Finally

This internship has been, to say the least, a very long work in progress. For years now I've been trying to get an internship with the Republican Party and every time I've failed. Last year, when I started the process of planning my first Hawken Project as a Junior, I came very close to being able to work with a Republican Congressman. Yet weeks before the Project was supposed to begin he had to cancel, leaving me to work for (surprise!) a Democrat. My internship last year with Cleveland's mayor, Frank Jackson, was actually incredibly worthwhile. But still, I longed for the chance to finally get my first true internship with a Republican politician. Finally, I've been given that chance.

Yesterday I started working for the Ohio Congressman Dave Joyce, a Republican who is currently seeking re-election. Now I won't try to beat around the bush, this blog post is obviously a little late, but there's two reasons for that. One I tend to procrastinate (something I will seek to improve upon!) but also because of the immense amount of work I've been given. I have the unique privilege of not only serving on the Congressman's campaign team, but also getting to work with the entire Republican Party of Cuyahoga County on their statewide campaigns. Not only does this mean I'm already receiving a huge breath of experience, but I have a ton of work to do.

The high level of work is welcomed, though. Because to be honest it feels more like I'm doing something I would choose to do then something I've been assigned that I would regularly try to avoid doing. Immediately upon arriving at the office, which is the beautiful Post Office Plaza building downtown (right across from the Ritz, actually) I was given my first major assignment. The campaign already had polling data from the recent Republican primary (Joyce won 55% to his Tea Party opponent's 45%, a little too close for comfort if you ask me) on how many votes Joyce received and how many votes his opponent received at each polling place situated in townships across the district. What they didn't yet have, however, were two things: first, how many votes Governor Kasich received in the same districts, and how many votes Democratic challenger Michael Wager (yes, the father of Susie if anyone is wondering) in the same districts.

My job was to find these numbers and input them into our table data, so we can compare them with the number of votes received by Joyce.

Now the primaries for Republican gubernatorial nominee and the nomination for the Democratic challenger of Joyce were both uncontested, but voters can still vote in them. Both Republicans and Democrats have the ability to vote in uncontested primaries, which provides us with some interesting data. In Ohio, many members of the increasingly right-wing Tea Party consider both Governor Kasich and Congressman Joyce "too liberal," so often times Tea Party leaders will tell their supporters to go out and vote for Republicans like Dave Yost and Josh Mandel, but then leave the voting box for Governor blank, as a sort of protest against Governor Kasich. This tells us which areas of Ohio are the most conservative, as townships that have a disproportionately low number of votes cast for Kasich and yet a high number of Republicans turning out to vote will tend to have more hard-right Republican voters.

Now as I said, Mr. Wager was the only Democrat seeking his party's nomination to challenge Congressman Joyce, so in reality there was no reason for Democrats to even bother casting a vote for him. However, many did, which provides us with some important insight. The townships where a high number of people went out of their way to vote for Wager anyways, regardless of the fact that his nomination was already secured, shows us that these specific townships have a high number of Democrats. Democrats in these areas are already so committed to supporting Wager that they'll vote for him even when they don't have to. Isolating these townships, ones that are basically guaranteed to go for Wager in the November elections, enabled us to spend money more wisely by not campaigning as hard as we may have in these areas.

All in all, the first day was amazing. Of course I did some more menial things, like sorting through what felt like over a thousand pages of maps, hole punching them, and then organizing them accordingly into binders, but even that I enjoyed. Because for me, anything I can do to help the party that I genuinely care about is worth it. Although I am most likely the smallest piece of the machine that makes up this campaign, I want to fulfill my role to the best of my abilities. Day 2 is already going great, and I'm looking forward to even greater challenges in the coming weeks.

- WHM