Apparently, the fastest way to radicalize a teenager is to make him trek through his own high school in search of functioning plumbing. Whereas most teens would gripe, graduate and never look back, Mike McGuire ran for the school board. He was 19.
“I’ll never forget sitting in my ag science class. I was in [Future Farmers of America], and we had a leaky roof. The heat didn’t work. You had to hightail it across campus to go use a working bathroom, and it was unacceptable,” McGuire says.
During a recent “Civics 101” interview on The Drive 95.5 FM, the state senator and Democratic candidate for California’s 1st Congressional District traced his public service back to that decidedly unglamorous grievance. He knocked on every door three times, he notes, then helped develop and pass an initiative to rebuild the high school and middle school…