Meet the face of the booming youth political movement (and it's not Obama)
By Andy Kroll, Youth Vote '08 correspondent
Editor's note: This is one story in a series of pieces looking at young people working for the campaigns. Read more.
It's as if the infectious enthusiasm, unwavering idealism and self-determination of so many of today's young politicos were mixed together, poured into a single person and topped off with a pinch of the Midwest's trademark tinny inflection.
That's one way to describe Lauren Wolfe.
Another is that the ebullient Wolfe is one of the Democratic Party's rising stars, who, as the president of the College Democrats of America, sits atop all of Democratic youth politics in the United States.
What's more, Wolfe, a law student at the University of Detroit-Mercy, this year added to that list her role as a Democratic superdelegate. It's a position that's landed her into the broadcasts of CNN and the columns of The Washington Post and The New York Times for both her innovative strategy in deciding which candidate to support and also her membership in the controversial Democratic delegation from Michigan.
Unlike the Michigan delegate debacle, however, Wolfe's love of politics is simple, and she describes her passion for the College Democrats with the same brio that enlivens nearly everything she says.
"I really like politics and making a difference in the community," she explained in a recent interview from her Washington, D.C office. "The College Dems really mean a lot to me; for them, anything that needs to get done gets done. And if that means law reading doesn't get done, so be it."
A look at Wolfe's path leading up to her presidency at CDA illustrates why she's very much an embodiment of today's youth political movement, with her own political journey closely mirroring the emergence of the powerful young voting bloc seen today.
Though she briefly volunteered in a handful of political campaigns while attending the private Detroit Country Day high school, Wolfe first cut her teeth in politics when she joined the College Democrats chapter as an undergraduate at Smith College, a private, all-women's school in western Massachusetts.
At first, generating interest in the College Democrats at Smith, a school Wolfe described as "fairly liberal," wasn't easy.
"People kind of don't see the importance of a Smith chapter of the College Dems," she said. "They don't think there's anything to do."
By her junior year, in 2003, she was chapter president, and had succeeded in registering one-third of the college. The Smith chapter, under her leadership, also assumed a greater role within the northeast region, sponsoring annual organizing trips to nearby colleges and to neighboring New Hampshire to canvass for Democratic candidates.
Wolfe's efforts at Smith didn't go unnoticed. In 2004, the Smith College Democrats was named "Chapter of the Year." Wolfe was also named president of the College Democrats of Massachusetts and elected chair of the CDA's National Council, the federation of all College Democrats state-level organizations.
And as Wolfe was ascending within the College Democrats and rapidly growing the organization's membership, she saw her work coming to fruition as youth voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election skyrocketed, with more young people getting out to the polls that year than in the previous decade.
After graduating from Smith in the spring of 2005 and spending a year in Germany on a Fulbright scholarship, Wolfe soon dove back into Democratic politics.
She took the helm of CDA just as young voters again surprised their critics with soaring voter turnout numbers in the 2006 midterm elections, which gave the Democratic Party control over the House and Senate. Throughout Wolfe's tenure, Democrats have only gained more power in Washington by way of victories in a spate of special elections in the past several years.
As a superdelegate, she bucked the trend of most other superdelegates, who kept their lips pursed and their cards tight to their chests during the primaries and caucuses. Instead, Wolfe, along with CDA vice president Awais Khaleel who is also a superdelegate, decided to utilize the new media so popular among young people to let their constituents weigh in regarding which candidate they should support.
In a YouTube video posted on April 28 featuring herself and Khaleel, Wolfe said, "As the Democratic Party's two superdelegates who represent college students, we want to make sure that our vote belongs to you."
The crux of the video was that Wolfe and Khaleel were merely two college kids themselves, and thus far more accessible than the other superdelegates and more open to suggestions from their peers.
They encouraged students to submit their own YouTube videos or send e-mails explaining why Wolfe and Khaleel should commit to either Clinton or Obama.
"We will absolutely listen to what you have to say," Wolfe insisted in the video.
Some 5,000 e-mails, 1,000 Facebook messages and hundreds of YouTube responses later, Wolfe and Khaleel announced on May 13 that they would, not surprisingly, support Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in late August.
Looking back on the YouTube videos, Wolfe said she was still amazed by the overwhelming response, but added that much of the feedback she received didn't even pertain to the question of whom they should support.
"A lot of [the e-mails] were like, 'Thanks so much go reaching out to us' or 'Thanks that someone is asking for our opinions,' " Wolfe said. "I got lots of e-mails from people who simply appreciated that this was getting out there."
For Wolfe, the astounding response to CDA's online outreach was even more confirmation of the growing youth movement.
When asked about the causes of this movement, Wolfe first pointed to her opponents across the aisle. She believes young people have turned to the Democratic Party because the GOP -- despite Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's insistence that young people are important to him -- doesn't care about the issues that matter most to young Americans.
"Republicans are not standing for the values young people believe in, like a progressive energy policy, getting out of Iraq and that we don't want loan companies preying on us," she explained. "These are all things Republicans literally and strategically voted against."
Wolfe also stresses that the burgeoning youth movement is not wholly a response to the Obama's success so far -- although she believes he has certainly contributed to it -- but rather is the result of years of infrastructure growth and grassroots organizing.
"We're seeing more emphasis put on young voters, with new groups being formed in the past several years like Campus Progress, the Roosevelt Institute, and [the Student] PIRGs New Voter Project," she said. "There is a renewed interest in young people for getting involved in politics."
For now, Wolfe is preparing for CDA's national summit in Denver from August 22 to 27, and then, of course, the Democratic National Convention.
Oh, and there's also the small matter of school. Although she claims to adequately balance her commitments between case studies and campaign rallies by "budgeting her time," a bit more prodding reveals where Wolfe's heart truly lies.
"My experience with the College Dems will be far more beneficial to me in my life, and it means so much more than reading cases in Civil Procedure," she admits with a laugh. "But don't tell my Civil Procedure professor that."
Andy Kroll is a senior at the University
of Michigan and a news editor at The Michigan Daily. His writing has appeared at AlterNet, Campus Progress, WireTap Magazine, TomPaine.com and The Nation online. See his UWire profile.
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