for a student to be showing people how to vote. It sends a signal and a good message.”

“I think people in the community are generally happy when young people take this kind of position,” Eisenberger added. “I guess it’s not that frequent, but it’s good [for students] to get their feet in the water without plunging into something they’re not ready for.”

What gives these candidates the legitimacy to run? In addition to being relatively inexperienced, the Rhode Islanders and Penn students are mostly not natives to the area. Their previous experience lies mostly in campus politics and political groups and issue-based campaigns. How can they represent their potential constituents when they are, by some standards, hardly constituents themselves?

Segal and Ris have ready answers. Ris said he would represent both the students and the locals in Providence’s First Ward, which is home to both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. The constituency of older locals, he said, “basically runs the Democratic system here on the East Side.” It’s a ward used to a young councilmember, and Ris said he received the unanimous endorsement of the ward Democratic Committee.

Growing up outside of Washington, D.C., with people moving in and out of his area so often, Ris explained that he lacked a regional identity. In Providence, Ris said he immediately found a city that “feels like home more than Washington ever did,” and he has found that “if you really want to change people’s lives, you have to do it at the municipal level, [which controls] the vast majority of things that really affect people’s lives, like trash collection, schools, and police and fire departments.” Now a teacher at the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a Providence charter school, Ris made his top priority reforming the public school system.

As for Segal, now an established Providence politician, he became involved in city politics as a member of the Green Party after the issue-based campaigns he worked with met opposition with the ward’s previous representative and no other progressive candidate materialized. Four years later, Segal has switched his alliance to the Democratic Party and is ready to move up. “Municipal powers are defined by the state, which provides education funding, etc,” Segal said. “The city environment is just such a small geographic area. We’re very much constrained by the structure the state puts in.” By moving to the state level, he said, “there’s the potential to effect a much greater change.”

The common conception of such young candidates seems to be fairly positive: older constituents love to see dynamic young people so involved, and younger constituents, are happy to be represented by own of their own.

“There are some people who can and will do a good job, and others who can’t, and that’s what it comes down to,” said Yurdin, Ris’ opponent. “You have to look at their experience and everything else to decide.”

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