Local Student Converses With Maloney
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26–He may resemble a typical high school senior who speaks his own slang and stylishly gels his spiked hair, but Jonathan Blansfield knew how to use his intellect to make an impression.
During his visit yesterday with Rep. James H. Maloney, D-Conn., Blansfield had this to say to the lawmaker about the hotly contested 5th District congressional race that matches Maloney against Rep. Nancy L. Johnson in November: “One of the things about the coming elections that I find interesting is that you have a 68-year-old on one side, who only has two or three terms left, and than there is you, with this term-limit contract.”
The 17-year-old Waterbury resident quickly added, “One question [Johnson] is probably going to ask is – what, are you just going to run for a dead duck – for one term?”
“Do I look like a dead duck?” Maloney said after a hearty laugh, and then explained that he supports term limits because they allow constituents to hear new voices and opinions on a regular basis.
“That’s what gets me mad.” Blansfield said to Maloney. “When the Constitution was originally drafted, it wasn’t politicians entering the political spectrum because of a career. [Leadership] was supposed to by cyclical.”
Amongst the nods of stipulation and shared laughter, Blansfield engaged in a lively 30-minute discussion with the three-term Democrat as part of the Presidential Classroom Scholars Program, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to giving high school juniors and seniors across the nation an insider’s view of the federal government through seminars, discussion groups and visits to congressional leaders.
Blansfield, a self-proclaimed political independent and a student in the J.F. Kennedy High School’s Students of Academic Renown (SOAR) accelerated program, was one of 52 Connecticut students selected by the program to participate in one of nine week-long sessions based on his academic excellence and leadership skills.
Maloney encouraged Blansfield to pursue a broadcast journalism career and chatted about whether the news media influenced the government or vice versa.
“I think it’s a mix,” Blansfield said after Maloney told him of a former classmate who made a career leap from journalism to politics as an illustration of how journalism and political public service are aligned with one another.
“It’s like asking – do you influence your brother?” elaborated Maloney, who once wrote a recommendation letter to Boston University for Blansfield’s older sibling.
“Yeah,” Blansfield responded.
“And does your brother influence you?”
“Nah,” Blansfield said with a mischievous side-glance before admitting, “to some extent.”
Prior to the student and the lawmaker’s light-hearted, but serious, conversation, Maloney suggested that Blansfield and the rest of this week’s 170 Presidential Classroom scholars visit the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in addition to their scheduled tours of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Library of Congress.
Maloney also commended the diversity of the program and the students’ individual analytical prowess.
“One of the things I like about this program is that you have kids from all over the country who come with very different points of view. That’s exactly what goes on in Congress,” Maloney noted.
Blansfield, who has met Maloney several times before, didn’t seemed fazed by the representative’s political prominence.
“I appreciate you meeting with me,” he told the representative as he shook his hand. “It’s awesome.”
Published in The Waterbury Republican-American, in Waterbury, Connecticut.
