By Khalida Sarwari
Monica Mallon’s to-do list reads like most 18-year-olds: take the SATs, send in college applications, put together the school yearbook and upload a video to YouTube. But on her 18th birthday she added one more task, this one not so conventional: run for county supervisor.
Mallon announced her candidacy for District 5 supervisor on YouTube, where she posts weekly vlogs on topics as varied as school, politics and even a recipe for blueberry cobbler. She said she plans to use the video-sharing site and other social media apps to get her name and message out there, as opposed to raising money for campaign ads.
“I grew up with technology,” said Mallon. “I’ve been using social media since it was invented, so I know how it works. It’s a great way to get a lot of people’s input and people’s ideas.”
The Saratoga resident just started her senior year at Woodside Priory School in Portola Valley, where she’s co-editor of the yearbook committee and is involved in various charitable clubs. She spent a part of her summer preparing to go head-to-head with veteran politician Joe Simitian, a man 44 years her senior, in the primary election next spring. She acknowledges that while she’s got her work cut out for her, she doesn’t see her inexperience as a deterrent.
“There are a lot of people that say that I’m too young and too inexperienced and that I wouldn’t do a good job because of my age, basically,” she said. “Sure I don’t have all the experience, but I think that because I’m young and I don’t have any money in this campaign or any special interests I will truly represent the people in District 5.”
Simitian isn’t writing her off and perhaps that’s because the 62-year-old can relate to Mallon’s ambitions, having entered politics at the ripe age of 22 himself.
“Anytime a new candidate steps up they bring new observations to the political arena,” he said, “that’s a good thing. I think it’s healthy and I think it’s particularly encouraging to see a young person step up and say they want to be involved, not just as a voter but as a candidate.”
Mallon said that while she doesn’t have any political connections, politics is almost all her family members talks about at the dinner table. They, along with her teachers, are among her biggest supporters.
Her interest in the field has roots in elementary school, where she started reading newspapers. In middle school she was elected to the student council a few times but wasn’t as successful when she ran for office in high school. Inspired by the 2008 and 2012 elections, the teen said she became interested in running for higher office about three years ago.
“I wanted to prove that politics isn’t about money or special interests, but that it should be about representing people,” she said.
If elected, Mallon said she’d like to focus on issues that impact youth, such as the ramifications of academic pressures on students, as is the case in cities such as Palo Alto, where a number of young people have recently taken their own lives. The social media-savvy teen is also interested in pushing for the integration of technology in government.
“I went to the DMV and it took so long,” she said. “This is the Bay Area and we have the technology; we should take advantage of that and put it to good use.”
As she gets ready to launch her campaign, Mallon is setting her hopes high and her expectations low, not for lack of confidence but because winning isn’t really her end goal.
“I think that my chances are pretty slim; I’ve known that from the beginning,” she said. “My main goal was to make a statement and get more young people interested in politics, and so far I’ve been doing that and it’s been great.”
