Langley Spends January Working For Fiorina Campaign
Posted Feb 11, 2016
This January, Daniel Langley, a senior political major from Bethpage, TN, got the opportunity to spend January working to mobilize voters for the Republican caucuses.
This past summer, Langley spent his time working for the David Fox mayoral campaign in Nashville. Foz was the conservative candidate running in a liberal city and surprised many people by making the runoff. Many credited his success to his ability to identify and mobilize conservative voters who may not usually participate in a local campaign or who end up backing the moderate most likely to win the election. Langley was one of the full-time individuals who helped in this campaign.
Langley, who wants to pursue a career in campaign politics, kept in touch with those he worked with in the Fox campaign. In fact, Langley used his data from the Fox campaign to write his senior thesis to determine the effectiveness of the mobilization campaign. When he completed his thesis, he sent a copy to his superior in the Fox campaign so he could learn from Daniel's thesis. Then in mid-December, his superior from the Fox campaign, Kyle Fields, contacted him about an opportunity to work on a Presidential campaign over J-Term. Fields is the Senior Field Director at Stampede, a firm that does grassroots work for Republican campaigns across the country. Stampede had gotten a contract in Iowa for the month of January doing field work for CARLY for America (Fiorina’s Super PAC), and I got to join as field staff.
Daniel arrived in Iowa in late December and spent the entire month of January doing canvassing work essentially every day. He mostly worked in the Davenport area, alongside another six canvassers. He has done canvassing in the past, and it is one of his favorite parts of campaigning. While there are the occasional voters who aren’t interested or who are really ill-informed about politics (like the one voter who wanted to colonize Mexico to solve the immigration problem), there are some interesting people out there, and there are few ways as good as canvassing to both meet them and promote a worthy cause. Additionally, canvassing is statistically one of the most impactful methods of voter outreach, so to be involved in something so meaningful for a job is a major perk.
All in all, my favorite part of the experience was just having the opportunity to be in Iowa during that time. There are many people who would have loved to have an opportunity to be involved in the process of picking our next president, and to be there and involved was incredible. Plus, he got to meet and have his picture taken when GOP candidates like Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio.
The Department congratulates Daniel on his ability to work on a campaign and see how a major presidential campaign works up close. Daniel hopes to use his experience on campaigns to find a job in political consulting in the future.