News and Events

Olympia (and life) for dummies: Intern goes from sportswriter to legislative reporter

By David Krueger
March 17, 2011

Be polite, smile and listen. If you take one thing away from this essay — which is entirely possible — let it be that. Whether you want to be a journalist, firefighter, astronaut, politician, truck driver, doctor, professor or any other profession, I'm convinced now, more than ever, that those are the tools you need to be successful.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I came to Olympia. I'm a sportswriter. I'd been covering high school sports for four years. Since I was in high school. I figured that if I can't hit a home run I may as well do the next best thing: watch other people do it and write about it. I loved my job at the Everett Herald, and found it very hard to leave to come to Olympia to write about politics. But I'm glad I did.

The Democrats have a donkey, and the Republicans have an elephant. I never understood why, but that was the extent of my knowledge on party politics. I knew the basics of what each think we should do, but I was more interested in seeing how they interact with each other. Who hates who? Who's best friends with who? Who (if anybody) is more than just co-committee members? The answer to the last question is nobody, as far as I could tell.

The second to last article I wrote about Olympia for the Skagit Valley Herald pretty much sums up what was the theme in the Capitol this session: bipartisanship. Legislators from both sides of the aisle (I also now know what that phrase means) have come together to get things done for Washingtonians. Balancing the budget (no simple task when there's an almost $5 billion deficit), fixing the depleted ferry system and saving social programs potentially facing the ax because of said budget woes are the big issues I wrote about during my time in Olympia.

It looks kind of depressing, but it's not. The one thing I learned most in Olympia is that legislators really do care. Sometimes they misread a situation, or drop a bill that's not the best. Sometimes, they won't even vote for their own bills when the floor votes on it. I think this is funny. But they genuinely care about their constituents and doing the right thing for Washington. They'd have to, or else they wouldn't be on the floor debating bills until 11:40 p.m. some nights.

I found out I like politicians. They're nice. Granted, the press pass around my neck probably helps a lot, but even the way they usually interact with each other is friendly (usually, I must stress that word). It's amazing to see people making a difference in people's lives on a daily basis. After talking to several legislators I can assure you it's not a process they take lightly. It means a lot to them that they're here, and it's not lost on them that if they don't perform they won't be behind that desk much longer.

I've never hidden the fact that I've always wanted to be President of the United States of America. I want to do this. I want to make a difference. This feeling hasn't changed at all. However, it's gotten stronger. The fire inside is burning hotter than ever. One of the people I admire most here is Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen from Camano Island. Haugen has been in the legislature for 29 years, and this session has been striving to find a solution to the mismanagement in the Washington State Ferry system. Since the ferries are an important topic in Skagit Valley, I found myself in her office pretty often.

My last meeting with the senator was an interview for a profile I was writing about her almost-three-decades of service to the state of Washington. However, by the end of it we were talking more about me than we were her. She asked about my future plans (which include interning for the Seattle Times, freelancing for the rest of the session, spending the summer working for a newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone and, of course, my impending presidency) and offered to write me a letter of recommendation should I ever need one, perhaps to be a legislative assistant one day here in Olympia. I had never thought about that until she offered.

So now my future's actually a little more blurry than it was before, because it looks like I have another potential road to the White House. I'm not complaining whatsoever. While I've always wanted to be a sportswriter before I got into politics, my internship in Olympia helped open even more doors for me, and helped me develop even more relationships. Really, isn't that what it's all about? Lots of people go to college, and lots of those people have a better grade point average than me. But now I may have a leg up on at least a few of them who want to get into politics, because of the University of Washington and this program.

And because I was polite, smiled and listened.

Read more about the Olympia Legislative Reporting internship >>