Obama endorses 22-year-old college graduate running for Connecticut state Senate

Will Haskell’s campaign manager is his college roommate and many of his volunteers are still in high school

Will Haskell met voters while serving French fries and hotdogs at Oktoberfest in Wilton, Connecticut (Will Haskell/Twitter)

When Will Haskell began his campaign for the Connecticut state Senate, he had not yet graduated college. He was 22, the same number of years that his Republican opponent has been in state office.

But for Mr Haskell to win, he would need to succeed where many young challengers fail: It’s not enough to draw curiosity and attention; donors, party leaders and, ultimately, voters, must follow.

Mr Haskell, a recent graduate from Georgetown University, is two-thirds of the the way towards accomplishing his goal.

Donors immediately got behind Haskell: He qualified for public financing in less than a week, raising more than $29,000 (£22,200) from more than 450 donors.

The state then gave the campaign $96,000 (£73,500) in election grants.

Democratic leaders followed suit. Endorsements have come from Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, and Representative Jim Himes; all three have campaigned on Mr Haskell’s behalf.

And last week, Mr Haskell was among the 16 Connecticut Democrats included in Barack Obama’s second wave of 2018 midterm endorsements.

The momentum behind Mr Haskell is all the more surprising given the stature of his opponent, Senator Toni Boucher, 68, a Republican who flirted with running for governor this year.

Even his age has become an asset and a selling point, as the so-called blue wave has catapulted young Democrats over more seasoned incumbents across the country.

Mr Haskell’s campaign manager is his college roommate at Georgetown; many of his volunteers – inspired by the advocacy by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – are still in high school.

“Those students were so eloquent, I think they paved the way for a lot of young people to get involved,” Mr Haskell said of the Parkland students.

Despite his age, Mr Haskell is no political neophyte. He interned for Mr Murphy and Mr Himes, studied government at Georgetown, and worked for the Democratic National Committee’s voter protection team.

Ms Boucher, who serves in the Republican leadership in the Senate, would seem like an unlikely target for Democrats seeking to break the chamber’s tie between Democrats and Republicans.

She has captured at least 58 per cent of the votes in her past three elections in the 26th Senate District, which covers much of wealthy Fairfield County.

But Hillary Clinton won the district by more than 20 percentage points in 2016, and the number of registered Democrats and Republicans is almost a tie.

Gary Rose, a professor of government at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, said Mr Haskell has done well to overcome three substantial hurdles for young, untested candidates: name recognition, fundraising and endorsements.

“It is shocking that the race is in play,” he said, citing Ms Boucher’s one unassailable advantage: her record of constituent service.

“That is something he cannot claim,” he said. “That’s what often sustains an incumbent is that they have built up a reservoir of goodwill among the residents of the district.”

But, he added, “I think there’s very little question that she feels challenged in a very big way.”

At a recent opening of a Republican field office in Ridgefield, Ms Boucher certainly seemed like a candidate feeling the competition.

She characterised Mr Haskell as a “privileged, wealthy kid from a wealthy family in Westport” who only had opportunities to work in the offices of Murphy and Himes because of his family’s political donations to Democrats, according to a recording of her remarks obtained by The New York Times.

But FEC filings show Mr Haskell’s parents have never made political donations.

Senator Boucher has also accused Haskell’s campaign of stealing lawn signs and conducting a push poll.

Mr Haskell has denied both accusations, pointing to his limited campaign resources and campaign finance records that show his campaign has not spent any money on polling.

Ms Boucher and her campaign dodged numerous requests for comment over the course of several days, asserting that the senator did not have the time to speak.

Mr Haskell said he had planned to attend law school at Georgetown, where he was accepted as a junior as part of an early admissions programme for Georgetown undergraduates.

President Donald Trump’s election changed that.

“I woke up after Trump’s election, and like a lot of other people felt like I had to get involved in the fight against Trump’s agenda,” Mr Haskell said. “That fight starts at the local and state level.”

So he examined the positions of his local representatives, and worked his way up until reaching Senator Boucher.

Mr Haskell said her voting record on issues of gun control, voting rights and paid family leave alarmed him.

“I really believe that there once was a Connecticut Republican and it was different than a Donald Trump Republican,” he said.

“I know because my grandparents were once Connecticut Republicans, but that has faded away year by year.”

So he’s focused his campaign on Ms Boucher’s voting record. He sends out an email every other week highlighting Senator Boucher’s past votes, showing how he would vote differently, and at the first candidate forum last week in Ridgefield, Mr Haskell routinely criticised her record.

Mr Haskell said he knows he needs to show his fluency on the many issues plaguing the state: A fiscal crisis with severely underfunded pensions, major companies like General Electric leaving the state and crumbling infrastructure.

For Sue Scannell, a registered Republican who has lived in New Canaan for almost 40 years, Mr Haskell has shown his worth.

Ms Scannell, 75, said she has consistently voted for Senator Boucher in the past, but she will support Mr Haskell next month. She said it was time for a generational change in Hartford.

“He seems to be really attuned to what’s happening around him,” Ms Scannell said. “He seems to understand what needs to be done.”

Other Republicans disagree, saying Mr Haskell’s policy proposals would exacerbate the state’s fiscal woes.

JR Romano, chairman of Connecticut’s Republican Party, said: “Every policy that he wants has led us to this ditch that we’re currently in.

“If we are going to be honest about putting the state on a path to fiscal and economic prosperity, Will Haskell’s more interested in pushing the interests” of the Service Employees International Union, which represents a large swath of workers, such as nurses, janitors and security officers."

Part of Mr Haskell’s success, observers of the race say, is his aggressive ground game.

He’s knocked on nearly 4,000 doors and held 115 meet-and-greets in the district. As for days off, he only recalled one since he graduated in May: helping his girlfriend move into Harvard Law School.

“We spent the day building Ikea furniture,” he said.

Chris Murphy, who won his first race to serve as a state representative at age 25 and was elected to the US Senate when he was 39, said Haskell’s age should not inhibit his candidacy.

Mr Haskell, he said, has “tremendous energy and is whip-smart”.

“I think that voters in Connecticut don’t pay a lot of attention to age,” Mr Murphy said.

“If they did, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate. They want to know whether you’re experienced, whether you have the energy and whether you have good ideas, and Will has all of that.”

The New York Times