Campaigning in Big Sky Country can be challenging: “I chose to campaign in a state that spans 186,000 square miles and has as many cattle as people,” says Steve Bullock ’88, who lost his 2000 race for Montana attorney general. “A week’s travel alone was brutal.”

Bullock has seen both sides of the action, thanks to an earlier stint running another candidate’s campaign, and says his biggest surprise in 2000 was the difference between being a manager and being the one managed. “When day after day the product you’re selling is yourself, it is a humbling yet all-consuming affair,” says Bullock.

Bullock, who spent three years as his state’s assistant attorney general, decided to get into the race himself because, he says, “there was still so much work to be done.”

Like his peers, Bullock finds the scales of public service and family frequently dipping to one side. “There is no calculus for figuring out the balance between the desire to serve and the obligations of service,” he says.

Ironically, Bullock says, amid all the frenzy and excitement of a campaign, it can also be lonely. “Still, I can’t tell you how many notes I received saying, ‘I never thought I would give money to a Democrat, but…’ That reminded me that friendships and shared foundations are more important than political labels.”

Simon Salinas ’78, believes access is everything. Salinas, in his first term in the California State Assembly, entered public service in 1989. While teaching in Monterey County public schools, he was struck by the lack of after-school activities for children, so he decided to run for city council in the city that shares his surname: Salinas.

“I had been teaching the kids not to be afraid to fail, to get involved in what you believe in,” recalls Salinas, seated in his paneled office. “You have to step up and give people the sense that they can believe in a system, and then they will participate.”

And Salinas steps up often. Prior to his first campaign, he was a plaintiff in a case that ended the community’s practice of at-large elections, which he claimed were disadvantageous to minorities. His voter registration efforts increased Latino voters by 1,000, increasing turnout in the district and helping him become the city’s first Hispanic city council member.

Every so often, he says, a cynical inner voice pipes up about public service and its demands, and his mind drifts back to teaching. “There are nights when you drive three hours home and think, ‘What am I doing?’”

Staying realistic helps counteract the doubt. “When you’re able to accomplish something,” Salinas says, “you can make the community better than when you first ran.”

For Elenor Taylor ’81, CMC director of alumni relations, the run for office “just sort of happened.”

Taylor moved to Duarte, Calif., in 1991, and began attending city council meetings when she noticed that the city, bordered by potentially flammable foothills, permitted the sale of fireworks.

With the support of her spouse, Ernie Silva, Taylor decided to run for the council. The small pool of voters, combined with the nature of the race, led the couple to a pact: campaign expenditures would be minimal. The resulting $150 they invested was so minor it was exempt from all but the simplest campaign finance reporting requirements.

Taylor chose a grassroots campaign approach. Standing in front of the local Target store and going door to door supplanted glossy mailers and yard signs. “We just started showing up places, and in a city that small, people start to notice,” Taylor says. Of course, the occupational hazard is that you’re also more likely to see your opponents at the grocery store, “so it’s best to keep things friendly.”

One hundred votes shy of a win, Taylor went on to become a community services commissioner. Two years into the position, she was approached to run again for the city council. She was concerned about adding the strain of running for office to the rigors of chasing a 2-year-old, but wanted to set a good example for her son, so gave it another chance. Though Taylor fell short of victory, she says the desire to serve remains.

Like Cheuvront, Taylor remembers watching party politics as a child. “The first person I supported was Hubert Humphrey.”

Visitors passing room 436-A in the state capitol often wonder about at a small sign reading “New Mother’s Room.” Had it not been for Deborah Gonzalez ’85, the room wouldn’t exist.

“As long as I am in the building,” says Gonzalez, “they better not get rid of that room.”

Working for then-California Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, Gonzalez, who is married to alumnus Tony Gonzalez ’85, requested a place to nurse her newborn once she returned to work as Pringle’s policy director.

She first campaigned alongside her husband during Bruce Herschensohn’s 1986 U.S. Senate race. “Tony would come home enthused about policy issues, excited because he loved his job. I wanted a job like that,” says Gonzalez. “So when Curt Pringle had an opening in his two-person Capitol office, I became a legislative aide.”

Like Elenor Taylor, Gonzalez was encouraged to run for office by fellow community members because she was a parent well-versed in public policy. When her 1998 Sacramento County Board of Education campaign was over, she decided she wasn’t the public office type. “Races are so invasive, and so hard on families,” she says.

As chief of staff for Sen. Charles Poochigian (R-Fresno), she has the luxury to affect public policy “in an intense and personal way without losing privacy.

“Balancing the demands of career and family is interesting for me as a conservative, Republican woman,” Gonzalez says, “but this job is flexible.”

Elenor Taylor '81, CMC's director of alumni relations, was a community services commissioner in the city of Duarte, Calif.