Obies have long believed that one person can make a difference. This election year, several Oberlin alums have taken this motto to heart and are running for public office from Washington D.C. to our own Ohio.

Yvette Clarke OC ’86 and Adrian Fenty OC ’92, have already all but won. Clarke is running to represent her Brooklyn district in the House of Representatives and Fenty is a candidate for mayor of Washington D.C. Clarke and Fenty won their respective Democratic Party primary elections on Sept. 12, making victory in the November election a near certainty in their overwhelming Democratic constituencies.

New York City Councilmember Clarke, who attended Oberlin from 1982-87, defeated three other Democrats with a margin of roughly 31.2 percent of the votes. Clarke’s opposition included city councilmember David Yassky and long-time local activist Chris Owens. Yassky recently moved to the district and was the best-financed candidate in the race. Owens is the son of the district’s current representative.

Shortly before the election, many sources reported that Clarke never officially graduated from Oberlin. Clarke said she thought that she had transferred the necessary six credits from Medgar Evers College but was mistaken. Soon thereafter, The Village Voice printed a story on a 10-year-old suit against Clarke regarding unpaid student loans.

Despite her debatable status as an Oberlin graduate, Clarke managed to assemble a long list of endorsements featuring many labor unions, progressive organizations and prominent New York political figures.  If Clarke wins the general election she will replace current Representative Major Owens, who she unsuccessfully challenged in 2004, and hold the office once occupied by Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress.

Unlike Clarke, 35-year-old Councilman Fenty had long been the frontrunner in the campaign for D.C. mayor. In his campaign, Fenty emphasized his plans for extensive school modernization and his positive record of responding to constituents as a councilman. He garnered nearly 58 percent of the votes, winning districts throughout the Capitol in what The Washington Post called a display of “unification politics that breaks a long tradition of dividing District voters by race.” 

If Fenty wins, he will become the youngest mayor in Washington’s history.

In Ohio, Lee Fisher OC ’73 will run as the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of Ohio and the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Representative Ted Strickland. Fisher served as a trustee of Oberlin College for 12 years and has long been a fixture in Ohio politics. 

Fisher first took public office in 1981 in the capacity of state representative, before becoming a state senator and later, attorney general. Fisher narrowly lost re-election as attorney general in 1994.  He later campaigned against current governor Robert Taft, losing by five percentage points in 1998. For now, Fisher seems liable to return to statewide office. Strickland and Fisher hold a consistent lead over the Republican candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, secretary of state J. Kenneth Blackwell and state representative Thomas Raga, respectively.

Former Oberlin student Steven Porter faces perhaps the most challenging race. Porter, who studied composition for two years at Oberlin, holds a doctorate in fine arts and has written several books and many music and theatre pieces. Porter is challenging six-term incumbent Republican congressman Phil English in Pennsylvania’s third district. Porter criticizes his Republican opponent for supporting the Iraq war, presiding over the collapse of the district’s manufacturing base and having “taken millions of dollars from special interest groups.”

Porter may face a tough race in his run for Congress. George W. Bush carried the district by a slight margin in the last presidential election and The New York Times rates it as safely Republican. Porter ran against English in 2004, earning 40 percent of the vote to English’s 60 percent. English enjoys a substantial financial advantage with a $289,254 war chest. Porter has managed to raise $33,027 so far. Despite these hurdles, the Porter campaign website reports that Porter led English in a poll released this summer by The Erie Times.