“Well, It’s Out of Our Hands Now”

This past week was my final full week with the re-election campaign of State Representative Pat Boyd to the Connecticut State Assembly. While I still will report for one final meeting, this was the last week. My emotions are mixed. On the one hand I feel more free to be done with the internship, but on the other I feel less in control now that I am finished. I look forward to spending these last few days of summer with friends and family, but I also will miss my team and my work. The “thing” about a campaign is that it is a zero sum game. There is only one winner. Now that I am done with around 85 days to go until Election Day, I feel incomplete and uncomfortable knowing that I can no longer influence the result of the election. My work has finished and I am no longer making a difference. The beauty of working on a campaign is that you choose who your boss is and the “why” is the only reason to show up each day. Come November 7th, campaign staffs around the nation will be finished and over. Why take a job knowing that come that fall Wednesday there is a pretty fair chance you may be out of a job and declared a loser. Of course, the answer is simple: because there is a chance you can win and that means there is chance you can make a difference.

This experience taught me a great deal about leaders and leadership. Politicians I met in the process were all different. Some were smart, some were jerks, some were inspiring, and some were considerate. Why is it that we can choose such different people for the same job? What is it about these people that makes us believe in them? The Representative who I was working to re-elect was regal. He is a man who votes his mind and speaks the truth no matter how popular or unpopular. My home state is better because of him. I believe in him and he believes in us. The adjective “Inspiring” falls short in describing him. Then there is my boss: the campaign manager. He had his down moments where his leadership was absent and the team suffered, but these cases were rare. Almost always my boss was one of the best leaders I have ever followed. Leadership is be written about, read about, and talked about, but at the end of the day, leadership is best studied by direct contact.

At the last meeting of my team, we were having a discussion about the summer coming to an end and our time as a team. As the conversation turned into a reflection of the last many weeks of work and how much effort we have put into this campaign, another intern turned and captured our emotions and the moment best: “Well, it’s out of our hands now”.