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14 March 2008
Getting Them to the Polls (2)
The speakers are young elected official Kelli Crawford, who is an Akron, Ohio, City Council member; Russell M. Pry, county executive of Summit County, Ohio; and Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio of the Summit County Juvenile Court.
The video was produced in March 2008 by America.gov and Crossborders.
(begin transcript)
Kelli Crawford: “My name is Kelli Crawford. I’m 27 years old and I’m an Akron City Council member.”
Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio: “I met Kelli a few years ago and was very impressed with her enthusiasm and her knowledge about national issues and local government.”
Crawford: “I was 26 when I initially ran for office. I was angry and upset because I didn’t like the direction that my country was going in. I knew that I needed to stop complaining and take my voice and actually do something with it.”
Teodosio: “I was very excited when she made the decision to go ahead and to become involved in politics and finally take a stab at running for office herself.”
Crawford: “Initially during the campaign, the biggest challenge I faced was my age. There was a certain incident at a door where a gentleman said to me, ‘You’re 26 years old -- who do you think you are?’ At that point, I wanted to fight to take the focus off of my age and say even though I’m 26 years old, I’m completely qualified and I’m very capable of doing this job.”
Russell M. Pry: “I was elected when I was 19 years old. I was a Mogadore village councilman. That was back in 1977. I think my age helped me in some regards.”
Crawford: “I actually had a designed literature piece that focused on other young elected officials: Congressman Tim Ryan, Congresswoman Betty Sutton, former President John F. Kennedy…”
Pry: “And I think people decided that if you are young and you go out and you try and show that you’re going to do something, they’re willing to give you a chance. Where young people are seeing that their government directly affects what they do on a day-to-day basis, so that it’s something now that is much more of importance to them to see who the leaders are going to be that affect where their future is going to go.”
Teodosio: “The growing number of young people in our country today, they really have an ability to impact not only present-day elections but also the future that the country’s going to take as they grow up and become the generation that guides our country.”
(end transcript)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
