Is Your Campaign Consultant Smarter Than a Sixth Grader?
Stuart Nachbar
October 21, 2008
This weekend, I finished an easy, but delightful read by Tierney Cahill, a Reno, Nevada schoolteacher who ran for Congress eight years ago. Her campaign raised approximately $7,000 and was staffed almost entirely by her sixth grade class, but she earned 35 percent of the vote as a Democratic candidate in an overwhelmingly Republican district.
Cahill´s book, Ms. Cahill for Congress, One Fearless Teacher, Her Sixth-Grade Class and the Election That Changed Their Lives Forever, is a story of a teacher who takes on a challenge brought to her by her students, without her knowing exactly what she is getting into. While her students are reasonably well organized to help, and display some surprising signage design skills, Cahill is more frustrated by the Democratic Party establishment than anyone else. Even the wife of the incumbent Republican congressman is more encouraging; a state legislator, she tells Cahill to run for her seat one day because she will not be able to hold it forever.
While parents have given their children permission to help their teacher campaign, Cahill is taken aback when she contacts the Democrats to declare her intentions to run. She is initially viewed as a joke, a non-contender who is not worth their time or resources. Yet she wins the Democratic primary, and as she becomes more recognized as a candidate her race receives slightly more attention. She receives the opportunity to campaign with others on the Nevada Democratic ticket as well as an appearance with former Vice President Gore´s daughter, who confides that her father is a fan of the teacher´s lost cause effort.
Cahill did not enter her race expecting to win, as much as to make a point: that anyone with the desire to serve can and should. She exposes her students to the good and bad of a campaign, while asking them to talk with their parents and develop their own opinions about the more polarizing social issues; abortion and gun laws were the two mentioned most often in the story. It is surprising that parents in a heavily Republican district never interceded to discourage their children from helping a Democrat. Maybe, they hoped that their child would learn a few lessons about politics that they couldn´t teach at home.
I´m a huge believer in experiential learning. I participated in Model Congress and United Nations from the eighth grade through my senior year in high school. We argued over the same issues as our real-life counterparts, but there was little at stake except school pride and a trophy. One time, I participated in a model New Jersey legislature and we had the opportunity to run our ersatz proceedings on the floor of the real state senate In Trenton. A legislator came on his day off—we held our proceeding on a Saturday—to wish us well, but his presence wasn´t needed to make the event feel real. But it would have never occurred to me to participate in a real campaign with real stakes at a much younger age.
Cahill has written this story going back eight years into the past, and she moves forward to the future to show how her campaign influenced her children and former students. Although she earned two awards for her political efforts as an educational exercise, one from the regional press, the other from the Nevada attorney general, Cahill never ran for public office again; she remains a teacher, tutor and coach. But she´s won far more than she lost eight years ago.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicles, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
Cahill´s book, Ms. Cahill for Congress, One Fearless Teacher, Her Sixth-Grade Class and the Election That Changed Their Lives Forever, is a story of a teacher who takes on a challenge brought to her by her students, without her knowing exactly what she is getting into. While her students are reasonably well organized to help, and display some surprising signage design skills, Cahill is more frustrated by the Democratic Party establishment than anyone else. Even the wife of the incumbent Republican congressman is more encouraging; a state legislator, she tells Cahill to run for her seat one day because she will not be able to hold it forever.
While parents have given their children permission to help their teacher campaign, Cahill is taken aback when she contacts the Democrats to declare her intentions to run. She is initially viewed as a joke, a non-contender who is not worth their time or resources. Yet she wins the Democratic primary, and as she becomes more recognized as a candidate her race receives slightly more attention. She receives the opportunity to campaign with others on the Nevada Democratic ticket as well as an appearance with former Vice President Gore´s daughter, who confides that her father is a fan of the teacher´s lost cause effort.
Cahill did not enter her race expecting to win, as much as to make a point: that anyone with the desire to serve can and should. She exposes her students to the good and bad of a campaign, while asking them to talk with their parents and develop their own opinions about the more polarizing social issues; abortion and gun laws were the two mentioned most often in the story. It is surprising that parents in a heavily Republican district never interceded to discourage their children from helping a Democrat. Maybe, they hoped that their child would learn a few lessons about politics that they couldn´t teach at home.
I´m a huge believer in experiential learning. I participated in Model Congress and United Nations from the eighth grade through my senior year in high school. We argued over the same issues as our real-life counterparts, but there was little at stake except school pride and a trophy. One time, I participated in a model New Jersey legislature and we had the opportunity to run our ersatz proceedings on the floor of the real state senate In Trenton. A legislator came on his day off—we held our proceeding on a Saturday—to wish us well, but his presence wasn´t needed to make the event feel real. But it would have never occurred to me to participate in a real campaign with real stakes at a much younger age.
Cahill has written this story going back eight years into the past, and she moves forward to the future to show how her campaign influenced her children and former students. Although she earned two awards for her political efforts as an educational exercise, one from the regional press, the other from the Nevada attorney general, Cahill never ran for public office again; she remains a teacher, tutor and coach. But she´s won far more than she lost eight years ago.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicles, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
Print
Email
