IntelliGrad likes to highlight young people who are working to make a difference. We’d like to draw readers’ attention to Derek Donnelly, a 26 year old democrat who is currently running as a candidate for Connecticut’s 61st House District. Derek is running against long standing Republican incumbent Ruth C. Fahrbach. Derek is a graduate of James Madison University and most recenty, a graduate of the University of Connecticut’s School of Law.
What is impressive about Derek is not only that he has been engaged in politics since graduating from JMU (Derek worked on Capitol Hill for former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and Derek assisted Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign) but he has still managed to graduate from law school and find time to be an active volunteer.
Derek has also used some great grassroots marketing techniques, as pointed out by the blog, Connecticut Local Politics:
“Donnelly is planning an aggressive, youth-oriented campaign. He has gone to colleges to talk with students there and recruit volunteers, and is planning on establishing a significant web presence. His main site will be interesting and interactive, he promises, and he will make use of a campaign blog to give campaign updates and answer questions. He will also explore nontraditional tools such as MySpace and Friendster to reach out to younger voters. He wants to take cues from the success of Howard Dean, and establish an email list. He is planning on having his website up by March.”
IntelliGrad salutes Derek’s effort and encourges more young people to get involved in politics. Great job Derek!
You can visit Derek’s Blog for more information.