Recently, Drew and I have had a wonderful opportunity to get involved with Allred for Idaho, the gubernatorial campaign for Keith Allred. We stumbled across Allred's website while Drew was exploring an internship back in April. When he learned about a possible internship with the Allred campaign, Drew decided to check out just who this Keith Allred guy is. After reading up on his platform, Drew urged me to learn more.
I have seen first-hand the problems going on in the State of Idaho, namely in education. Keith Allred's entire platform is centered around creating jobs and improving the quality of the educational system. So Drew and I discussed Allred's campaign more thoroughly and we found that we now support this candidate for Governor of Idaho.
Drew was unable to get the internship he was looking at with Allred due to work obligations, but this semester he met up with an old friend from his mission and found out that his mother is Allred's campaign manager in Southeastern Idaho (hey, that's us!). This friend told him about all the opportunities to help with the campaign in these last few crucial weeks before election day. We decided, together, to take advantage of them!
So this past Saturday, the City of Rexburg had a fun little event showcasing some local talent and local venues called Rexburg Unplugged. The Allred campaign had a booth at the event, so we went to volunteer our help. When we got there, we were surprised to meet Keith Allred himself, there to talk to residents of Rexburg and to answer any questions they may have for him first hand. We were both very impressed with him and found him to be a very genuine and a very kind and warm man. He's so stinking tall, too! A great thing about Keith is that he's not a "career politician"; he's the type of person who is concerned solely about the people of the state and fixing the problems we face. Though Keith is a people-person, that does not mean he does not have what it takes to become our governor. He was a professor of government at Harvard and has a PhD from UCLA in Conflict Resolution.
Allred is running for governor because the Democratic party approached him and, feeling that he would be the strongest candidate to run against the current governor (Butch Otter, who is Republican), they asked him to run on the Democratic ticket. Even though Keith would not be ideologically classified as a Democrat, he chose to run as a Democrat because he saw that it would be his best chance to run against Otter.
So at Rexburg Unplugged, Drew and I focused on making Rexburg-ians aware that they can vote in the State of Idaho after living here for 30 days, and urging them to inform themselves on the issues and the candidates' stance on those issues. The great thing was that Keith Allred, himself, was there too and would come over to us and introduce himself whenever he saw us talking to people. A few people commented on the unique opportunity it was to be able to talk to him face to face.
I have never really been involved in politics, rather choosing to stay ignorant, especially as a student living away from home. But this is my home now, at least for now, and I need to get involved. Drew and I loved the experience we had to help just this one day with the campaign and it strengthened our desire to help in the campaign for this man whom we support whole-heartedly. We are planning on doing all we can, wherever we can, to make those aware of his policies and his goal of truly helping the residents of Idaho. Drew will be as close to a full-time intern as he can be while taking 17 credit hours of classes in the time leading up to election day, November 2, 2010.
If you were to have questions regarding Keith Allred's campaign, please don't hesitate to ask us personally or take a look-see at his website: http://www.allredforidaho.com/home.aspx
We'll keep ya updated!
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