18 Years Old And Running For Office
Charlie Comfort, 18, of Oskaloosa recently ran for the school board, and won
Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are not necessarily the views or opinions of Osky News
Oskaloosa, Iowa- “I’m Charlie Comfort and I am running to be your school board representative.” I must have said that hundreds of times over the past couple of months. Recently, I finished up a school board campaign. To many people, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to those who know me personally, they know that it was a big deal. It was a big deal, because I am 18 years old.
After the 2009 Municipal Elections, I decided that I wanted to seek local elected office. Originally, I had made plans on running for Mayor of Oskaloosa. My hope was that enough people would think that it was cool to see an 18 year old running for Mayor of my hometown, so they would end up voting for me. After speaking with a few people, I knew right away that there was no way I could beat the incumbent, who was a former popular City Councilman. I then set my eyes on the 2nd Ward City Council seat.
When that seat would be opening up, I would be a recent graduate of the high school and would be attending College. I knew a lot of people in my ward, even the former Councilman who had lost his re-election bid. I was already a little frustrated with the new councilman and I figured that I could take him on and win. I went around for about a year and every so often I would bring it up that I was going to run. However, around December of 2010, I slowly started to realize that it was going to be much harder than I thought.
I visit the Mahaska County Recorder’s Office quite often and one day in February I brought the idea up to them of running for Oskaloosa School Board. They thought it was a good idea. I knew that there was at least one person not running again for school board and I was pretty sure that I was in his director district. However, when I asked the Auditor’s Office what Director District I was in and who I would have to run against, I was horribly mistaken. I found out that I would have to challenge the long time board member and current School Board President.
I knew that I would lose so I completely forgot about running for School Board. However, later that evening, I found an old newspaper from 2002 that had a story about the recent school board elections. Two Director Districts had been voted on the day before the day that edition was printed (one of them being mine). Under each director district, it listed the results from each city ward. I was confused because I thought school board elections were like city council ones and I could only be voted on by the persons living in my ward.
I went back to the Auditor’s office the next day and I found out, much to my pleasure, that in fact if I ran for school board, I would be voted on by the entire School District as if it were an At-Large election. I was thrilled because I knew that I could win an At-Large Election against the person I would have to challenge. I started to request voting statistics from the Auditor’s Office, specifically past election results. I found that in the 17 years my opponent had been on the board, he would have been challenged no more than two times. I would be his third challenge ever.
I was completely surprised. I began talking to teachers, other staff, parents, former board members, and other elected officials about my possible run. Almost everyone I talked to was behind me 100%. I knew that I had a chance but I would have to work very hard at it.
On Tuesday, I will publish the second of three parts of a story about my campaign for the Oskaloosa School Board.
