Back in 2011, Daniel Gordon was a senior at the University when he made a decision he felt would help bring some balance to the way Bowling Green’s city government represented the interests of students.
He ran for a seat on city council.
More specifically, he ran for the First Ward council seat, which encompasses the northeast area of Bowling Green, including the University campus.
As he approaches the middle of his second year on council, Gordon has announced he will be seeking reelection in the fall.
However, he is only able to run for reelection thanks to countless hours of door-to-door campaigning that helped get him into office in the first place.
In 2011, Gordon was serving as an at-large senator in the Undergraduate Student Government at the University when he received an email from the Wood County Democratic Party. Danielle McConnell had resigned from her position in the party, leaving an opening to run against Republican incumbent Mark Hollenbaugh.
Gordon liked that the party was looking for a student to run for the seat and decided to give it a shot.
“I really appreciated that they were looking for a student to run,” Gordon said. “We make up almost half of the population of [the city], and we didn’t have single student on council. Yet, council is supposed to represent the students of the University, so I thought that hopefully I could pull it off and we could have a student on council; I felt that [having a student on council] was very important.”
Heading into his campaign, Gordon said the best advice he received was to be realistic: he was facing an uphill battle.
“I had to go up against an incumbent Republican who was much older than me and was well-liked,” Gordon said. “That wasn’t easy. It kept me grounded to assume that I was behind.”
In the lead up to election night, Gordon said he was anxious.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen, if I was going to win or lose,” Gordon said. “So when Election Day came, I just tried to make the most of it.”
Gordon ended up defeating Hollenbaugh, 303 to 228. Gordon called the victory “exciting” and said he was “hugged very aggressively” by many people after the results were announced.
Since then, Gordon has became more comfortable with the job and has earned the respect of other city officials.
“Daniel’s always very polite and pleasant,” said Bowling Green Mayor Richard Edwards. “He works very hard at his job and takes it very seriously. He does an outstanding job of representing his ward and certainly the student body of [the University].”
As far as initiatves for the upcoming year, Gordon said the council is looking to do whatever it can to help residents, particularly when it comes to quality of life and property values.
“It’s been a great pleasure working with Daniel,” Second Ward council member John Zanfardino said. “We work pretty close together. We’ve shared some issues and have been similar in our stances.”
Zanfardino said he and Gordon have heard similar issues from their constituents this year, and those issues have led them to have similar concerns for the town.
“It’s refreshing to have someone hear the same things that I do,” Zanfardino said.
The support he has received from his constituents has driven his decision to run for reelection in the fall.
“I’ve had a lot of people come up and ask me if I was going to run again, and they wanted me to run again,” Gordon said. “I’m really enjoying the work because it’s meaningful. You certainly don’t do it for the money because it doesn’t pay that much. I think public service is one of, if not the most meaningful thing you can do.”
Gordon will be enrolled at the University as a graduate student working toward his masters in public administration for the 2013-14 academic year. For the time being, he wants to continue to help make the city a better place for all its residents.
“I want to keep bridging that gap between students and residents,” Gordon said. “I want to show students that they can get involved, to show residents that students can work with them to address these issues.”
