Five Monmouth College alumni to participate in Presidents Day forum on 2020 election
Monmouth, Ill. (02/09/2021) — COVID-19. Economic collapse. Civil unrest. Iowa caucuses. Rep. Steve King's defeat. President Trump. Kenosha. Georgia special elections for the U.S. Senate. The storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Election 2020.
Monmouth College graduates were eyewitnesses to all of those historic events.
Five of those graduates will be part of a special Feb. 15 session organized by the College's political science department and led by lecturer Robin Johnson.
Alex Altamirano '19, Libby Meyer '15, Steve Oaks '16, Josh Perschall '19 and Antonio Salgado '20 will participate in the forum. It will be held via Zoom at 4 p.m. Feb. 15, which is, appropriately, Presidents Day. It can be viewed through this link.
"After connecting with some students who were involved, it became apparent our young alums were involved in every major aspect of the campaign - from the Iowa caucuses a year ago to the Georgia special elections to last month's insurrection at the Capitol," said Johnson.
Altamirano worked on the Biden-Harris campaign in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and on Jessica Gutierrez's campaign for Chicago's 30th Ward, while fellow Chicagoan Salgado was in the opposite camp, serving as a field organizer for the Trump Victory Team in Omaha and staffing the Senate election runoffs in Georgia.
Perschall was field director for Randy Feenstra's bid to unseat King in Iowa's 4th Congressional District, while Oaks was in the Quad Cities, serving as Bloomberg Regional Field Director for the primary and Progressive Turnout Project District Field Director for the general election.
Meyer, who lives in Fort Madison, Iowa, has been a political reporter for the Burlington Hawk Eye and a federal reporter for the Iowa Starting Line news outlet.
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Monmouth College political science lecturer Robin Johnson talks with his “Politics and Government in the Midwest” students in this file photo. Johnson has organized a Zoom session on Feb. 15 featuring five young alumni who were involved in politics over the course of the past year.