I worked on my first campaign (and Lindsay Lohan was born).

Sometime in the summer of 1986, my college roommate said he was going to go down to Whatcom County Democratic Headquarters to help a woman named Harriet Spanel, who was running for the State House Of Representatives. He asked if I wanted to go, and I did.

My parents weren’t very political but I got interested in 1980 when I was a paperboy on Mercer Island for the Seattle PI. I always had an hour to kill before school so I started reading the paper. The Magnuson-Gorton race was heating up and I started following it (including stories from Joel Connelly).

During my first summer home from college, I got a job canvassing with the Washington Public Interest Research Group. We took on a proposed Puget Power rate increase and stopped it from happening. I got the bug after that. Once I saw you could organize and win, it made me want to do more campaigning.

I got involved in the Washington Student Lobby and helped start a chapter of the Western Washington University Young Democrats and I’ve been going ever since.