Defeat Doesn’t Deter 18-Year-Old Politician

He got blisters on his feet from walking the streets during his campaign to become a trustee of the Bellflower school board. He spent $4,087, much of it his own money.

Though he lost in his first attempt at elective office, the world of politics has not heard the last of 18-year-old Dave Manuel, he says. Another bid for a school board seat is in Manuel’s plans.

In the November election for the Bellflower Unified School District, Manuel finished eighth in a field of 11 candidates. “I’m disappointed,” Manuel said of results, in which he received 502 votes of the 3,089 cast.

The budding politico said he won’t remain on the sideline for long. He plans to work this spring for the reelection of Bellflower City Councilman Ray O’Neal in April.

Manuel will be welcomed, said O’Neal, who described him “as a very bright young man.”

It was Manuel’s interest in city government that got the teen-ager picked for the city’s Transportation Commission last year, O’Neal said.

Began Politicking in 1979

“He has been involved in city politics, specifically school politics, and the city could use the input of all citizens, young and old,” O’Neal said.

Manuel said he started “voicing his opinion” in 1979 when he was a seventh grader and the school board was trying to deal with declining enrollment. All the solutions involved closing some schools, he said.

“There were 12 hearings,” which Manuel described as heated. “I attended them all and gave my opinion in prepared speeches to the board several times.”

He favored combining the two junior high schools with the two high schools, Bellflower and Mayfair, into one super-high school.

The board’s decision was to eliminate the junior high schools and integrate them into the two high schools, which now include seventh through 12th grades.

But the elimination of the junior highs caused problems, said Manuel, who graduated from Bellflower High School in 1985. The younger students were treated like second-class citizens, he said.

Lobbied Board for Changes

“It was like we had our own school within the same campus but was not part of it,” said Manuel, who, along with a small core of other students, began to lobby the school board for changes.

Because of the consolidation, “we were missing out on our graduation” from junior high school. “I thought it was right that we have it. Finally, the board agreed after some other students and I started attending board meetings regularly and speaking out for a ceremony.

“We had a graduation. I felt that was one of my major accomplishments,” Manuel said.

When not working part-time or attending Cerritos College where he is majoring in political science, Manuel is involved in politics.

He said he finds excitement in politics and decided to run for office after “doing leg- and busywork in campaigns” for four or five years.

Manuel, a Republican, said he worked in several campaigns, including those of former City Councilwoman Shirley Feenstra, who was defeated in 1982; the 1983 reelection campaign of school board member Jay Gendreau (who was 18 when he was first elected to the board in 1977); the unsuccessful bid by Peter Feenstra, Shirley Feenstra’s husband, for City Council in 1984, and Ray O’Neal’s bid for county Supervisor Deane Dana’s seat, also in 1984.

Politicians ‘Love to Talk’

During those years, Manuel said, the one constant he observed among politicians is that “they all love to talk.”

“It is difficult to shut them up,” said Manuel, a six-foot, 230-pound former high school football player who himself rarely seems to stop talking.

Manuel--who played some football as a freshman and sophomore but gave it up when he found the sport cutting into his time for politics--seems to draw his energy from talking.

Manuel said he began campaigning for the November school board race right after his graduation in June. “I think I walked every street in this city. I walked all 52 precincts. I got the blisters to prove it.”

A friend, Jeff Albanese, helped him organize his campaign and analyzed past elections for voter trends. Manuel’s mother, Joy, 44, licked stamps for mailers, and his sister Gail, 13, went out to face the voters.

“I had people tell me that they would vote for me if I wasn’t so young. So I don’t think people took me seriously because of my age,” Manuel said.

Maybe that will all change in 1987, when he expects to run in next school board election, Manuel said.

“I will be 20. Age wont be a handicap then,” Manuel said.