On November 8, Saint Anselm students can be among the voters who determine the direction of our nation for the next four years. Some will go down to Bartlett Elementary School on Mast Road to vote, and then forget about politics for a while.  Others, however, have been working on the election for months.

Sarah King ’18 and Isabelle Daigle ’19 are two of those people.

Daigle is a student ambassador who was able to work for NBC during the Democratic primary debate last year.  She has been working for the RNC and the Trump campaign this cycle, working to elect Republican candidates up and down the ticket in New Hampshire.  She is the turf coordinator for Manchester and Nashua, organizing volunteers, voter contact efforts, and activities in that area.

Asked why she is working for the Trump campaign, Daigle told Crier staff that although she doesn’t agree with everything Trump has said, she believes in keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House and feels that Trump would be a good president because “we need someone that is not a career politician that will say and do anything to get elected.”

“When people have been in politics for longer amounts of time and have shown that they are not competent in getting the job done that is a problem,” she added.

While Daigle has been working for the Republicans, Sarah King has been working with the Democrats.  King is the co-chair of the student ambassador program along with Marc Tetreault ’17 and she was selected to serve this year as a student delegate as part of College Debate 2016, a national, nonpartisan program that focuses on empowering young voters.  She is also the secretary of the College Democrats on campus.

King worked for Clinton’s campaign during the primary and is currently working on local politics.  She decided to work for Clinton’s campaign because she wanted “insight into organizing and mobilization.”  King organized phone banks and canvasses in the community and coordinated “get out the vote” efforts for the primary.  She supports Clinton for the presidency because “she has incredible experience working at various levels of the government” and has been “advocating for families her entire adult life.”

Crier staff asked King and Daigle why they thought working on campaigns were valuable experiences for them.  King said, “it really is a crash course in organization, strategy, communication, and team experience…those skills are valuable even if you don’t continue to work in campaigns.”  King clarified that while she does not think she wants to work on campaigns as a career, she does want to learn how to mobilize people to engaged in advocacy, something campaigns help their staff learn.

Daigle noted that in many cases being a volunteer or an intern “does not give you that much opportunity to be the ones that make the decision”, but that she has been given the ability to act as a decision-maker with the Trump campaign.

“It gives you life long experiences and connections and also helps you learn how to balance and problem solve in life,” she said.

Daigle and King will likely vote differently in November, but they do seem to agree that working a presidential campaign is a valuable experience to have no matter what career path you are trying to follow.