As the ’08 presidential race heats up, recent graduates dive in and get to work.

BY | ANDY STEINER PHOTOGRAPHS BY | DARIN BACK

Matt Klaber ’07 is naturally competitive, but he’s not a natural at activities typically defined as competitive. “I’m not particularly athletically gifted,” Klaber jokes. “My parents were always impressed to see me walk and chew gum at the same time. But as early as middle school, I became active in politics. I was just drawn to it. I always had a desire to change what was happening in the world, and I really loved working on campaigns.” Last summer, for instance, he managed Democrat Ryan Winkler’s campaign for the Minnesota Legislature. Klaber’s candidate won the tight three-way race with 38 percent of the vote. “I love strategizing, organizing—it’s all very competitive,” Klaber continues. “In high school I used to say, ‘Politics is my sport,’ and it still is.”

If politics is Klaber’s sport, then he’s on the first leg of an ultramarathon, one that began just weeks after he graduated from Macalester and may continue until next November. These days, Klaber, a computer science major, is putting his political passion and tech savvy to heavy use, working as data director in the New Hampshire office of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards. Almost since he landed in New Hampshire, Klaber has been working around the clock helping position his candidate to win that state’s key primary. He shares an apartment in downtown Manchester— just eight blocks from campaign headquarters—with another senior campaign staffer. By his own account, Klaber works 12 to 13 hours a day, six and a half days a week, leaving little time for a social life. “When I have time to hang out, chances are it’s with other campaign staff,” he says, adding that the Edwards campaign employs about 65 paid staffers in the state. “There isn’t much time to make other friendships or to drive to Boston to see friends.”

Klaber’s job responsibilities are varied, but include managing the massive state voter file database, coordinating technology infrastructure in area field offices, and filming and posting online selected candidate appearances. It’s hard work, and he’s not exactly earning a princely sum (“more than the typical starting salary,” is all he’ll say), but Klaber clearly loves what he’s doing. “Campaigning is almost an addiction for me,” he says. “There’s a rush that’s involved. The work we’re doing for this cycle is unprecedented: We will be going full blast all the way through the primary in January. It’s totally intense but something I enjoy.”

ALL HANDS ON DECK

Klaber is not the only recent Mac grad working for a presidential candidate. In fact, all the Democratic frontrunners employ at least one campaign worker with a newly minted Macalester degree. Why the preponderance of recent Mac alums on campaign staffs? Zachary Teicher ’07, a field organizer for Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire office, believes that many of the values taught at Macalester—like civic responsibility, social awareness, and global connectedness—naturally inspire graduates to seek political careers. It also doesn’t hurt to be sprung from college just as an election cycle is heating up.

“This is the kind of work that Macalester preps you for,” Teicher says. “It’s exactly why I went to school there. And then graduating when I did, right when everybody was gearing up for primary season, it seemed only logical for me to move out here and get right to work.” And that’s precisely what Teicher did. Since moving to New Hampshire in June, he has basically signed over his life to Clinton for a salary he describes as “enough for someone who has very few expenses.” Teicher is usually busy every moment of the day: “I get to the office by 9 a.m., catch up on the news, see what’s happening,” he says. “Then I meet with my coworkers to discuss the day ahead, do computer work, work with volunteers, talk to voters in my region about who they’re supporting in the primary, go to town Democrat meetings, go to community events and represent Hillary, and get out of the office by 9 p.m.” The long hours and competitive race means that Teicher’s social life tends to be limited to hanging out with other Clinton staffers, but that’s okay with him. In some ways, he says, it feels like he never left college. “There are quite a few of us who have just graduated from college and are in very similar situations, which is comforting in some ways,” he says. “Because most of us are living in New Hampshire for the first time, the only people we know are those related to the campaign. So when we have free time, we hang out with each other.”

“This is the kind of work that Macalester preps you for. It’s exactly why I went to school there. And then graduating when I did, right when everybody was gearing up for primary season, it seemed only logical for me to move out here and get right to work.” —Zachary Teicher ’07

Emily Arsenault ’00, seacoast regional field director for John Edwards’s New Hampshire campaign, took a slightly less direct route to politics than did Teicher and Klaber. A theater arts major, Arsenault worked as an actor and bartender in Minneapolis and New York before landing a job as a program coordinator for SEIU Local 1199, a union representing New York–area healthcare workers. During the 2004 presidential race, Arsenault worked full time for the Kerry–Edwards campaign through an SEIU-sponsored program. When the new presidential race started heating up, Arsenault decided to follow Edwards—a candidate she believes stands firm on workers’ rights and has a strong health care proposal—to New Hampshire. Her connections from the ’04 race helped put her on the short list for her current position.

“There were a lot of people applying for this job,” Aresnault says, “but I think it helped that they already knew my track record.” When she found out she’d landed the coveted spot, the next step was a big one. “Moving here was difficult because I had to put my life on hold and move to a state where I didn’t know anybody and probably couldn’t even afford an apartment.” Luckily, Arsenault found a spot in supporter housing, a common program in New Hampshire around primary time. Local backers open their homes to financially strapped campaign workers. Arsenault lives in the home of State Representative Otto Grote and his wife, Jaci, Edwards supporters who let her bunk in their spare room rent-free.

“The Grotes have been so generous to open up their home to me,” Arsenault says. “Sometimes I take care of their dogs, but I’m hardly ever there except to sleep. I keep telling myself I want to make dinner for them someday, but I haven’t had any time to cook yet.” For now, work takes priority over cooking. Arsenault is busy managing Edwards’s Portsmouth office, supervising a staff of four paid employees and 80 active volunteers. She maintains political relationships with supporters and manages the work of the political organizers responsible for doing community outreach and organizing in three surrounding regions. She also prepares and oversees the work of volunteers. All these responsibilities mean that Arsenault is usually in the office 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week. “It’s the most difficult job I’ve ever done, but it’s also so rewarding in so many ways,” Arsenault says. “If you can survive a New Hampshire primary, there are so many things you can go on to do.”

TRUE BELIEVERS
Early campaign workers may be their candidates’ most fervent supporters. To pick up and move across the country to work countless hours with no guarantee of long-term reward—takes faith, hope and courage. In other words: You have to believe to get in early.

Nicole Derse ’00 is one such believer. In March 2007 she left her job and friends in San Francisco and moved to New Hampshire to work full time on the political desk of her candidate, presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

“I’ve never been this excited about a presidential candidate,” Derse says. “And I’m not alone. I’ve never seen anyone with this ability to inspire people and challenge them to be partners and work to make change happen. It’s a historic moment because Barack Obama is a candidate with the power to motivate others. Voters have become disenchanted over the last eight years, and they’re looking for inspiration. I know I was. We can now be part of driving historic change. Because of that, every day is exciting for me.”

ABOVE: SUPPORTING OBAMA Inspired by Obama’s message, Nicole Derse ’00 left a promising career in San Francisco to work New Hampshire for him.

The King (Or Queen) Makers

Although there’s no shortage of recent Mac graduates laboring away in far-flung field offices this election season, there’s also a significant crop of less-recent alums volunteering their time as political fundraisers and organizers.

Don Schwartz ’71 is a senior partner in the Chicago office of Latham and Watkins. He and his wife, Susan Dunst Schwartz ’71, are Republican activists and powerful fundraisers. Schwartz doesn’t have time to work phone banks or staff field offices for the candidates he supports, but he does have an important way of supporting his chosen candidates.

“Once I settle on whom I’m supporting, I’ll raise money within the firm,” says Schwartz, who’s leaning toward Republican Fred Thompson, a candidate whose straightforward communication style he compares to Ronald Reagan’s. “There are seven or eight of us who will raise funds. Once the Republican nominations become clear, we’ll go to our colleagues, shake the trees, and collect checks. We can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars this way.”

Jerry Crawford ’71 is a business owner and founding partner of the Des Moines–based Crawford Law Firm. As Midwestern co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Crawford speaks in the state and region on his candidate’s behalf. “I also help formulate strategy,” he explains. “I travel with her when she’s in Iowa. I recruit people to vote for her in Iowa and in other places.”

Crawford is also a reliable fundraiser for Clinton, just as he was for her husband. “I think Hillary is ready to be a great president on Day 1,” Crawford says. “I suppose that makes the most difference to me in this race. She’s ready to jump in and go, and that’s what this nation needs. Also, as the parent of two grown daughters, I think this nation is ready to elect a woman.”

Because Iowa has its caucuses, it only makes sense that John Sprole ’71, another Iowa-based Mac grad, also works as a big-time backer for a presidential hopeful. Sprole, an attorney in private practice in Des Moines, is enthusiastically backing New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Bill Richardson. “I’m backing Richardson because he best represents the values of Macalester,” Sprole says. “He’s an internationalist.”

In the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Sprole is fundraising for Richardson, hitting up friends and colleagues. But unlike many of his peers, he’s also doing the campaign grunt work: “Telephone calls, organizing rallies—there’s no quick money in it, but it’s the fun stuff for me,” he says. “I still like to get my hands dirty.” —Andy Steiner

Derse’s days—and nights—are spent gathering and meeting with community groups, building an organization of voters committed to the Obama campaign. She works with religious groups, members of the LBGT community, youth organizations, and others. While at Macalester, urban studies major Derse held internships at community-based organizations around the Twin Cities. Through her work with these groups—which included Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, the Minneapolis Center for Neighborhoods, and the Elliot Park Neighborhood Center—she became convinced that community organizing and direct service work had the power to effect change. After graduation, Derse, who grew up near Milwaukee, moved to San Francisco and landed a job advocating for young Californians at the San Francisco Youth Commission. Disenchanted by the changing course of the political scene, she began working for local campaigns. In 2004 she managed Ross Mirkarimi’s successful bid for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “I started to realize that to see real change,” she says, “we needed to have the right people in the right chairs making the decisions.”

When Barack Obama began making national headlines, Derse took notice. She was inspired by his message and heartened by his background as a community organizer in Chicago. Then Obama announced his run for president. Learning of an opportunity to work on Obama’s campaign, Derse applied. Working for Obama, she believes, is exactly what Macalester prepared her to do.

Macalester has a dynamic of curiosity and questioning and imagining,” she says. “It’s a place where you question what’s in front of you and imagine something better. My college experience encouraged me to focus my attention on the rest of the world—not just on myself.” Clinton organizer Teicher agrees that Macalester’s outward emphasis is what inspired him to choose politics. He grew up in White Plains, New York, in a highly political family. Although his parents are Democratic organizers and his mother worked for the Department of Health and Human Services during Bill Clinton’s administration, he claims to have never felt pressure to choose a certain candidate. A religion major with classics and history minors, he could have gone on to graduate school. “I felt like I just had to jump in right now,” Teicher says. “It’s fascinating to be here on the ground floor, working like crazy on this campaign. I’m not working for just any candidate: I’m working for Hillary. I really think she’s the one, and that we’re going to make history in this election cycle.”

Ever the competitor, Klaber insists that he’s not working for a long shot. He believes he has picked a winner, and he’s ready to ride it out, backing his candidate—a person he says is ready “to challenge the status quo and take big steps to solve the problems of our day”—to the bitter end. In November, when the election is finally over, or maybe a few years after that, depending on the winner, Klaber plans to return to school or “get a job with a more regular hours.” But right now the future—even the New Hampshire primary in January—feels too distant to imagine. Like all campaign workers, Klaber lives in the moment, and he can’t think of a better place to be.

“I’m not here because I’m some idealistic college student,” he says. “I’m here because I’m supporting a candidate who can and will win. He’s the best in the field. I’m betting everything on him.”

ANDY STEINER ’91 is a St. Paul freelance writer and a regular contributor to Macalester Today.