V.

In February 2007 Barack Obama announces he is running for President of the United States. I’d watched him speak at the Democratic National Convention three years prior and had physically lifted myself out of my chair that night, jubilant, like when I’m watching my team crush it in a big game.

I am getting restless in my career at Stanford, wondering how much longer the joy of working with the students will outweigh the annoyance of trying to effect change in an environment where change comes slowly. The day after Obama announces, I write a long letter to the folks at his campaign headquarters in Chicago and attach my résumé. Something in that letter piques their interest and that March they fly me to Chicago for a conversation. There I meet Betsy Myers and Analisa Lafontant, two white women overseeing the enormous task of bringing this unknown candidate to the consciousness of a party obsessed with Hillary Clinton. I tell them I want to play a grassroots role in California. They tell me they aren’t opening any California offices. I plead on behalf of the largest state in the nation for us to matter to this campaign, and then, shutting up and listening to them, I finally understand: there will be no California campaign until they make it past Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. They offer me a job with Chicago headquarters but I can’t imagine uprooting my family or commuting two thousand miles to support such a long shot.

I resign myself to being a volunteer if and when the campaign ever makes it to California. This means staying where I am at least for a while, participating in the coaching, listening to what Maryellen has to say.