Teenvoice 2004

Two years after the publication of The Young Investor, I discovered that the state of New Hampshire opened their presidential primary to all persons who wanted to voice their platform. By this time my grandchildren were either in or close to entering high school. I asked them what they thought of my running for president in New Hampshire. The deal was this: I would financially support the campaign, but I would only run on a platform put together by teens. They said, “Let’s do it.” And teenvoice 2004 was born.

My eldest granddaughter, Elle Powell, put together a group of her high school friends who were interested in politics and wanted to learn more about how the political system worked. Together, with the help of a masterful web site designer, Mythryn, we designed an interactive site, teenvoice2004.com (inactive).

The site provided an educational resource for kids across the country to discuss the issues with each other, link to data bases on the major topics of the 2004 campaign season, and connect to web sites of the major campaign headquarters. We did surveys in downtown Chicago and online to determine the teenvoice2004 platform and with that in hand I flew to Concord, NH in fall 2003, along with other “secondary” candidates, to speak and answer questions posed by a panel of state officials on the teen agenda in front of journalists, other interested parties, and a live CSPAN audience.

Finally, on a freezing primary weekend in 2004 my grandchildren, a high school classmate, two members of my not-for-profit, and the children’s father and uncle, a documentary filmmaker, flew to Manchester to hand out stickers and buttons and to interview members of each of the major candidate’s campaign staff members. And to meet people like Stephen Colbert.