Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
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The days have settled into a strange sort of routine here at On Politics world headquarters — otherwise known as my house.
The kids Zoom and scream and run through the living room brandishing pretend lightsabers. There are noise-canceling headphones and a card table-turned-desk crammed into a corner of a bedroom. I have a newfound appreciation for the little things … like just how many hours of “Star Wars”-related programming exists on Disney Plus.
It’s not much like our life in the beforetimes. I don’t know when — or even if — that life will return. But, we’re managing. Balancing? Not quite. But managing.
Of course, compared to so many, we have it easy. I’m not a front-line worker. Or furloughed. Or running for office.
But Maggie Nurrenbern is trying to do more than just manage. The 35-year-old teacher is running her first political race, while also contending with the complexities of how we live now.
She’s teaching her high school courses virtually. Parenting three boys, 6 and under. Dealing with the risks that come from having a husband who works in health care. And, on top of all that, she’s campaigning as a Democrat for a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives from her suburban Kansas City district.
This is hardly the situation Ms. Nurrenbern pictured when she began her campaign months ago. I talked to her about distance learning, “scheduled chaos” and politicking in a pandemic. (As always, our conversation has been edited and condensed.)
Tell me about what your life looks like now. How is everything going?
Scheduled chaos, let me say, is what we’re managing. My husband and I, we have three boys. The youngest just turned 1. Then we have a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old.
When I decided to run for office, everybody was, “Gosh, you can’t do this. Your kids are too young. You’ve got to be there for your kids.” And over and over again I was saying, “This is being there for my kids. Running for office and caring about their futures is being there for them.” But it certainly has been the toughest thing I’ve ever done.
And you’re still working, right?
I’m still teaching full-time, even though it is through online learning. My kids make frequent appearances during my Zoom classes. There’s times where I have to say, “OK, hey, you guys keep talking right here, I’m going to go run the baby back downstairs,” or something like that.
And I do my best with the campaign to do scheduled calls but you never know what’s going on at a certain time. I just had to step away to fix a marble run and tape a part back together. There’s always something.
My husband is a nurse practitioner. Sometimes he’s in the clinic, which has been nerve-racking to say the least. His patients test positive for Covid-19, and I think about him coming home, and it’s been tough.
When I started the campaign last year, I knew that it was going to be ——
Can I finish this phone call and then I’ll help you? It’s an ox. Like a horse, you know, but an ox.
Sorry, we’re having a distance learning issue here.
I get it. The other day I was on a call and my son was trying to spell soup versus soap, and it was three minutes of trying to be like, “No, that’s soup, this is soap.”
What kind of stuff can you even do for the campaign right now?
Everything is virtual. I would represent 36,000 people and so canvassing is just a huge part of that, meeting voters face to face. Now we’re shifting to doing that through phone banking. Right now it’s reaching out and doing wellness checks: “How are you doing right now?” And if there is any way to connect them with resources.
“Can I count on your vote in November?” feels a little ludicrous right now.
Are you fund-raising?
That’s been the toughest part. It’s really hard to fund-raise for a political office when people have lost their jobs, when they’re worried about being able to pay the rent. But at the same time, we see how imperative it is that we have elected officials that understand the realities of working families. That’s what this has shown us: When we have people who are completely separated from the lives of working people they’re not making decisions that are in our best interest. We have seen that from the president on down and certainly even in Missouri.
It’s kind of a necessary evil that we do have to raise money and change who is in office.
But you’re trying to do it, it sounds like?
To some extent. It’s not maybe the hard ask that I would do before, like, “Can I count on a donation today of $200?” But more, you know, “Hey, if you’re able I would really appreciate this when you can.” So it’s coming from a place of understanding.
Walk me through like what your day is like.
Honestly, I feel like I’m pretty fortunate because we went from a hundred miles an hour to a screeching halt. Before, I would be out of the house by 7 at the latest and come back from the school day and be gone again for events in the evening.
There’s some days I feel like are a complete blessing to have all this time to spend with my family. But then at the same time I’m constantly thinking of those who every day is just pure agony — not knowing how they’re going to make it to the end of the month and pay those bills or have enough food to eat.
The school that I teach at, it’s our most diverse high school in the state. We have a huge population that’s free and reduced lunch, we have a homelessness population, and it’s so hard to be able to connect with those kids and you really don’t know what they’re living right now. So many of them would tell me school was the brightest part of their day.
Do you think you would have still decided to run had you known this was going to happen?
Yeah, without a doubt I would have. I’m even more certain that we have to change the people we elect. We have to have people who are in office that truly represent working families. As a mom with young children, I feel like I have that kind of mama bear mentality.
So what’s next after we hang up the phone?
Right now, it’s nap time for the kiddos. We switch off who is with the kids so nobody goes too crazy during the day. It’s one day at a time and we do the best we can.
As a mom, you learn early and often to have a tremendous sense of humility. That’s how I approach everything. We do what we can each and every day, but at the end of it, if everybody’s alive and happy and well, then I’ve done the best that I could.
Social distancing: bringing us together or driving us apart?
A sewing army is sending masks across America. At the same time, mask mandates are leading to threats, verbal abuse and even a shooting.
We want to know how your community is responding to this stressful moment in American life. Is it a time of unity or even deeper political divisions?
Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. And don’t forget to include your name and location. We might feature you in a future edition of On Politics.
Coronavirus diary: Havertown, Pa.
We’re sharing some of your dispatches from around the globe about life in the time of coronavirus.
Today, we have a letter from Parker Gertz, 12, from Havertown, Pa.:
I have seen a lot of Times readers saying different things about when the country should reopen from our lockdown. Although I can’t say I have read the news for decades, or say I’ve been into national and international happenings for 50 years, I do feel dumbfounded at some of the reasoning I have seen for reopening the country.
I thought we, as a country at least, decided that people are worth more than money.
Perhaps you who say we should open the country have not felt the effects of the virus? Maybe you have not feared a loved one’s death? I was just thinking, you can always get another haircut, another manicure. But can you get another mother or grandparent? Are short-term pleasures worth the waste of life?
People say experience is everything, but if you have the “experienced” trying to end lives as though they’re just numbers, then I prefer a teenager in office.
… Seriously
You may never want to eat from a buffet again after seeing this video.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
