Photo Courtesy of Peter Bolland
The Vote Is In—Professor Peter Bolland and protégé Ammar Campa-Najjar remain close years after the Congressional candidate was a student.
By Julia Woock
College professor Peter Bolland said he is no fan of the Electoral College.
He will be in Sacramento on Dec. 14, however, casting one of California’s 55 Electoral College votes for President-Elect Joe Biden.
Like Super Bowl tickets or front row seats for the Rolling Stones, some offers are just too good to pass up.
Bolland’s chance to be one of the 538 Americans to cast an official vote for the president came when former Southwestern College student and Congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar asked if he would like to be the elector for the 50th Congressional District.
“I am grateful he picked up the phone and called me,” said Bolland. “My phone rang and he (said) how would you like to be in the Electoral College? I (said) that thing everybody hates?”
Campa-Najjar laughed and said yes, then so did Bolland.
Campa-Najjar said he remembers being a reflective young man in Bolland’s world religions class. Growing up Palestinian-Mexican he figured he had developed a panoramic view of religion by attending Catholic school in Gaza and Islamic school in San Diego.
So he thought.
“Professor Bolland really expanded my horizons and (nurtured) a deep love and respect for Eastern religion and Eastern thought,” he said. “It was a very enriching experience that brought the content out in a way that exploded off the pages and sparked my curiosity.”
Campa-Najjar said Bolland soon became an indispensable part of his life.
“We became friends and he became my mentor,” he said. “He has given me a lot of great wisdom and he’s always been someone I could deeply trust. I think it is really important to have someone like that, who is a little bit older than you, to give you that advice. We’ve had a friendship like that ever since.”
Campa-Najjar said he and Bolland share a very strong bond centered around philosophical and political thought, including how to be involved in the political process and become agents of change. He said Bolland and his wife visited him in Washington D.C. when he worked in the White House during the Barack Obama Administration.
Bolland recalled the early days of Campa-Najjar’s political career. Campa-Najjar ran the San Diego County Obama campaign in 2012 and became a White House intern in 2013 during the second term of the Obama presidency. He then worked for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, followed by a position at the Dept. of Labor in Washington.
Bolland said over the course of 12 years he and Campa-Najjar spoke on the phone frequently. He has followed his former student’s career closely, he said, including Campa-Najjar’s candidacy for one of the nation’s most conservative Congressional districts, the East County’s California 50th.
Campa-Najjar said Bolland was one of the first people he spoke to when he decided to run for Congress. Bolland hosted meet-and-greets to help with fund raising and networking. A progressive Democrat running for Congress in the deep red 50th seemed Quixotic, but Campa-Najjar landed on the national political radar when he ran competitive campaigns in a district with a nearly 2-1 Republican registration advantage.
Campa-Najjar was the candidate in the March primaries who received the most votes and with that came the opportunity to nominate an elector. He immediately thought of his old profe’.
“The key takeaways from his philosophical teachings were how to show up in the world and be a positive force. So when it came time for me to choose an elector, I knew he would really relish the opportunity,” said Campa-Najjar. “I knew Mr. Bolland would really appreciate it and he would see the historical significance.”
Honored as he is to be an elector, Bolland said the Electoral College is undemocratic and badly outdated, but probably here to stay.
“Every office in the United States, except President, is elected by direct popular vote,” he said. “The reason for that is the Constitution. It takes you right back to 1787 and that hot summer in Philadelphia (during) the Continental Congress.”
SC Professor of Political Science Phil Saenz said the Electoral College is a powerful dinosaur. America’s Founding Fathers did not trust the “average” 18th century voter to make such important decisions, he said. Instead they called for each state to choose “electors” to represent them.
Bolland said there was also concern among the Founding Fathers about allowing the Senate or House of Representatives to elect the president. They predicted cronyism would ensue.
“Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (feared) democracy because (they feared) mob rule,” Bolland said. “They were good students of Plato and Socrates.”
The great Greek philosophers thought direct democracy unwise and could lead to a dangerous demagogue, said Bolland.
“When a very charismatic person promises everybody candy and keeps saying how they are going to lower your taxes and put money in your pocket, we are going to vote for that guy,” he said. “Winston Churchill said the best argument against democracy is having a five-minute conversation with the average voter. It’s brutal, right? He has another line ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except compared to all the others.’”
Saenz said it would be very difficult to change the U.S. Constitution.
“It requires a ⅔ vote in both Houses of Congress and that means you need to have Democrats and Republicans agree. Then it requires ¾ of the states to ratify,” he said. “So the likelihood of changing the Electoral College is not very likely.”
Saenz said the 538 electors reflect the number of Senators and Members of Congress. There are 435 members of the House of Representative, 100 Senators and three electors for the District of Columbia to total 538. Actual electors, he explained, are selected by the party in each state that wins the election.
Saenz said 270 is the “magic number” to elect a president because that is the majority of the electoral vote, which is what the Constitution calls for.
Hamilton and Madison were looking for a way to accomplish the impossible, Bolland said, namely to get the independent-minded colonies to agree to be part of the United States of America. Colonies then had vastly different governance philosophies, he said, and everyone had to compromise. Most early Americans could not vote.
“You had to be male,” he said. “You had to be white. You had to own property and have a certain amount of money in the bank. Talk about some hurdles and barriers!”
Conservatives insist the Electoral College is fair because it reflects the popular vote, said Bolland, but in practice it does not. Five presidential candidates won the popular vote, but not the Electoral College, including Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. Clinton tallied 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, but was denied the White House because Trump had more Electoral College votes.
Saenz said the Electoral College discriminates against communities like the South Bay area of San Diego County.
“The reality is it (is not) fair,”he said. “The South Bay has more people than the entire state of Wyoming, yet Wyoming has three electoral votes.”
Bolland agreed.
“It’s fundamentally undemocratic, still, I am super excited about this opportunity,” he said. “It’s so 1787. I literally have to fly to Sacramento and walk into a room with the other 54 folks and say ‘Biden,’ then fly back home.”
Campa-Najjar said it is important for him to help others, like Bolland helped him.
“I had a hard time growing up and my dad left when I was young,” he said. “My mom raised me on her own. I got lucky because I met people like Peter Bolland who really helped me, but not everyone has those opportunities.”
Campa-Najjar may consider running for office again, he said, if it is the right fit and if he is called to serve.
“For now I want to do things that have a direct impact on people’s lives,” he said. “Maybe later I’ll explore what the future has for me politically.”
