By Kyle Ching, 2025 CLA Intern
When I first came to CAUSE eight weeks ago having just graduated from USC, I have to admit: I was a bit haughty. What could these other interns, especially the younger ones who had just finished their freshman or sophomore years in college, teach me?
Over the past eight weeks, I have had a chance to work with my fellow interns on a mock campaign team for an imaginary election in Assembly District 49. I have learned so much from them, especially the younger interns. In particular, I want to shout out our mock campaign team’s candidate, Esther Lian, who is a rising junior at Northwestern. Through her strong connection to her neighborhood in San Marino and AD-49 and her unwavering dedication to telling people’s stories, Esther taught me lessons I will carry with me into whatever career I pursue. Here are the three main lessons I learned from Esther:
1. Your “why” matters a lot: At the beginning of this mock campaign, Esther told us that her primary reason for running this mock campaign was to elevate the voices of her fellow neighbors, community members, and friends in AD-49. More than winning or losing, Esther wanted to share the actual concerns of the immigrants, students, small business owners, community leaders and families that comprised AD-49. In having a strong rationale for why we were completing this project, Esther gave our team a North Star to follow through a long, and at-times exhausting, eight week campaign. During her speech to an audience of 200 influential AAPI policymakers and leaders at CAUSE’s Soiree, Esther told the stories of AD-49 residents with such strong conviction that it made all our hard work seem worthwhile. At the end of the day, I believe Esther’s commitment to raising the voices of her fellow district residents is what made her an incredibly strong candidate for this mock campaign, and what will make her a winning candidate when she actually runs for elected office in the future.
2. There is immense power in strong stories: Esther let the stories she was hearing on the ground guide her campaign. Because I am a data nerd at heart, I often let numbers guide me, so this approach was antithetical to my first instincts. However, when Esther told those stories, she communicated to an audience a conviction and emotion that my beloved numbers never could on their own. I’ll let the stories she told in her speech at Soiree speak for themselves:
“I’m troubled that Mrs. Zhang, who arrived in America in her 40s with decades of experience in commerce, has never found employment because she never found a way to mitigate her skill and language gaps. I’m troubled that Emily, a rising 11th grader in Alhambra, is despairing over how her family would cope with the 50-cent increase in her daily school bus fare this fall. I’m troubled that Thoa, a waitress who works multiple jobs, is struggling with the additional paperwork she must now file in a language she is still learning, or risk losing access to MediCal.”
3. Good leaders stand up for what they believe in…sometimes even against the objection of their own team: There were multiple times during this mock campaign I and my fellow team members objected to Esther’s approach to this campaign. At various points, we told Esther that she was spending too much time on hearing people’s stories and too little time on developing a political strategy to win over people at the Soiree and at our mock endorsement panel a few weeks prior. Esther pushed back, pointing us again to her primary reason for running the mock campaign. I am going to say this flatout: in making those objections, I was wrong, and I am immensely grateful that Esther stuck to her convictions. The stories that Esther was listening to and communicating to others were, in themselves, a strong strategy for persuading people at the Soiree to vote for her. More importantly, the approach Esther took was authentic to herself, and that ultimately came through in her speech.
To Esther, I want to say: I am so appreciative of your leadership and when you decide to legit run for office, I’ll be the first person to canvas for you. And even if you don’t run for office, the lessons you have taught me from this mock campaign are nonetheless invaluable to me and everything I and the members of our team will do in the future.