8 FEBRUARY 23-MARCH 1, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | election. Because it was the New Hampshire primary, we had all the candidates coming through, and that’s what piqued my interest. I had been raised by two journalists, and it was required that we be aware of what was going on — but not political. When I would say, “Well, who are you guys voting for?” They would respond, “We don’t talk about that.” It was very journalistic. They were telling me what was going on, not their thoughts on what was going on. Then I became the head of the Democratic Club in the fall of my junior year. And I never had worse grades in my life. I decided that presidential politics was far more important and just let everything else go, because I went all in. Was there somebody running who in- spired you? For most of the club, it was probably Howard Dean. He appealed to young people, to progressive folks. Whether it was because I didn’t have enough political background or because I was the son of journalists, I took a neutral approach. I worked for all of them. Our club would say yes to anyone who asked for help, making phone calls, knocking on doors, doing whatever they needed us to do. How did that interest in politics deepen during the two years between high school and college? I graduated high school in 2006 and took two years off before going to college. During that time, I worked for John Edwards, who was running for a second time. In 2004, Edwards had been the close second behind John Kerry and became his running mate. Then from the day John Kerry lost, Edwards was running for president again. He was the only person talking about the inequalities that I had seen. His theme was two Americas, and going from what I had seen in New Jersey to what I had seen in New Hampshire, it resonated. He was the only one talking about poverty and about educational inequality. So I deferred college and moved to North Carolina. I don’t think my parents were thrilled about it, but they said: “You do you. You’re eigh- teen, you’re an adult. But you’re on your own. We’re not funding this excursion of yours.” So I ensured I had a paycheck before I went. I lived in North Carolina for a year and a half, until [Edwards] lost the fi rst few states and then dropped out just before Super Tuesday. Then you went to college... I came into Columbia as a twenty-year-old, and my birthday is in October, so within three weeks, I was a 21-year-old freshman. I loved campus; I spent all kinds of time on it. I found friends very quickly, but I lived on a fl oor with seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds and did not feel as connected to them. And that probably pushed me more outside the dorm and into the campus in the city. But I was in a hurry because I had come in at that age, so I did it in three years. Between Columbia and Harvard Law School, I worked as a teacher out here, down in Colorado Springs. I taught high school math and was a baseball coach. Can you explain how in the next three years you worked for one of our former governors, at McKinsey & Company, a global consulting fi rm, and in the White House? Were those jobs you held after you fi nished your law degree at Harvard? I worked at those places during law school. I knew I wanted to be out here in Colorado, so I came out here both sum- mers. The fi rst summer, I worked for former governor John Hickenlooper in the Offi ce of Legal Counsel, and also at a law fi rm. It’s common in law school to split your sum- mer between two internships, to let you get more experience. I divided my time between the public sector and the private sector. I decided law fi rms were not for me, but the public sector could be. My second summer, I did an internship with McKinsey to gain more experience in the private sector, and also did an internship in the governor’s marijuana offi ce. In between those summers, during my second year of law school, I got a law clerk position in the Offi ce of White House Coun- sel for Barack Obama, and Harvard let me do that for credit. I spent from January to June of 2015 in the White House, where there are 25 full-time attorneys and fi ve law clerks who are all law students. The Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage came before the Supreme Court, and the immigration executive orders were being defended. It was an amazing time. We were in what President Obama called his fourth quarter, when he had no more elections in front of him. It was fun to govern because we were using the power of the offi ce to push the agenda through. And then I had to leave to make it out here for my second summer, where I had agreed to work in the marijuana offi ce. ... I can’t hold a job, is the story of my life; my wife was reminding me of this. She’s been the breadwinner for us for a while. You know, I was a teacher for two years, so I did not make much money, and then I went to law school, where I never did paid gigs for very long. Maybe I made a few thousand from the law fi rm my fi rst summer and then McKinsey paid me well for half a summer. When I worked for the State of Colorado, neither of those jobs were paid. And then I was deep in debt when I graduated from law school. But I had these awesome experiences. When I graduated, I happily accepted a job from McKinsey as a management consul- tant and worked for about two months, and then Donald Trump got elected in 2016. And I said, “Oh, I need to get back to the public sector.” I remember I was out of town on a project on Election Day, and was out bowl- ing with a colleague of mine. It was late, and we just wanted to get out of the offi ce. The election results came out, and I said to him, “I don’t think I’m going to be here very long.” And I was there for about another six months. Why did you want to run for offi ce? I knew I wanted to be in the public sector. I did not know I wanted to run, but the legacy created by an administration I had loved, it was all at risk. A year prior, I had been de- fending the Affordable Care Act, defending same-sex marriage, defending immigration executive orders, and now a person who sought to undo all of that had been elected. I had liked the idea of working in the private sector as a way to gain experience that I could use in government and pay off my debt, but when things were not good, I felt I needed to get back to the public sector. I had no idea what the path would be, and just started showing up to a bunch of stuff. My wife and I would show up, and often we were the young- est people in the room by like forty years. We had almost all elected Republicans in Jeffco at that point. The clerk and recorder was running for reelection, and no one was willing to challenge her because she’d won thirteen out of thirteen previous elections. So I looked at that offi ce and found that it had the DMV under it — which I describe as a consultant’s dream, because it is everybody’s least-favorite agency, and consultants like going to the worst and trying to make them better — and then elections, which I had been passionate about for a long time. So I said, “Sure!” I’ve trained as an elections judge, but the laws that govern elections are so complicated. And I learned that on day one in the job, because I thought I knew the law pretty well, and I had a lot to learn. Staff is amazing. I mean, the talent drain happening in elec- tions is a big problem, because we depend on career people who know what they’re doing. Let’s talk about that. Threats have hap- pened in various counties and at the state level. This has been a challenge for the last few years. Certainly, it was something I didn’t intend to navigate. Clerks fl ew beneath the radar until 2020, and then we learned pretty quickly that anytime we responded to a threat, we would get many more. When someone asks me about them, I say, yeah, they’ve increased, but I don’t like to draw attention to that. You’re often telling them why they’re wrong, which just feeds the troll. What bothered me more than anything else was how it would affect the staff. You could physically see it taking a toll on them. Right after the 2020 election, I mean, I’m a Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder, and I was on CNN, you know? That shouldn’t be happening. That happened because of the climate we were in. But the brighter my star shone, the worse my staff got it. And the more I faded from view, the better it was for them. And so that became a diffi cult calculus. Some measure of speaking out was im- portant because it helped legislation pass that brought more federal dollars to fund election security, but especially when I de- cided I wasn’t running again, I was like, “I think I need to insulate staff from this.” At that point, I decided the incoming threats needed to come through me so the staff didn’t know what people were saying and doing. It was hard to see, you know? Front- line staff members would be answering the emails, and they would get someone saying crazy things, and they George Stern continued from page 7 continued on page 10 George Stern was elected Jefferson County Clerk in 2018. EVAN SEMÓN EVAN SEMÓN
