First off, Paul Axel has not become a contributing member to The Sconz, although it certainly wouldn’t hurt having him on board.
A few weeks ago he interviewed Analiese Eicher, the Democratic candidate (in a non-partisan race) for the District 5 seat on the Dane County Board. Disclosure: Axel is active in the College Democrats and very likely knows Eicher personally. Here’s the interview:
Why did you initially decide to run for county board, or who convinced you?
Well, I guess I really hadn’t been considering because there was an open seat, and it never really crossed my mind that it was something I wanted to do right away. I was definitely on the track for law school, taking the LSAT. Someone brought it more to my attention and asked me to consider it, and I began to consider it…just to think about it. And I was, like, “Well, OK.” So I started talking to a lot of students that I work with on campus, asking their opinion about it. I started to think about what the position means to the students on campus. So after many conversations with many students, it was clear a lot of people thought it was a good idea. I convinced myself that there were a lot of things that I wanted to work on that could be accomplished on the county board. I felt students needed strong represented to represent their voice on the board. I felt that students needed to know what was going on. They don’t realize just how relevant the board is to their everyday lives. So it was a lot of students that convinced me to run.