Hands-on Political Internship: Video Transcript

Emily Goliver [junior major in Political Science; Journalism, Class of 2019]: I worked on the Clinton campaign in the summer going into last year, and at the beginning of the summer we were based in the Ohio Democratic Party headquarters. And, then, like the organizers … so I had an organizer out of Columbus, and then on campus; they both recommended that I look into that.

So I was the chief of staff's intern, so I kind of helped her with what she did. I met David Pepper, who is the chairman of the ODP. My boss, Bridget, was his chief of staff, so I worked pretty closely with him. And part of what she does, that I helped her with, is organizing where he should be, where he should be speaking. They just started an 88-county initiative, I guess, and one of my projects was looking at all of his events that he's done the past two years, see what counties he's been to the most, what he hasn't really been to at all, and helping put together where he should be in the future.

I also helped with like day-to-day office stuff. But I was really involved, which was one of my favorite things, with like actually doing a lot of the political stuff. So I spoke with a lot of the county party chairs, I sat in on the staff meetings every Monday and learned exactly what everybody was doing, how they were preparing for not just 2018, but 2017 as well.

We, like basically as soon as I got there, we were about to kick off our redistricting petition drive. That's a petition to end gerrymandering in Ohio, and I got to be not just in the, like petition gathering side of it, which was also very cool, but the validating the petitions, seeing how many we were getting, working with the parties in kind of like a competition of which county was able to get the most signatures, yeah, working with the partner groups we were working with to make sure we were able to get this on the ballot at some point.

I think that having the experience is going to be really good because I wasn't just like — it was very hands on — I wasn't just answering phones and opening mail and stuff or listening to voicemails. I felt like I was actually involved in a lot of the things.

And I got to be a part of a lot of like conference calls that had a lot of high-powered people on it, so I think that was really cool, and getting to work so closely with David Pepper and getting to meet a lot of the statewide candidates I think will help me in the future.

[March 2018]