Justin Hollinrake on Political Campaigns and Running for Office

Justin Hollinrake shares insights about how to get a job working on a political campaign, strategies for making it a career, and also about his recent election to the City Council in Ankeny, Iowa.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

You're listening to Polycyclones from the Political Science Department at Iowa State University, a podcast that explores the wide variety of ways our alumni and students are making a difference. Welcome to the Polycyclones Podcast. I'm Alex Tugnis, chair of the Political Science Department, and on this episode, we're going to talk about opportunities in political campaigns, running for office and public policy with Justin Hollandrake. Justin graduated from Iowa State with a bachelor's in political science four years ago and is the executive director for the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Summit and was recently elected to serve on the City Council for the City of Anckony, Iowa. Justin, thanks for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Thanks for having me, Alex.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

So Justin, maybe start by telling us a little bit about how you got interested in politics.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So I I'm I feel old now. It was 11 years ago. So the 2015 election was going on. I was on the internet, I was on YouTube about seeing a lot of chatter about controversies in that year and in that election cycle. But I was also seeing some really good education about political systems. So I'm gonna uh give a totally unpaid plug for CJP Gray. Uh uh, he's a great YouTuber who uh did some videos about election systems. And that is what kind of started my interest because I was the observation that I made was that you know, approval ratings are an all-time low, right? Almost almost no one is truly satisfied with the representation that we're having today outside of absolute partisans who are happy when their site is in power. And then, of course, horror horrified when they're not. Um and I wanted to understand how the election systems we have, how the political systems we have create the behavior that we see out of elected officials. And that's kind of what started me down that route.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah. And so uh tell us now a little bit about like what brought you to Iowa State, what are some of the things you did while you were here and your kind of career path since then.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah. So you may have seen, Alex, there's a meme going around about the class of 2020. Uh we didn't uh we we didn't get a prom. Uh so I was Ankin Centennial class of 2020. Uh I actually had plans to uh go to a university uh in the DC Metro. Um and then COVID kind of nixed that, and the college decided yet to live on campus for all online classes, and I was like, no, thank you. Um and so uh it was right around April time. I was scrambling to figure out what my future was going to be, right? And at that time, uh Iowa State by far gave me the best offer. I'm honestly really happy that things weren't out the way they did, uh, because I think I got the best education I could have gotten at Iowa State, and I got it at a much better price than a DC Metro school. Um and so uh that's what kind of ended up attracting me to here. And of course, also, you know, I live in Ankeny. It was it was a reasonable commute for me. I was a student um driver for a lot of that time.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Good. Yeah, and uh I I think one of the things you did while you were uh in school uh was uh working down in Des Moines a little bit. Maybe talk to people some about uh that opportunity you had.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, so that was a great opportunity, and I think a great example to students of the importance of uh networking and always being on the lookout for opportunities. So my final semester uh in uh spring 2022, I was a clerk at the state capitol, and specifically I was a clerk for a state representative out of uh Cedar Rapids. Now that that may seem odd, right? Because I don't I don't know people in Cedar Rapids, but wild story. I was at Ragbri, and I was actually um uh canvassing with clipboard for a political group, and I ran into my high school chemistry teacher who was biking Ragbri, and it was his sister. And his daughter was no longer gonna be the clerk, and so his sister needed the clerk. And we just got to chatting about, you know, hey, how are you been? What's going on? I told him about that. And he's like, Oh, yeah, you know, next year you could do this. And then we met, we got along, uh, and that kind of got me started down the world of working in politics.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, so yeah, yeah. So I mean, part of the kind of message there is like always be on the lookout for opportunities, right? You weren't at Rag Rye thinking, oh, I'm gonna, you know, land a really interesting clerk position that may, you know, then set me up for other things afterwards. But you know, you were you were open to those possibilities and and then it happened. So maybe talk a little bit about like some of the like campaigns, other things you worked on after you graduated.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So uh very soon after I graduated, um uh well, networking thing, right? I would attend political events, I would be at stuff, and I ran into uh someone who was from the uh Cindy Axney campaign. She was our uh third district congressional uh representative, and uh they were looking for uh staff, uh specifically for me, uh entry-level field organizer position. And I um I was a 20-year-old fresh graduate. I did not quite have plans, so I was like, you know what? That sounds great to me. Uh, because I was like, you know what, this is uh one of the most competitive districts in the country, and that's something that we're we are uh very blessed to have in Iowa, that in our state constitution, gerrymandering is actually illegal. Uh, and we I believe actually follow that here, um, which I'm very mindful of considering what's going on in the rest of the country right now. So who knows, a couple of years uh next election cycle, um a fifth of all competitive elections for Congress, maybe in Iowa, if this gerrymandering continues. But I was like, you know what? This is a place for me to make my impact, apply my efforts, apply my skills. That was a very interesting experience I can talk about for a long time. But um after that, um, and this is something I want students to really take away, is that if you want to do campaign work, you need to have a plan and a strategy of how you're gonna hunt jobs. You need to hunt your next job. Because that was my problem, is that I didn't um I didn't have a plan. At least I was a 20-year-old fresh graduate, just trying to biggest dreams of how I'm gonna change the world, right? And the campaign ended. You know, November came and went, and I didn't have a political job. And so the next year, after a few months, I started working at Viridian Credit Union to kind of plug my time. And then I ended up um uh getting a call one day to come uh be the campaign manager for Sarah Trumgaryot. She was uh or still is a state senator out in Dallas County, Iowa, and uh is the current uh nominee for the third congressional district. And that was another situation where, you know, that wasn't published online. Like people people knew me, I knew people, I had put in the work to have a decent reputation, and so I literally got the call. Um I literally rolled out of bed. It was my day off work, and I just rolled out of bed. I was like, who is who is this? And um, and then they told me what was going on. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, let's let's do this. Um maybe a bit more of a sidebar to go for it. Yeah, that's how the campaign world went.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Yeah. So yeah, so you know, it it seems like kind of one of the dynamics working on campaigns is they're seasonal, right? So uh you're hired to work for, let's say, six or nine months on a particular campaign. And so part part of what I'm hearing is like one, you you need to be like proactive and trying to figure out what that next thing is going to be and not just assume uh it'll magically happen without a little work. But you also may need like a plan for you know generating some income during the you know the gaps you have between um between sessions, right? Is that or between campaigns?

SPEAKER_01 8:34

That's very accurate. I would say if you really want to do campaign work, uh there's kind of three routes. Um, and I have friends that are in each of these very stages. Uh one is the just you know, like I I did with Verity and Credit Union, I was there for I think 15 months. Just plug your time in between, right? Um, but obviously that's not the best, right? Uh retail doesn't pay the best, or you know, entry-level service work doesn't pay the best. Uh option two, um, and this is the one that uh kind of started me down the route of not wanting to do uh campaign work as a career, uh, travel around the country. Uh for me, deal breaker. I didn't want to, did not want to have to travel around the country, did not want to have to leave home, leave the state entirely. That was not um for me. Option three, um trying to find those off-cycle opportunities. So that can be a special election, that can be uh primaries, right? Because you know, the primaries in Iowa held first Tuesday in June. A lot of those campaigns will hire early in the year. Some of the most serious will hire late in the prior year. But from working in that space and speaking with friends and helping some friends make connections, I'll tell you this, it's not posted online. Like it is the only times you're gonna see like a publicly posted job application is for massive campaigns during the typical election cycle, right? Um and the competition for that is gonna be very significant because it's posted online. It is all about who do you know, who are you networked with, and what is your reputation. And so I have a couple of friends that I I know that do that, that they've been very effective at, and they've been able to maintain more or less constant employment by going from one campaign to the other, to the other, to the other. But um, those opportunities, like I said, are very limited. And part of that's gonna vary of which political party are you in and what is the political environment in your state. But I either way, you gotta you gotta find the work. It will not come to you.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yeah, no, that's that's that's really helpful. I think so, yeah. So if if if we have if we have students who are listening to this who are thinking, hey, actually I I think I'm interested in maybe trying to make a career out of working in political campaigns, uh you know, either one, they might think through like what could I do uh to provide income during the off season, right? Or be willing to travel uh to find the work in other states, right? Or really cultivate enough connections that you're able to get work and you know, primaries off your stuff. Um, but that's even what I'm hearing is that's even more dependent on uh networking connections and reputation and things like that. Um that I think I think it's yeah, that's really really helpful.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah. And I will add that the people that I know that are like getting up to that higher level of success, right? Even the ones that are from Iowa, they tend to be forced to spend some time out of Iowa too. And then they might come back and then they can be higher up the chain. Um and I will say also, you know, campaigns they go very young. Uh, they work you very hard. And I guess I'll say in career path, a lot of the times the goal of can't of campaign staffing and like the way you get into a more like traditional job is you turn into being official side staff, right? So, you know, you work for you work for someone, you prove that you have the ethics, they prove you prove that uh they can trust you, the elected official. Then when they're looking to staff up, and I need a chief of staff or I need a district director, or I just need a representative, right? To go out and serve my constituents, it's not a guarantee, of course. Nothing's a guarantee, but they're gonna having that tie with them from the campaign world will matter, and that's how you can be more secure. But once again, uh that can change with the next election. Every single time it can change with the next election.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah, no, yeah, that's that's helpful, right? So so clearly there are some people who end up doing this full-time, prove to be really good at it, and eventually they work up enough of a reputation that they're able to make, you know, a good income and have more steady employment. But it takes a lot of work to like build yourself up to that kind of like more elite tier of campaign work. Um and so if people are going into this, they need to realize it takes a while to get there. And for many people, it actually may be more likely that they they do what you're describing, which is they use some of those connections they've made working on campaigns, the reputation they've gained, uh, and eventually end up working uh in government positions, right, as they get appointed to or hired for different different kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Yeah. So maybe reflect a little bit on your time at Iowa State. Like what are what are some of the ways your time at Iowa State has helped prepare you either for some of that campaign work or if you want to talk about uh, you know, your current position uh with the the immigrant entrepreneurs summit. Uh what what are some different ways that your time at Iowa State's helped prepare you?

SPEAKER_01 13:48

I'd say big picture number one is forming connections, right? I uh was pretty politically active during my time here. Um one of the things was I founded a very short-lived, that's on me, a short-lived club to support ranked choice voting. Um and uh that was the first time I ever got interviewed, so we got me some practice there with the ICU Daily. Um, but uh some of the friends and relationships that I built, I still have to this day. And I'll talk with people um and and not just in supporting me and what I'm doing, but also just helping me be in touch with other people's perspectives and experiences. Um I would say some of the other things is part of you know the political science education is understanding how systems work, right? And how do the dynamics of how a system is set up, what kind of behavior does that produce, right? And I think that can really translate into a lot of things. I'm actually currently pursuing my second bachelor's in accounting at UNI, and I actually see a lot of overlap there because the math is simple. It's just the system is needlessly complex. And so it's it's about understanding what flows where. Uh and I would also say with uh with my current uh new job, uh Immigrant Entrepreneur Summit, um, once again, uh relationships, I met one of the co-founders of that group during my time as a student being politically involved. So uh that has been an enormous boon to me. Uh, I'm very excited about this position. You know, it's all about helping immigrants who do want to be entrepreneurs get connected into the networks, get the resources. Uh, we do a business pitch, and so every year we give $5,000 to a new immigrant-owned startup. And uh we have our big national summit is in Ankin, Iowa, but we have summits in Quad Cities, Minneapolis Metro, Iowa City. Um it helped me also get the passion for public service and understanding what it really means to work for the sake of the community as a whole, right? Because, you know, I think uh I'm gonna be cautious about philosophical statements. I remember a political philosophy class, but um I think that there tends to be a me first mentality that is decently common, right? Okay, I need money, I need to, I need to pursue cash, I need to get security, right? Uh and at a certain level, everyone needs that. But also part of it is inspiring the thinking about, okay, I have these dreams of making the world a better place and having an impact on my community, my state, my country, the world. How does that turn into reality? What is the staircase to success that actually gets me there? Um, and I would say um one of the other groups I was involved that helped me understand that better was uh I was involved in the Climate Reality Club that was here at Iowa State at the time. And it was a very interesting case of uh the trade-offs of of how do you get there, right? Because there were some people in the group that took the more, I would say, practical approach, which is what I believed of if you want to get action on climate change, we should engage the City of Ames government. We should try to engage elected leaders that have significant budgets and make significant decisions and try to push them to whatever extent we can to be more climate conscious. And then there was others that thought, okay, well, we're just gonna start a mass movement and we're gonna have thousands of students and we're gonna boycott or threaten a boycott on private business, and we're gonna get all these financial institutions to change their decision-making. And it was like, well, the experience in which of those routes worked and which didn't really taught me something about being strategic and mindful about how do you actually get the results you want to have.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Yeah. And maybe, you know, as you're talking about public service, maybe just reflect a little bit uh on your experience uh, you know, as a political science major now actually getting to help you know set policy for the city of Ankeny, right, as you're uh working uh on the city council there.

unknown 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Uh so I would say I'm gonna take it back to the election system real quick because uh that's somewhat of an ongoing discussion. Because you know, in Iowa, we have first past the post, right? Um, which for any students that don't know, it's just the very simple kind of default system of every person gets one vote, most votes wins, right? Um The reason we see very intense partisan behavior in most of America is because that system itself, the math of it, inherently incentivizes having exactly two sides. And I experienced that on the local level, and that had been the case on the local level, despite the fact that officially these are nonpartisan races, right? And there has been some legislation proposed that hasn't gone very far that uh some people want to make them officially partisan. Um, and a lot of times they do take on a partisan characteristic um and behavior where you'll have, if not Democrats and Republicans, you'll have liberals and conservatives, um, etc., like pseudo-labels where people are falling into two camps and it there are two tickets that are competing against each other. And you know, I I spoke with some people that rightfully complained, like, hey, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And I'm like, yeah, it's not the spirit of what we want either governance or especially local governance to be, but it's what the system incentivizes. And there was actually a situation at that time last year where one side had more candidates than there were seats to fill. And so what happened? Well, the system, the behavi uh the behavior the system incentivized was uh, you know, that side wasn't happy about it, and ultimately one of those candidates ended up dropping out. And so that's to me where I really wish we could be something more like uh Minneapolis or like uh Maine with ranked choice voting or some type of alternative voting system that incentivizes uh in the campaign season that spirit of cooperation and uh and mutual agreement. Uh but I'll say in practice, though, I've been very pleased to see that the council has really tried to stick with that nonpartisan mentality in governance, right? Uh and part of that is that you know, uh local governments in Iowa have been stripped of a lot of powers by the state government, so we don't have as much decision making as you might think. Uh but when we do have decision making, it tends to be a project of trying to find consensus. It's it's not been the case in my experience that you know, one side's just trying to count a majority and it's like, oh screw everyone else. Um I would also say that I think it's very interesting comparing how the state makes laws and how the city makes ordinances, which is our version of laws. It is very informal. Uh well, not always, but it can be very informal uh because it's just based off of conversations between elected officials, staff, and residents. And it is v very different compared to like the state, right? Where like you have your subcommittees, you have your committees, you have your you know, pass back between the chambers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um I would say it's a great example of how the impact of a single person speaking out can really make a difference. Uh because you know, the state government I know, like that's that's big, and a lot of times some some input gets ignored. And also you have people, you know, on different sides of almost every bill, right? Uh at local government, I mean, we'll have meetings where no one says anything, right? Like the vast majority of the time the public input section of the agenda is just skipped right through because nothing's actually no one actually came to speak. And I would say also, um, you know, the uh the difference that a single person elected on the council can make and the conversations that are happening, I think can make a really uh really Big difference.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Oh, that's great. That's great. So maybe to to wind up here, what would be a piece of advice you would give to one of our say you're talking to one of our current or or prospective students who's thinking about being involved in politics? What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

I would say number one, uh physically write down a roadmap for yourself of not just where you want to be, but all of the jobs and all the steps that are between where you are now and where you want to be. You need to have at least somewhat of a plan. It will change and adapt, of course, it always will, but you don't want to be me where you're just graduating. You're like, oh, what I mean, what job? What's a job? Where can I work? Um you want to have that. And if you really do want to work in the space of campaigning, which not everyone does, but if you do, you also need to write down, okay, where are the spaces I go to find the people that are in that world, right? Like, you know, obviously official party meetings exist, right? But also there's um non-partisan political groups that meet, right? And there are also just community groups that meet, right? Uh, so that's something I really want the students to take away that you you want to have that. Uh, I would also say that when it comes to public service, uh, don't be afraid to imagine that that is you, right? Like when I started running for Ankeny City Council, I was just 23 years old. I wasn't quite young enough to get uh news articles written about me when it was all over. Uh they were writing about some 20-year-old in Southwest Iowa. It's like, gosh dang it. But um but it can be you. And I think that you will experience a warmer reception than you might anticipate. Uh, you know, I had many times where people across the political spectrum are just like, man, it's great to have someone who's, you know, not a senior citizen or not, or just someone on the younger side running for office and taking interest and trying to do these things. And I experienced very little of the opposition. It's like, oh, you whipper snapper, get off my front porch. Like that. I think that there really is an appetite in general, but especially I think now, where people want new voices, want new perspectives. And, you know, as a younger generation, as uh Gen Z, right, if we want to get there, we have to be willing to put our hands up and engage in some way and not be afraid of, you know, getting a little pushback.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Well, uh Justin, I yeah, I think that uh is is a really good reminder uh to you know to students to like imagine that there are people who can make a difference, right? And uh it may take a little courage to be able to step out and say run for office. Um, but uh it's it's good to have reminders for all of them, like wherever they are on the political spectrum, to know uh that there are opportunities, even in their 20s, right, to be to be doing things like that. Uh so Justin, thanks again for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Thanks for having me, Alex.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Thank you for listening to this episode. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Iowa State University or the Department of Political Science. If you have ideas for topics or guests for future episodes, or if you want to share your thoughts, email Polycyclones. That's P-O-L-I-C-Y-C-L-O-N-E-S at Iastate.edu.