From College House to State House

By senior year, most college students know how to arrange their schedules for maximum convenience. Some do this so they can sleep in; Nicolas Garcia organized his classes so he could fly home to Florida on weekends to campaign for a seat in the state House of Representatives.

“I want to take what I learned at Penn and bring it back so I can help my community out,” he says. “I hope I can do it this way.”

Though he was raised in a “not very political” family, the Arab Spring in 2011 roused Garcia’s interest in politics. He was drawn to Penn by its approach to political science. “Unlike most places, Penn gives you a big practical piece: This is how politics actually work, and this is how you can use what you learn here in politics and policy making and government.”

He’s been able to take classes with former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, C’65; John DiIulio, Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society, director of the Fox Leadership Program, and the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives; and John Lapinski, associate professor of political science, director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, and director of the elections unit at NBC News.

Garcia also had two Penn in Washington internships that were transformative. He spent the fall of 2013 in D.C. taking classes and working in the Education Department on the White House initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanics. He became so interested in educational policy that he took classes at the Graduate School of Education when he returned to Penn.

Last summer he worked at the White House in the Presidential Personnel office. He says, “The people at the White House were really, really passionate about doing public service, and that rubbed off on me a lot more than I was expecting.”

Garcia was talking to a mentor about his plan to run for office in 10 or 15 years when the mentor asked him point blank: Why don’t you run now? “I came home and thought about it,” says Garcia. “I talked to my family and friends and professors, and they were all behind me. And I thought, why not? The passion I saw at the White House pushed me to do something now and try to make a change while I could.”

With a team at Penn helping with research and organization, and friends and family in Florida spreading the word, he ran for office while completing his senior year. “I wouldn’t necessarily advise it,” he says. “But I’ve loved it since I began.”

Out on the campaign trail, Garcia found his work as a as a leader of the Latino community at Penn and in the Fox Leadership Program also served him well. “You’re talking to people you represent, trying to find out what they want, advocate for them, and find ways to solve their issues,” he says. “I developed my ability to negotiate and find common ground.”

Now campaigning full-time, he’ll be out for 10 hours at a stretch, a schedule he’ll keep up until the Florida state primary on August 30. “I’ve had such a great response. Some of the people coming up to me have never met a candidate to see and talk to,” he says. ‘This is what it should be like.”