Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the 2020 National Constitution Bee winner Jackson Carter in studio to explain what it was like running for the Maury County Board of Education seat as a 19-year-old student.
Leahy: In studio, our good friend, a seasoned political veteran at the age of 20, the champion of the 2020 National Constitution Bee, a sophomore at the University of Alabama from Spring Hill, Tennessee, in Maury County, Mr. Jackson Carter.
Jackson, let’s continue the story. You got your $10,000 scholarship ship from The Star News Education Foundation for winning the National Constitution Bee. You entered Alabama as a freshman. What was your first year like at the University of Alabama?
Carter: Preface this with, I’ve always wanted to go to Alabama ever since I was four or five years old; I always knew I was going to end up in Tuscaloosa. So really, it was kind of a manifestation of everything I’d ever wanted it to be. I know you go down there, and you hear a lot of people who look from the outside, oh, it’s a party school; it’s a football school. It’s this, that, or the other.
But I’m a public relations major, so I’m in the Department of Communications. And Alabama has the top communication school in the country right now. So getting to have top-of-the-line professors, world-class education accompanied with, of course, the football and all of the things that go along with that, it really was an exercise in, wow, there’s a lot more to this than what meets the eye when you’re just looking at it.
Leahy: Describe to the audience what’s it like to be a student going to an Alabama football game at home.
Carter: There’s a lot of standing. It truly is. The student section, it is packed every week when we have a big game, and it truly is. You see pictures on TV of how full that stadium can get. In that student section, you are elbow to elbow with 30,000 other people just right there in the student section alone.
We always joke we stand on the bleachers, so no one sits during the games. And you don’t even stand in front of your seat. You stand in your seat. And we’re always jumping around.
Leahy: I didn’t know that.
Carter: We stand on the metal bleachers. We have bleachers with no backs. And you stand on the bleacher. And let me tell you when it gets loud, when that place gets to moving and shaking, you will almost fall because the metal bleachers start shaking so much under you. When Dixieland Delight comes on, that place explodes.
Leahy: It sounds like you’re having a lot of fun.
Carter: Yes, sir.
Leahy: You’re having a lot of fun. I think you’re interested in going to law school at some point.
Carter: Yes, sir.
Leahy: While you’re having fun at Alabama, you decide during your freshman year that you’re going to run for the Board of Education in Maury County. You were only, what, 19 at the time? What prompted you to think that you might have a chance to win?
Carter: It would have been the back half of 2020. I co-founded the Maury County Young Republicans. And with that, I became chair. And I earned a seat on the Maury County Republican Party Executive Committee. And as we were going through state law, just changed so we could run partisan elections at the local level. And when we started to look at that process and try to find candidates, we were really looking in my district, the 11th, for a candidate for the school board.
Leahy: So you weren’t necessarily thinking, oh, I’m going to run for school board. You were thinking, let’s find a candidate in the 11th district. And that’s how they do it, by district, right?
Carter: Yes. And the thought had crossed my mind eventually of running, and I had never thought that I’d be running this soon. That was definitely not my plan. And I had been helping people look for a candidate. We’ve been making phone calls, and no one really had the interest in doing it that we had been talking to.
And finally, a couple of members of the committee approached me, and they’re like, we think you would be a good fit for the seat. And at first, I kind of laughed. I was like, I’m a freshman at Alabama. I’m not here. I live here, but I’m not here all the time.
Leahy: But it’s not too far from Tuscaloosa to Columbia.
Carter: It’s about a two-hour and 45 minutes drive.
Leahy: Piece of cake. In Los Angeles, some people commute that long.
Carter: Yes, sir. Originally I wasn’t totally sold on the idea, and then as I looked more into it, and I kind of got to thinking, well, we haven’t had someone on the board that really has been a student recently, and I think that gives kind of a unique perspective.
Leahy: So you decided you throw your hat in the ring.
Carter: I did. Finally. I’ll never forget I made the phone call back home. I was walking into my dorm in December, and we had our nominating convention, caucus, whatever you want to call it, in January. Remember, I made the phone call in December.
I said, yes, I’m going to do this. I’m going to run. And they started processing paperwork, and the next thing comes January, I was the only one that had thrown their name in for the GOP nomination and got that nomination, and, well, the race had begun.
Leahy: What sort of campaigning did you do? Because they don’t have a primary down there. They have a caucus.
Carter: Yes. The Republicans caucus. Yes.
Leahy: And then the general election is in August. So you got the nomination when? In January?
Carter: End of January. Yes, sir.
Leahy: And so you start campaigning. What do you do to run for school board?
Carter: For my campaign, it was a lot of social media, I think being more in tune with that, not being here all the time. I was able to run a social media campaign. And then a lot of it too was just good old-fashioned, the old-school door-to-door ground game. I’m a voter in the district.
Leahy: I’m a voter in the district. Explain how does this work? What would you have said? You knock on my door, I open the door. Who’s there? Is it you? Just you or somebody else? What was that conversation like?
Carter: Usually it was me and a friend of mine. My mom and dad were huge supporters or something like that, or someone from the party, whatever. I usually had someone with me. And we would just start a conversation. A little bit about you trying to start that conversation.
And a lot of people look at you kind of funny when you’re a 19-year-old kid knocking on the door, wanting their vote, but you finally get to talk about what I stand for which is transparency, accountability, and getting stuff done for the students and that’s when you really start to have these conversations. People start to buy it.
Leahy: How many doors did you knock on?
Carter: Oh, we’re talking in the thousands. I would say I don’t have an exact number.
Leahy: That’s a lot of door-knocking.
Carter: Yes.
Leahy: Did you have a challenger in the general election? Did you have an opponent?
Carter: I did.
Leahy: How much did you win by?
Carter: The final vote can I remember, I’ll never forget the number. It was 781 to three. So that number is just etched in my brain.
Leahy: I think you did pretty well. Congratulations.
Carter: Thank you. It was decisive. The people spoke, and I was happy to take on public service on their behalf.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Luiz1940. CC BY-SA 3.0.
