Against All Odds: Civics teacher Tierney Cahill stands up for the little guy and the American ideal
by Mary Conrad
In these months of polished image-building by professional politicians, it’s refreshing to revisit the Tierney Cahill story, of political campaigning done the civics-class way.
Tierney teaches sixth-grade at Sarah Winnemucca Elementary School in Reno, Nevada. Full time. She’s a divorced mom of three children. And she’s a candidate for the Nevada State Assembly, having cut her political teeth running for US Congress in 2000.
Why Bother?
People run for office for a multitude of reasons, says F. Chris Garcia, UNM political science professor: “some personal, some narrow, some for reasons of good government.” But Tierney Cahill may be one of the few who have run to prove to a group of dubious pre-teens that any American can do it.
Cahill’s class had been discussing the development of democracy in this country. A student questioned Cahill’s assertion that anyone could run for office in the United States, and ultimately challenged her to prove it. Cahill bit.
Tierney registered as a Democratic candidate for Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District. After school hours, her students collected donations in coffee cans, and Tierney spoke to anyone willing to listen. Much to her surprise, she won the Democratic primary and found herself in a battle with Republican incumbent Jim Gibbons.
“I thought someone else would bump me out in the primary,” says Tierney. “I had no idea I’d win.”
With that win came a sense of “moral obligation,” says Tierney. “It was no longer just a project. People are looking for someone to speak up for them.”
A Better World
Idealistic? Tierney had grown up with pictures of the Pope and John F. Kennedy in her parents’ front room. Surrounded by a “subliminal message that your life isn’t just your own—you owe a lot to others,” she came by her idealism naturally.
A softball whiz, Tierney wound up on scholarship to UNM, married Lobo lineman Lamont Hall, and graduated with an education major and African American Studies minor. Originally intending to go to law school, Tierney changed her major to education after African American Studies assistant professor Cortez Williams suggested she might have more sway fighting prejudice in the classroom than the courtroom.
Tierney and Lamont had hoped to join the Peace Corps after graduation, but the arrival of their first child halted those plans. The young family moved instead to Los Angeles, where Tierney and Lamont worked in the inner city.
“Think about what we did!”
With no choice but to continue teaching during the campaign, Tierney spoke up nights and weekends on the issues important to her and her followers: education, mental health, nuclear waste. But even the strongest ideals couldn’t close the gap between campaign budgets of $7,000 and her opponent’s $320,000.
The final results were much closer than the dollar difference would suggest: Cahill received an unexpected 34 percent of the votes after the Democrats had polled her at 10 percent.
“I had a large crossover vote,” Cahill says, adding that voters perceived her as “a normal person.”
The kids were in tears the night of Tierney’s loss, but Cahill herself perceived it as a victory.
“Think about why we did this and what we did,” she told them. “Can an everyday American run for office? Yes. We have lots to be proud of.”
The Real World
But can an everyday American run for office and remain an idealist?
“I was baptized into the reality of politics,” says Tierney, who claims to be less naïve but not pessimistic. “It’s a little more murky than I believed. Money has a lot to do with success. Not everything, but there’s a definite correlation.”
Disappointed in the lack of support from the Democratic Party, Tierney has switched party affiliation, but hasn’t changed her aims.
“People are brainwashed into the White and Black Hats and think the others are the bad guy. I just want to get things done.”
Genuine Altruism? Priceless.
Career politicians pay big bucks for an image as pure and original as Tierney Cahill’s real self. There’s a chance that Disney may do the same if those pitching Tierney’s story succeed.
Meanwhile, Tierney Cahill continues teaching kids, in and out of her classroom, to have hope in American politics.
http://www.unmalumni.com/mirage/spring2004/cahill_print.htm | A practical lesson in US democracy
Anyone can run for public office - so a young teacher did. And now she's being played by Halle Berry
David Smith
Sunday February 18, 2007
The Observer
It began as a classroom dare. In a lesson on early democracy in Greece, 11-year-old Heather Faanes raised her hand and said that, while it might have worked for the ancients, in modern America only millionaires got to be powerful politcians. Her teacher disagreed and set out to prove the little girl wrong - by running for the US Congress herself.
The remarkable story of Tierney Cahill, a teacher who came from nowhere to challenge a Republican congressman with the help of 11 and 12-year-old campaigners, is to be told in a Hollywood film starring Oscar-winning Halle Berry. It is likely to be released next year, just as another woman, Hillary Clinton, builds momentum in her bid for the presidency.
Cahill, a single mother of three with a $30,000 salary and no political pedigree, made her audacious stand in 2000 to show her class that any citizen could emulate Abraham Lincoln's journey from log cabin to White House. Her budget was only a fraction of that of her incumbent rival but, with her pupils working on her campaign after school, she gained 34 per cent of the vote. It may have been a defeat, but it was a moral victory and more than the Democrats had recently managed in the safe Republican district. 'To be the subject of a film is an odd feeling, because I go to work every day teaching and sell real estate on the side,' Cahill, 39, told The Observer yesterday, speaking from her home in Nevada. 'I feel like a normal mum and teacher and don't deserve the attention. To have Halle Berry playing me is pretty exciting.'
Cahill's attempt to take on the political establishment is a real-life version of the Hollywood classic Mr Smith Goes to Washington - in which the idealistic everyman, James Stewart, fills a vacancy in the Senate and refuses to be corrupted by the system - and the recent BBC drama The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, in which Jane Horrocks's supermarket manager becomes so angry at the state of politics that she stands for election and becomes Prime Minister.
Shooting of Class Act is set to begin this spring, backed by Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio. Its writer and director, Doug Atchison, whose past credits include the hit Akeelah and the Bee, has spent time following Cahill in her daily work and interviewing her at length. Berry will take the lead role in an unusual Hollywood case of colour-blind casting: she is black, whereas Cahill is white. The actress, who won an Academy Award for Monster's Ball, is keen to revive her career after disappointments such as the critically panned Catwoman
When Cahill - a teacher at Sarah Winnemucca Elementary School in Reno, Nevada - announced that she would run for the Democrats against Republican Jim Gibbons to prove that democracy was alive, officials warned her that the campaign could not be a class project, but pupils' activities after school were their own affair. Around 60 children formed committees, designed logos and garden signs, canvassed on doorsteps, handled interview requests and rotated the post of campaign manager on a weekly basis. Cahill described them as her 'campaign crew'.
She recalled: 'The children were much more well informed and astute to the process and institutions. They were 12-year-olds talking to political analysts, and the public were charmed by that. Many have gone on to run for office in their student bodies; one told her mother the place she most wanted to visit was Washington DC, so she got to visit Jim Gibbons's office on Capitol Hill, then came back and told me how exciting it was.'
The teacher, whose only previous political experience was being elected treasurer at her junior high school, acknowledged at the time that she had as much chance of winning as 'a snowball in Las Vegas'. In the end she raised $7,000, compared with Gibbons's $500,000; he won 64 per cent of the vote to her 34 per cent. After the election, Gibbons visited her class and embraced Cahill. 'This has been the ultimate history lesson,' she said.
Cahill juggled the campaign with motherhood, teaching, and part-time work as an estate agent and a cocktail waitress. She said the experience made the scales fall from her eyes. 'Money helps, but it's not the qualifier. You don't have to turn up at the State Department with a chequebook. My budget was a drop in the ocean compared to my opponent, but we were creative and we proved that anyone can run. I'm certainly common - I'm not related to the Kennedys.
'But it made me feel more realistic. It started as a fairytale; then, when I looked behind the scenes, I was disappointed. That's what happens when you get up close and personal with something: you see the flaws. It doesn't mean that I give up on the system, but changes could be made in the process to make it a much more level playing field. Certainly lobbyists and large corporations which donate to candidates are controlling a lot of the agenda, so it makes it very difficult for Joe Ordinary to get in there.'
Cahill's pupils had originally wanted her to run for President, but she was below the age limit of 35 at the time. She later ran for the state assembly but finished last, and has ruled out another political foray until her children are grown up. She is now in talks for a book about her experience and public speaking engagements generated by interest in the film.
The part of Gibbons in Class Act has not yet been cast. Dreamworks refused to comment on whether the film might be given the 'happy ending' of a Cahill election victory.
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