Students Swing to Iowa

AP Seminar, AP Government, and AP Economics teacher Daniel Adler and seniors Amelia Haynes and Katie Seaman were privileged to visit Iowa under the Mikva Challenge during the MLK weekend. The program offers eligible students the opportunity to work with presidential candidates during their campaign in Iowa.
Over 160 students from various states such as California, Florida, and Texas flew into Des Moines, Iowa, to begin their volunteer service. Students were able to select which candidate they wanted to work with, and were assigned a van to travel the state with five other students. This allowed for them to have their own unique experiences. Haynes worked under the Clinton campaign, which involved a more on-hands approach: “We went knocking on doors and spoke with the residents to vote for Clinton in the freezing five-degree weather.”
Residents of California do not get to experience such political participation from presidential candidates due to a firm political party preference. Iowa is a swing state, meaning the state is given more attention by presidential candidates to get their vote. As most presidential candidates are in Iowa, there is a respective candidate tracker for those interested in finding campaign rallies. “We looked at the tracker and we saw that Chris Christie was having a breakfast, so we went and ended up meeting him,” said Adler. “We also did phone calls for Bernie Sanders and walked around to see people who would want to go to the caucuses.”
“My favorite part being there was getting to meet Martin O’Malley. We were standing in the foyer of the town hall, and he walked in, shook our hands, and took a picture with us,” said Haynes.