21-year-old Nazarene wins seat in Oklahoma House of Representatives

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Elise Hall, a 21-year-old Nazarene from Oklahoma City, will become one of the youngest lawmakers in Oklahoma after winning the state's House District 100 race on Tuesday, August 24. Hall, a Republican, will not face any opposition in the November 2 election as there are no Democrats running for the seat.

Although she is just entering her senior year at the University of Central Oklahoma, Hall defeated fellow Republican David Looby, an attorney, with 62 percent of the vote and won all 10 precincts. She will remain in school working toward her bachelor's degree in marketing, but will lighten her college load during the spring semester to keep up with her state representative duties. In addition to being a student, she has been working as the director of marketing for a local landscape management company, Western Lawns.

Elise and her family, including parents Lorne and Lori Hall, are members of Bethany First Church of the Nazarene. Her grandparents, Gene and Janice Hall, are members of the Silver Creek Church of the Nazarene in Owasso, Oklahoma.

This election not only made local and state news; Elise was introduced to the nation when she was interviewed on CNN.

"I've always had a love and passion for politics and government and realized that if I wanted to make a difference for my generation, I needed to do it now," she told CNN. "So I decided to run and had a great campaign and I was very excited to win on Tuesday."

While many college students spend much of their time and money on parties and entertainment, Elise chose a different route.

"I think the main thing is that I grew up in a way that made me live my life in a purposeful way," she told the host. "My generation is very apathetic and they're not looking ahead to see where they want to be in 3 years or 10 years or 25 years ... I wanted to make sure that my generation doesn't look back and say, 'Well we should have been paying attention when we were 21.'"

Elise said she encountered a few people on the campaign trail who objected to her running for office at such a young age, but she was quick to point out state qualifications say individuals only have to be 21 to run. She also turned their attention to who she is, not how old she is.

"For me, age wasn't really the issue," she said in her interview. "I think the thing is we need to elect people with character and integrity and that's what I just reminded people of - that it's not about experience, it's not about what degree you have behind your name, it's who you are and the decisions you're going to make as a legislator. And ultimately, it's up to the voters and apparently the people in House District 100 didn't look at the age of 21 and think it was scary and they believed that I have the character and integrity to do what needs to be done in the legislature."

While Elise is taking a different - or earlier - path than most college students, she definitely shares their expertise of social media. In addition to focusing on her young age, media outlets were fixated with Elise's use of Twitter and Facebook to help the her campaign.

Though she acknowledges the ease of social media for spreading a message quickly and with no cost, Elise is proud of the fact her team worked diligently in the weeks leading up to the election.

"In the 21st Century we can't just use social media," she said. "We used a variety of methods. We used direct mail, but probably the most effective way was getting out and actually talking to voters."

As for her future plans, CNN asked Elise if she was considering the presidency.

"Probably not at this time," she replied, laughing. "We'll take it one step at a time."
--CNN, Compiled by NCN News

 

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