The issues that my parents cared about and talked about constantly with us included civil rights and racial equality, economic inequality and workers rights, and in the 1960's they were opposed to the Vietnam war. So it seemed only natural that when I started college in 1969, that I would march against the war, engage in sit-ins at a selective service office, and work for anti-war political candidates.
The voting age was still 21 when I started college, but that did not prevent me from working for a political candidate. The house director for my freshman dormitory was married and her husband was the areas' elected Democratic representative to the Ohio House of Representatives, and I worked on his re-election campaigns in both 1970 and 1972, doing things like stuffing envelopes, and making phone calls.
Back in the 1970's voter registration rules were specifically designed to keep college students from voting in the communities where they went to college (unless of course their families lived in those communities). So when I first registered to vote in 1972 at age 21 (the same year that the voting age got lowered to 18), I had to register from my parents address in California. Through an interesting quirk of the times, I actually registered the first time as a Republican.
In 1972 Richard Nixon, whom I hated with the white hot passion of youth, was running for his second term. The local Congressman for San Mateo, Paul Norton "Pete" McClosky Jr. was a liberal Republican. I know, a liberal Republican seems crazy these days, and in fact, according to Wikipedia Pete McClosky switched to the Democratic Party in 2007. However, back then, such a thing was actually fairly common. McClosky stood up and opposed Nixon and the war in Vietnam, and decided to try and "primary" Nixon in 1972. So I and all my family registered as Republicans so that we could vote for McClosky in the primary against Nixon. Of course, that challenge was unsuccessful, and in the summer of 1972, I was "clean for Gene" and voted for Eugene McCarthy in my first presidential election.
Between 1972 and 1975, I voted by absentee ballot as a Californian in every primary and election, but was not engaged in other ways in politics. Then I moved to Kentucky in 1975. As a graduate student living year-round in Lexington, and considered an "in state student" by virtue of my assistantships and researchships, I registered to vote in Kentucky.
I still remember the conversations. All the life-long Kentuckians made it very clear, that if one wanted to have any real say in elections in Kentucky one had to register as a Democrat regardless of what one's political leanings actually were. Kentucky had been and continued for some decades still to be so dominated by the Democratic party that all the real political decisions for local offices, state offices, and federal representatives like senator and congressmen, were made in the primaries rather than the elections. We can still see the effect of that reality in Kentucky in 2020, where registered Democrats still out number registered Republicans, even though both houses of our legislature are dominated by Republicans, both Senators are Republican, and the state went overwhelmingly for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Yet in eastern Kentucky, most of our county and town leadership are still Democrats. Politics in Kentucky have always been "the damnedest."
Professionally and personally I became much more interested in local politics in the late 1970's and early 1980's. As a sociology graduate student I was reading Floyd Hunter's Community Power Structure, John Gaventa's Power and Powerlessness, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz Power and Poverty, Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman Small Town in Mass Society, and Robert Dahl Who Governs? All of which used community politics and decision-making case studies to develop theoretical perspectives about the exercise of power. I was doing my own research on political conflicts in southwestern Virginia (my father's home community). My dissertation focused on conflicts between local communities and the U.S. Forest Service over recreational developments in the Jefferson National Forest region. Also during that same time, I had a paid job as a research analyst over two years on a huge community survey of Kentucky municipalities. Personally I was also paying more attention to Kentucky's gubernatorial races and Lexington school board issues. Nonetheless, I was more observational than participatory during those years, limiting my participation to voting in every primary and election, but did not work for any candidates or make any donations.
After graduate school during the 1980's, my first full-time professorial job was in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I paid close attention to national politics. I raised money for Mondale and Ferraro, and helped the local democratic party plan a visit by Ferraro who did a press conference at the local airport. The idea of a female VP was intoxicating. Four years later, I fundraised and worked for Michael Dukakis who visited Johnstown on a cross country train stop. During the same years I donated to and worked for Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, probably the last of the great liberal Republicans. However, I am ashamed to say that I have no idea who was mayor of the city, or how the city was governed, and I paid little if any attention to who were my representatives at the state level, or even my congressional district.
I didn't change much when after seven years in Johnstown, I moved to Wise, Virginia to teach at another branch of a great university (this time UVA). I put my focus on presidential politics, senatorial politics, and maybe on the governorship, but not much else. I did at least know who my local congressman was, but that was about it. I was taken by surprise when my blue district "suddenly" went red, in the 1990's.
This I believe is the great failing of liberals of my generation. We looked at the big issues we felt were important, such as the environment, civil rights, reproductive rights, and we decided that the best way to attack those was at the federal level and through the courts, rather than trying to fight in each and every statehouse. Most of us failed to think about the role of the statehouses in controlling access to voting, to defining districts, and setting the ground rules. We never thought about a day when the Supreme Court would strike down major parts of the voting rights act giving free reign back to the states. The Republicans never made that mistake. They worked the local and the state offices and came to dominate state politics even in states where ostensibly the majority of voters were liberal, and elected Democratic presidents and Democratic senators.
Part of the problem comes from the fact that many highly educated liberal voters of my generation (Ok Boomer), held jobs that often involved major moves. In academia, I taught at three different institutions. People in business and finance often had to make major moves to advance in their careers. Local politics is so much about who you know and how long you or your family have been in the community that it is hard for more transient residents to get to understand how it works.
Moving to Kentucky for my final academic position (that I was in for more than 21 years), finally gave me the roots to get firmly involved. I know who all my county and community leaders are, I can stop them on the street and talk to them. I know who my representatives in the Kentucky legislature are, and feel free to chat them up when I run into them in the grocery store, or the local farmers market. I know the people in my community, not just those that I worked with at the community college. I know the sheriff and many of the deputies and town police in the county (many are former students). The local level is far more important than I realized when I was younger, despite the fact that as a community sociologist I should have recognized that.
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