EP 539 A First Job Like No Other

 

 

 

Will Haskell was about to graduate from Georgetown University when concerns about college affordability, climate change and other liberal causes hastened his entry into elective politics.  It takes a lot of courage for someone who had not held a full-time job to contest a state senate seat in the Fairfield County suburbs of Connecticut held for years by a Republican incumbent.  Many thought it was quixotic of him to take the plunge in 2018, imagining that he was in it only because no one else stepped forward.  It turned out he was in it to win it…and he did.  And in trying to hold on to the seat in 2020 found that his approach to the job garnered even more support, wherein he won 7 of the eight towns in his district with over 58 percent of the vote.   In his early stage memoir ‘100,000 First Bosses: My Unlikely Path as a 22-Year-Old Lawmaker’, Haskell describes the learning curve and his own misconceptions of who the state lawmakers he served with were and how they went about their work.  Prior to his time in the state legislature, aside from a trip with his dad just before deciding to run, he had never been to Hartford, the state’s capitol city, or its legislature.  It’s a book about discovery and growth, as well as encouragement for America’s young people, particularly Gen X’ers, not to wait their turn.

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