election | Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good

Living Out Our Constitution

Constitution Day commemorates the September 17, 1787 signing of the United States Constitution. As we mark Constitution Day, the importance of the Constitution as a living document hold true today. With an election, a pandemic and a reckoning on the disparities against Black bodies, a conversation of how these all intersect is vital. Check out…

100 years since the 19th Ammendment

Earlier this week, on August 18, we celebrated the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which granted women the right to vote in the United States. Our road to women’s suffrage was hard-won, but also complicated and deeply flawed. As White women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton marched the streets with banners…

Voter Outreach through USFVotes

Amaya Fox ’21, blogs this week about her experience as a lead ambassador in the USFVotes program on campus. Amaya was a McCarthy Fellow in Washington, D.C., an Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote Everywhere Ambassador for USFVotes, and through her leadership, earned the Gold Medal Award designation from the All-In Campus Challenge by registering over 5,000…

Organizing Electoral Success

A reflection on the work – and payoff – of effective organizing in Nevada by Professor Rebecca Gordon Many years ago, a young friend told me she was giving up politics. I asked why and she said “It’s because I’ve realized that all political work involves convincing people to do things they don’t want to…

Trump Exposes America’s Value

Amir Abner M.A. Urban Affairs ’17 Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States. President-Elect Trump has spewed racism, sexism and xenophobic ideals since his campaign started and it carried him all the way to victory. As soon as it was announced that he would win the bid to be the…

Playing the Blues in a Deeply Red State

Corey Cook Corey Cook, Professor of Politics is currently on leave but is still a critical observer of local, state and national politics. Professor Cook regularly contributes to the Leo T. McCarthy Center blog while he establishes the School of Public Service at Boise State University. Idaho was one of a handful of states that rejected…

Elections and Democracy – San Francisco Style

As my friend Jon Bernstein pointed out in a Bloomberg View piece last year, the timing of our elections can have a profound consequence for policy and governance. For instance, the specific timing of the economic crash in 2008 had important implications for President Obama’s agenda. – Corey Cook

Election Day Reflection: Supporting Stevon Cook’s Campaign for Board of Education

“”Our campaigns have not grown more humanistic because candidates are more benevolent or their policy concerns more salient. In fact, over the last decade, public confidence in institutions- big business, the church, the media, government- has declined dramatically. The political conversation has privileged the nasty and trivial. Yet during that period, election seasons have awakened…