by Karl Kurtz
An information request the other day about policies regarding state legislative interns running for office while they are working for the legislature uncovered an old story that I had not read before. In Minnesota in 2002 a legislative intern attempted to run for the legislature--against the legislator for whom he worked.
The story, as told by Jack Penchoff in State Government News (go to p. 7), is that an old friend of ours, Rep. Phyllis Kahn, took her intern, University of Minnesota student Jason Samuels, to lunch to thank him for his service to her during the legislative session. After she told him that she would be glad to write a recommendation for him, he handed her a press release announcing that he was running against her!
After Rep. Kahn challenged him on his ethics and made it clear that she was planning to run again, he initially backed down from running and apologized for the timing of his announcement--without admitting to any ethical transgressions. He later reneged, though, and filed to run against her on the Green party ticket, only to have his name eventually bounced from the ballot by the state Supreme Court because he did not live in the district. From State Government News:
After the Supreme Court ruling, Kahn had time to reflect on what happened.“Everybody thought I was really dumb to let this happen to me,” she said.
A reader of The New York Times Magazine, Kahn decided to write Randy.Cohen, author of the publication’s “The Ethicist” column.
After outlining the situation in her letter to Cohen, she asked: “Are we being too sensitive? Should I have been more alert to this possibility?”
In his response, Cohen assured Kahn that her “unwariness” does not excuse her former intern’s actions. He also encouraged her to establish an intern’s ethics policy. Cohen suggested part of the ethics policy “require would-be interns to pledge that upon leaving the job, for a finite period – one term? – they not run against a former boss.”
In the end, Samuels may have picked up some tips from working for Kahn, but the legislator said she, too, learned something. “Now I’m more suspicious of people’s motives.”
Kahn is still a member of the Minnesota House, serving her 20th term.
And the answer to the orginal information request about state policies regarding interns running for office? About one-third of the legislative internship coordinators I polled said that their legislature has no policy on this subject, about one-third said that they have a contract, employment agreement or guidelines that prohibit partisan activity during their internship, and the remainder said that they try to screen out cause-oriented candidates for internships or ones who appear likely to run for office in the short term during the selection process.
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