When he graduated from the nation’s college for home-schoolers and ended internships first on Capitol Hill and then the White House, Simon Sefzik returned home to Ferndale, Washington, bitten by the political bug but more immediately focused on getting into law school.
“My goal was not to get into politics at this young of an age,” the 22-year-old national debate champion said. “My plan was to go to law school and to get married and have kids and maybe think about that many years down the road.”
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That was last month.
Today, the Republican state senator is in his third week representing the 42nd Legislative District in Olympia, already offering bipartisan legislation to tackle flooding.
Unexpectedly on the political fast track, he’s poised to outdo the last kid politician who went the distance: former President Bill Clinton.
image2.jpeg“For me, it’s just been one of those weird things because this is like something that I would do 30 or 40 years down the road,” Sefzik said of serving in the Senate. “And now, here I am, the youngest senator in the history of Washington state.”
Timing and placement have been Sefzik’s friends. Take the home-schooled student’s choice to attend Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, 70 minutes from Washington. The college has a record of placing students in internships with conservatives on Capitol Hill and even the White House during GOP administrations. When he arrived at Patrick Henry College, former President Donald Trump had the White House, and he scored a job helping with former Vice President Mike Pence’s coronavirus task force.
After returning home, news broke that 42nd District Sen. Doug Ericksen died after a battle with COVID-19. Some local Republican Party officials suggested he throw his name into the contest to be appointed to replace Ericksen.
As a “kid,” he said, “nobody took me seriously.” But he made the case that his youth was an asset. He also cited history to the party and the Whatcom County Council that would make the choice.
“There’s a case to be made that in many ways, the history of the Revolutionary War was a history of young men. That was a young man’s game. They were the ones that had the most to lose,” he said.
“In the same way, I just feel that it is my generation that is the next voting base,” he added. “It’s the next taxpayer base, and my generation is going to be the most impacted by the decisions that are made in Olympia today or in Washington, D.C., today. And so I felt a calling that I needed to get involved.”
image1.jpegIt worked, and now, he’s eager to play an outsize role in the Washington state Legislature. He receives advice from colleagues and family friends, including Rep. Ted Budd, running for the Senate in North Carolina, and has several lessons learned from his time in the White House. He cited a plaque given to him when he left the White House that said, “Thank you for serving the White House and leaving it better than you found it.”
As for his future, Sefzik does cite Clinton. “Bill Clinton is actually one of my favorite presidents,” he said. While he doesn’t agree with Clinton’s politics, he admired the former president and Arkansas governor’s determination and communications skills.
Asked if he hoped to follow Clinton’s path and run for president one day, he said, “If anything, being a senator for three weeks has made me say I understand why some people never want to jump into this sort of thing.”
But he added, “I think that the answer to that question is ‘yes.’”
His goal now is simply not getting mistaken for a child on a school trip.
“Some of these security guards in Olympia think that I’m probably just an intern. I don’t think they believe that I’m a senator from the 42nd District yet. I’m ambitious, but I’m also just trying to be cautious and realistic about doing my job here right now,” said Sefzik.
