Who Needs Law School

Some of Harvard’s politically savvy students work for campaigns after college, but it’s the rare graduate who starts her own. Carolina S. Johnson ’04—a presidential name if we’ve ever heard one—is doing just that. The Mather House senior is launching a third-party bid for the 25th Middlesex District Massachusetts state representative seat. She’ll be running on the Green Party ticket in a district that includes Harvard, Porter Square and areas around Central Square. Victory isn’t guaranteed, but like the Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII, Carolina is ready for a fight. She’s already made her mark on campus. After the 2000 election, she co-founded the Harvard College Greens, and she has remained active in local politics throughout her time in Cambridge. FM met up with her on the campaign trail.

1. How did you first get involved in the Green Party?

Freshman year, I got involved in the Ralph Nader campaign. I heard him speak several times and I really enjoyed what he had to say. The World Trade Organization protests in Seattle really upset me my senior year of high school. The way the entire country flared up against the possibility of another candidate running got me involved in the Green Party and third-party politics, because I realized how important it was. People weren’t even allowing these voices to be heard.

2. Why did the Green Party ask you to run for state representative?

One of [the Party’s] main goals for this election cycle is to try to run people in as many districts as they could for state and local elections. People from the Middlesex County committee approached me and kind of as a joke said, “Well, you should run.”

3. Were you originally planning on staying in Cambridge after graduation?

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do originally. I studied [abroad] in Oxford my junior year, and I was wanting to go back to England eventually but I decided to wait to apply to grad school. I wanted to stay here in Boston.

4. Are you a government concentrator?

I am joint social studies and women’s studies, social studies primary.

5. Are other members of your family named after states?

No, none of them are. I wasn’t named after a state either, actually. I was named after my mother’s good friend who happened to make her wedding dress.

6. Why should Harvard students pay more attention to local politics?

Harvard students, whether they like to think about it or not, are part of this community. They chose to come to Boston, they chose to come to Harvard. I mean, there’s more going on than just Harvard University here. The representatives in this district represent Harvard students and this community to the state and the decisions that are made in the state house affect the students who live here—things like how late the T runs. The fact that [students] don’t care about local politics at all, for the most part, is ridiculous to me.

7. You announced your candidacy at the Café Gato Rojo. Any particular reason you announced there as opposed to, say, Harvard Hall?

First off, I spend a fair amount of time there, so I was familiar with it. We wanted a space that wasn’t that big; none of us had time to make a huge event out of it. And we wanted to have a band, which we got. It was meant to be a welcoming, friendly environment.

8. Will the Mather House Committee or the Mather Department of War be assisting you in your campaign?

I haven’t approached them yet. I think that that’s not an impossibility, but I wouldn’t say it was something I was planning as my campaign strategy. I hadn’t actually thought of it. Now that you mention it, I’m going to have to approach them about that.

9. Do you plan on campaigning at Mather Lather?

I’m not sure people would be paying much attention to me. Maybe if I did ridiculous things people would pay attention to me but that may not be the best campaign strategy.

10. What’s the first bill you would bring up in legislature?

I can’t say that. I’m not going to make a joke about that because this is a campaign.

11. Are you planning on voting for Ralph Nader for president in November?

I also won’t say who I’m voting for in the presidential election. A lot can happen in six months, and I don’t necessarily like the way Nader has dealt with this election in that he bypassed the Green Party’s primary nominating process. I’m very undecided. I won’t be voting for Bush, that’s for sure. But other than that I can’t tell you.

12. Did you receive flak from friends or acquaintances because you worked on the Nader campaign?

My friends generally were pretty good about it. It was mainly strangers on the street. After the election, a lot of people were very abusive about that— swearing at me, screaming at me. Pretty much being unreasonable.

13. You’re not on thefacebook.com. Any particular reason?

That’s just the fact that I’m doing a lot of things and one thing my brain doesn’t need to think about is whether I’m on thefacebook.com. Maybe right before graduation I’ll sign up and then I’ll realize I should have been on the whole time.

14. Would you be anxious about handling yourself at the State House as a local college graduate?

No.

15. You’re running against incumbent state Rep. Alice K. Wolf (D., Mass.) in the fall. Would you make your campaign theme song Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf?”

I’m currently debating what my campaign theme song would be. There’s been a lot of ones thrown out, and I’m kind of… I’ll take that into consideration.