A Conversation with the Spring 2021 GU Politics Fellows

Below is a transcript of Himaja Reddy’s conversation with the GU Politics Fellows for Spring 2021. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

HIMAJA‌ ‌REDDY:‌‌ I’m Himaja and I am a sophomore. I’m also a staff writer for On the Record and I’ll get started with my first question! What initially motivated you to become involved with politics and what makes you stay involved?

ANATOLE JENKINS: Well, for me, it was representation. I view it as being very lucky, having come of political astuteness and age during the 2007/2008 primary where you had a Black man, Barack Obama, and a woman, Hillary Clinton, sort of leading the charge. And before that, I don't think that I knew that this was an option for me, and you know that is very much why I also stay involved and stay engaged. I think it's important for folks to see themselves represented and people who are actually making decisions and opening those doors for more people to come in.

DOUGH JONES: All right, I got involved, like everybody else, at a young age, I was enthralled with politics. I saw heroes in John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy and others, and I saw villains in my state like George Wallace and Bull Connor and I wanted to get involved to help try to make a change. What I realized, and I was out for a while, I mean I didn't get elected office until I was over 60 years old. And there's a lot of reasons for that including the changing politics in Alabama. But the fact is what I saw working for Senator Howell Heflin from Alabama in the late 1970s, what I saw as a United States attorney, what I’ve seen with so many is that politics really should be about public service. 

That you really have an opportunity to make a difference in your communities, your state, and your country by doing the right things and that is what motivated me in 2017 when this seat opened up in the Senate from Alabama. No one gave us a shot in hell about winning but it was an opportunity to have a voice. It was an opportunity because Alabama had just kind of conceded the progressive voices a little bit for a long time, and it was opportunity to give people a little bit of hope that, even in a state like Alabama, there can be those voices to help build a platform to do some some things and to do some good for the state, and we have that voice for people that hadn't had a voice in the Senate in a long, long time. And it's something I’m very proud of that is going to continue.  

I stayed in it really as a service, it is a sacrifice to go through all this crap these days. But it is something that if you care about your community and you care about the public good and including those who don't agree with you, you stay in it and you work at it and you try to do your best.

TOM PEREZ: My family came to this country because of politics. My family is from the Dominican Republic and my mother's family got kicked out because of an authoritarian dictator and my grandfather speaking out against him— a guy named Trujillo, who was a thug. My father had to leave for similar reasons, and so this country gave my family hope. And my mother was one of nine and all of her male siblings served with distinction as legal immigrants as part of the US army as part of America's greatest generation. And my parents taught my siblings and I that “to whom much is given much is expected,” and so my service throughout my career is really a function of what my parents taught me. 

Even in these dark moments, I think there's so much opportunity to make a difference and I think part of what motivates all six of us to be excited about being part of the Georgetown family this term is you know these grown- ups, we grown-ups have kind of messed this thing up and we're looking to you for guidance on what we need to do to put it back together. But I hope you won't walk away from it and that's what I think unites all of us, because I still believe, on the darkest nights you see the brightest stars and that's what my parents always taught me to make sure you're continuing to fight and that's what motivated me.

GUY BENSON: I started following politics as a class assignment in middle school. There was a presidential election on and you had to figure out who you're supporting and why, and we had sort of mock campaigns and that sort of thing. It appealed to me because I was and am a huge sports fan, and I sort of viewed politics at the beginning, as kind of like another fun high-stakes team sport where you pick a team you root for them, you boo the other team, and so forth. 

Then, my junior year of high school was 9/11. And I grew up in the New York area. My town lost 12 people in the World Trade Center that morning. My father worked in Lower Manhattan— we didn't know where he was for a while and that was sort of a turning point for me where I started to think a lot harder about why politics matters, policy matters, that people who are in charge in moments of crises matter, and that's when I started to take it more seriously. And I’ve had some interesting twists and turns along the way ideologically and so on and so forth, but it started as sort of a fun interest turned into something a little bit more serious and then, in some respects, you know, a career.

JULIE PACE: I had no intention of ever been involved in covering politics, at all. My goal was to be a foreign correspondent. I freelanced in Southern Africa after I graduated from college and ran out of money and needed a job. I got this job covering politics in Florida, and then I got a job covering politics at the AP in Washington and thought “that's my ticket to get back overseas.” And the assignment they gave me was the 2007/2008 campaign and I spent a lot of time covering Obama on the road, and I just got hooked by it. I mean one of the things I think that is so interesting about like what we're all talking about is everyone sort of has like a moment where you're like “oh that's when I latched on to this” and, for me, what was so cool about that campaign not ideologically but was seeing young people, at the time I was young, and so people my age, you know getting involved in politics for the first time and seeing power in getting involved and seeing their ability to shape, you know the forces in this country and that, frankly, is what really hooked me on it. 

From there, it just grew and I see covering politics as, for me, a real public service. It's the ultimate way to hold elected officials accountable, to make sure that they're living up to what they have promised voters, to try to expose when they're not it, to really be that check on the system, and I think that's more important now than ever.

SARA SENDEK: I think, for me, it was very much a public service thing. It was a way to get involved and actually feel like I was giving back to my country, trying to make things better. I don't know that we've done it right over the past 15 years but you know I’ve worked for some great people that I know have put everything into this effort and have maybe not done it right all the time, but have done it because they think it's the best thing to do. Politics can get ugly, there's some not great people in it, but when you get to work for some of the best people that are just here to serve their country it's really inspiring and has made me want to stay in it and be part of it.

Himaja Reddy is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service and a prospective International Political Economy major. She is from Columbus, Ohio and is interested in the Middle East and South Asia.