Chloë Moore ’24

It might seem like politics and creative writing are not related, but a good campaign is the story we tell about our community, our country, our future.

Chloë Moore, ’24

I have just started an MFA in poetry, but my job before that was as Constituent Services Liaison for NY State Senator Lea Webb. I think of my work for the Senator as shining a flashlight into the big, black-hole of New York state politics and trying to make it work better for the average person. The job was primarily casework: helping New Yorkers who had trouble with state-level issues, including professional and business licensing, state taxes, and applications for need-based aid programs. I also maintained a database of constituent opinions. 

I got my start as a volunteer peer educator with a local Planned Parenthood, and was engaged in New York politics in summers during college: I ran an online youth engagement operation for an Assemblywoman’s primary one year; did door-knocking for a county legislative candidate another; and then became Tompkins County Field Organizer for Senator Webb—recruiting, training, and launching volunteer canvassers. After graduation, I made the transition from campaign organizing (the political side) to the government side. It’s nice to feel like the work on the campaign is paying off, and we are doing what we said we would do.

I jumped in at the deep end with politics, spent a year working, and now I am going to graduate school to get an MFA in poetry at the University of Montana. I want to take the time and space to commit to the art for the length of the program, but then I plan to come back to politics in New York—perhaps in Albany because at the state level, there is a bit more job security than at the national level. I can imagine moving into communications or policy work in the longer term.

It might seem like politics and creative writing are not related, but a good campaign is the story we tell about our community, our country, our future. My English major made me successful in the political world. I am almost the only humanities person in any room I’m in, and that has made so much of my work so much more intuitive. My ability to do policy research, to conceptualize the rhetoric of campaign strategy, and to come at problems from a people-oriented mindset that doesn’t only ask about the fiscal impact of a program are all things that come from my humanities approach to problems. 

I would encourage people thinking about politics to embrace the entry-level side of things. It’s fine to be the youngest person in the room. When you take the nitty-gritty seriously, you learn how systems work, and that’s when you can really make a difference in helping government respond to the needs of people who find its processes most impenetrable.

Last updated: October 2025