today to talk through why do i love
campaigning even though the work is so
exhausting so i want to before i jump
right in give you a little bit of
background of who I am and how I even
got into politics so I do not come from
a political family whatsoever I was born
and raised in the northwest suburbs of
Chicago so our big claim to fame these
days is the Chicago Cubs winning the
2016 World Series I have never been more
excited to say that I am from Chicago
and that i am a Cubs fan because after a
hundred and eight years of not winning
it is very fun to be a winner ever so
that is basically the extent of my
Chicago blood when I say I’m from the
Chicagoland area I did grow up a full 25
miles outside of the city center and so
I think a lot of my upbringing really
helped shape the way that I’ve you ideas
and the way that I’ve you people in as a
part the way I view politics so I’m the
oldest of four children but nobody in my
immediate family or my extended family
maybe two or three identify with the
same political party as I do so it’s a
heated debate every Thanksgiving every
Christmas me versus maybe by like 20
cousins aunts and uncles but it is a lot
of fun and it challenges me to take
ownership of what I think and why I
think that and I would say that it first
began when I was in college I went to
Baylor University in Waco Texas and when
I went to college I had no intention of
majoring in political science it’s not
that I wasn’t interested in it it just
wasn’t on my radar so when I was a
sophomore everyone at the university is
required to take a course in American
constitutional development so i sat in
second row in that course and I fell in
love with the material I think it helped
that our professors were married to one
another they taught the class jointly so
they created the most engaging and
meaningful course for me we studied
everything from the separation of powers
to monumental Supreme Court cases all
the way to voting
rights and it was the voting rights
stuff that really really stuck with me I
fell in love with the material I fell in
love with the content and it was then
that I decided okay this is something
that I want to pursue not only with my
major but also as a career so we can
fast forward all the way through college
to a graduation day when I was looking
for my first job up to that point I had
only taken internships obviously I
wasn’t really qualified to do much other
than help file papers help schedule all
kinds of little stuff so I had very
normal work hours as an intern I went in
for three days worked from eight to five
close the books got to go home at the
end of the day so when I applied to work
on my first political campaign after
graduation I was in for a world of shock
for what it actually entailed the hours
were way longer than i had dissipated
the work was much harder than i had ever
anticipated and I never planned to go
into fundraising I had a political
science major i thought i was going to
change the world with policy and ideas
and all this different stuff when that’s
not really the reality of how it happens
so the first job that I accepted was
this campaign for an individual who
lived in illinois and we worked our
butts off i was hired to do something
called call time the manager so i assume
all of you are not campaign savvy with
all the lingo and the titles I’m going
to do my best job to break it down for
you so I was in the fundraising
department and fundraising is kind of
like the engine of the campaign we don’t
we’re not really seen we’re not really
heard a lot of the time but what we do
is make sure that our candidate has
enough money to get the message out so
whether that’s through the mailers you
get in the end in your inboxes or your
snail mail mail boxes or whether that’s
the ads that you see on TV or just basic
field program so when people knock doors
on your house sort of talk talk to you
about what candidate you support why you
support them that’s all funded through
fundraising and a majority of the money
in the most effective way to raise money
is through what we call call time where
it is your call time manager what
was myself and your candidate sitting in
a room with binders of information
people their phone number their address
how much they’ve given two different
candidates in the past which sounds
creepy but it’s all public information
it’s all available on the Federal
Election Commission the FEC website so
if any of you have ever donated to a
candidate and you have given two hundred
or more dollars in one election cycle
your information is publicly available
so it was my job to research those folks
and to figure out who was best for our
candidate to call and ask for money so
most days I would go into the office you
know eight am ready to work hard
candidate would come in 9am we would sit
down and dial together for seven hours
it was exhausting he would then go home
I would have an hour to do all of my
data entry and then prep for the next
day’s calls so I left the office most
day probably around eight pm and if it
was earlier I brought the work home with
me to prep for the next day so coming
from looking at that perspective
compared to the intern jobs I really had
no idea what I was getting involved in
but I loved that work I loved the
campaign I love the idea that I was
helping propel a candidate and a cause
that I was passionate about so fast
forward to November of 2012 and we won
it was so so fun and everything that we
had been working towards was realized so
if you would have asked me in 2012 your
work is exhausting why do you love
campaigning I would have been able to
say well because we got somebody elected
to Congress it’s awesome the values and
the ideas that we have been fighting for
are all now realized I thought I was
making a difference through my work
through getting somebody elected that
was how I viewed that question at first
so fast forward to another congressional
race that I did where we weren’t as
lucky and in this role instead of the
call time manager I was actually the
finance director so I was in charge of
employees who did all of the work and it
was my strategy that was getting us to
raise this you know million plus 2
million dollar number that we thought we
would need to be effective
so while we did raise all of that money
I had never put more time and effort
into a program it was the first time I
had ever done something like that so I
would spend hours at my computer
figuring out shoot this event
underperformed how are we going to make
that up through online money here how
are we going to make that up through
direct mail when we send solicitations
to individuals mailboxes and ask for
contributions that way and how can I
bolster this call time number so all of
that came together Election Day rolls
around and we lost so I was faced with
this same question why am I campaigning
and I’m exhausted more so than ever
before because I’ve had more ownership
in this program than I ever had before
and I did not have an answer if someone
asked me why do you like doing this why
are you so excited why are you committed
to this work it was only the exhaustion
that was speaking through after that
race so that made me think okay maybe I
need to approach this question
differently maybe I need to start
looking from a different lens if this is
the work that I want to continue to do
your first loss does that it’s really
sobering it’s really you have all these
ideals and these things that you’re
fighting for and when they don’t happen
it makes the 12 plus our days seem very
miniscule in the grand scheme of things
it makes the work feel very belittled
almost like I poured my heart soul and
energy into this candidate or cause and
what we wanted to happen didn’t happen
so how could i reconcile the idea that
my work was still valuable when I wasn’t
getting the outcome that I wanted so
then I looked at a question the question
a different way I thought well what if
the value of the work that I’m doing
isn’t determined by my outcome and I
think that if I had this mindset back in
2012 and then so on and so forth when I
won different races or lost different
races the value of what I was doing
wouldn’t necessarily be determined by
something that I at the end of the day
don’t have control of the electorate
control the people have control I can
raise as much money as humanly possible
I can help the campaign put best put
forth the best message is humanly
possible but if it’s not resonating with
everybody that’s an outcome I can’t
necessarily control so I started to look
into the idea of value what is valuable
how do we define value and I came across
this book by a gentleman named dr.
Martin Seligman he’s a psychologist he
really focuses a lot on positive
psychology and the way that he was able
to articulate a lot of what I was
feeling it just was like a light bulb
went on I knew then that I was letting
my value and the value of the work that
we were doing be determined by a
favorable outcome and that is when the
question why am I campaigning even
though I’m so exhausted was sort of
flipped on its head for me it wasn’t
necessarily why am I doing this as much
as it was regardless of the outcome I am
propelled to do this so there’s I mean
value we can talk about value it’s
pretty vague everybody has different
ideas of what is valuable to them or
what isn’t but it was this book flourish
by dr. Seligmann that helps put it in
perspective for me so he talks about two
things he talks about achievement and he
talks about meaning and through those
two items achievement and meaning i
really be able to see through his words
what i had been feeling so when it comes
to achievement he talks about becoming
excellent at something so for me I knew
I had personal achievement I was an
excellent fundraiser over the course of
them from twenty eleven to twenty
sixteen collectively I’ve raised more
than 15 million dollars for candidates
and causes I know I’m good at what I do
I can outrace any goal that’s up before
me I have good strategy I know I’m
competent that’s personal achievement
that work is valuable and then meaning
is what i am doing making the world a
better
place or making my community a better
place and this is the part that got me
stuck on the outcome because I’m
thinking well know if my work doesn’t
get done if what I’m hoping to
accomplish isn’t realized then know the
meaning is useless and then I think
that’s when my brain put this whole
puzzle piece together that the value of
my work helps to determine the meaning
so my ideals and the things that I’m
committed to and the things that I want
to fight for as a person give my work
meaning even if they aren’t realized
through an election so all that to say
in any work that you guys do whether my
fiance is a teacher and so he and I have
had a couple conversations along this
line along these lines were it’s a
little bit universally applicable he can
prepare for as much content to set up
students to succeed but he can’t control
whether or not they do the work he can’t
control whether they turn in their
homework study for their papers so
inevitably he might have a few students
every year or semester that don’t make a
passing grade that’s not the outcome he
was shooting for you don’t want your
students to fail but at the end of the
day you can’t let somebody else and the
way they impact your work determine your
outcome and so when for me in political
campaigns it’s the same situation I
can’t let what the electorate decides
determine the value of my work I have to
give it meaning on my own because I
believe what I am doing by fighting for
the ideas that I believe in and helping
that be realized in candidates that I
want to support brings purpose value and
it helps beat the outcome so I guess my
last point for you I’ll to consider
today is how do you find your work
valuable what do you determine as
valuable and if the outcome that you
want isn’t realized how do you make sure
that the measure of your success isn’t
determined by that but it’s determined
by what you have achieved and the
meaning that you are bringing to your community so thanks