UConn Student Runs for Office in New Britain

Tim­o­thy Yan­chak, a 21-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dent, ran for office this year in New Britain for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty. He sought to be the town’s trea­sur­er. In this inter­view-style pod­cast, the host, Ali­cia Gomez, speaks with Yan­chak to dis­cov­er what led him into pol­i­tics so young, his chal­lenges, and advice for oth­er young peo­ple want­i­ng to get into politics. 

Learn more:

“Why Don’t Young Peo­ple Vote, and What Can Be Done About It?” — New York Times 

Audio Tran­scrip­tion:

Ali­cia Gomez 

So First off, I want­ed to ask like how Elec­tion Day was. 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

OK, Elec­tion Day was pret­ty good. I unfor­tu­nate­ly lost, but that’s OK. I lost my like 200 votes, so it was­n’t too bad. The may­oral can­di­date on our par­ty kind of had a bit of a blowout, but we did get a lot of city seats turned over, so that’s a good thing. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

Oh, I’m sor­ry about that. That’s awe­some. So. So first thing is you men­tioned is it both your par­ents are involved in politics? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Yeah, so my step dad is the state sen­a­tor for the 6th dis­trict, which cov­ers New Britain and Berlin, and a part of Farm­ing­ton. And my mom used to be involved. She served on the City Coun­cil with my step­dad back like before. I was born and like when I was born. This is like 2000, 2002 and then she served the city trea­sur­er after­wards for I think like 4 terms. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

And you grew up in New Britain? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Yeah, born and raised. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

How old are you by the way? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

21. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

21, awe­some. Your par­ents are the rea­son why you decid­ed to go into pol­i­tics. Is that it? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Yeah, def­i­nite­ly just like being involved since I was born, basi­cal­ly, def­i­nite­ly encour­aged me to go for it because I don’t feel as what’s the word. I don’t feel like as anx­ious going into it just because I knew like the com­mu­ni­ty I knew, like the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Town com­mit­tee. So I already have, like, that build report just from being involved since I was like work­ing on my step­dad’s campaigns. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

Being so young, were there any chal­lenges like going into? Or just like, since you had that your par­ents expe­ri­ences, did that make it less challenging? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

There is a cou­ple chal­lenges I think like one chal­lenge is just a lot of peo­ple look at me and they’re like How old are you? But at the same time, the reverse of it. A lot of peo­ple real­ly like see­ing new peo­ple, like younger peo­ple out and get­ting to vote. I think more than often, more than I got like, oh, you’re young. It was wow. I’m so excit­ed to see young peo­ple out. Like get­ting involved, my oppo­nent for instance, he’s like in the 70s, so there was like a 50 year age gap between us. So there was like it was quite the dif­fer­ence between us. It was quite like polar oppo­sites. Also, just like the chal­lenge of doing some­thing new for the first time. This is my first time run­ning a cam­paign for myself where I had to like, go and put myself out there like pre­vi­ous­ly I done it for oth­er peo­ple. I’ve nev­er done it for myself. That was also a challenge. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

So like you had to go. Knock on your door, like, knock on doors for your­self as opposed to doing it for oth­er people? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Exact­ly. I used to do it always for my step­dad and for oth­er munic­i­pal can­di­dates. But this is the first time where I was munic­i­pal can­di­dates and I had to door knock not just for myself. I mean, yeah, to draw it for myself and like the rest of the sleep. But, you know, peo­ple like send me like pic­tures of like my name to post and like, Oh my gosh, you’re run­ning. Like, it’s like peo­ple from, like, high school and what­not from like the hometown. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

What’s your major, by the way? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

I study anthro­pol­o­gy and geog­ra­phy infor­ma­tion sci­ence and I’m a woman, gen­der, sex­u­al sex­u­al­i­ty stud­ies minor. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

Why did you decide to do trea­sure of like all the positions? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Yeah, so trea­sur­er. That was my mom’s whole posi­tion. So it was kind of nice. So like go back to be like, you know, I admire my mom. She’s a big role mod­el in my life, so it’s nice just to, like, go back and take her posi­tion. The polit­i­cal aspect of it is prop­er­ty tax­es and bring one up 40 to 60% this year. That was due to, like reassess­ments of prop­er­ty val­ues post-COVID infla­tion. How­ev­er, the may­or and the rest of the munic­i­pal­i­ty had the deci­sion, which is at the time, more Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed. Since then we’ve switched it so it’s a lit­tle bit more mod­er­ate, but more bipar­ti­san. The Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion had the deci­sion to decrease the mill rate so that it was­n’t as finan­cial­ly bur­den­ing on our com­mu­ni­ty and New Britain. We’re not a rich place. I mean, we have a lot of low­er class work­ing fam­i­lies out there and get­ting like a $1000 increase in their year­ly tax­es is some­thing they can’t afford that also. For some­one like a col­lege stu­dent about to grad­u­ate, you know, if I get a job, if I want to find a place and set­tle down in New Britain, prop­er­ty val­ues for rent went up dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Because as soon as you increase the tax­es, the land­lords are going to increase your rent and then like sewage bill went up as well. So a lot of finan­cial aspects that would deter peo­ple from liv­ing in Britain are at play. That’s why I want­ed to run specif­i­cal­ly for trea­sur­er and not like City Coun­cil. I think board of edu­ca­tion would have been cool as well just because I’m a stu­dent as well. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

So is that. Like what you ran your cam­paign off of, basically. 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

Yes. My oth­er big point was DEI. So diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion, our bud­get was $20,000 and we cut it in half this year. And I said that’s there’s no rea­son to do that. I talked to a cou­ple of peo­ple in the queer com­mu­ni­ty in New Britain and they’re like, yeah, we don’t do any­thing for Pride Month in New Britain and that’s pret­ty dis­heart­en­ing. And I have a lot tons of friends in the queer com­mu­ni­ty and I want to make sure that they’re vis­i­ble in New Britain as well. So we don’t cel­e­brate pride in New Britain, real­ly. We do rain­bow flag rais­ing, but you have to go to Hart­ford, you have to go to NYC, you have to go to Mid­dle­town to cel­e­brate pride, which is some­thing we can def­i­nite­ly do in Britain just to like even just to like revi­tal­ize our com­mu­ni­ty a lit­tle bit. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

Yeah, def­i­nite­ly. So your oppo­nent was like 70 years old, right? How does it feel being sur­round­ed by old­er peo­ple and being a younger per­son? Like, do. Do you think that that your oppo­nent may have looked down on you? Do you think oth­er peo­ple on your team may have looked down on you? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

I don’t think so as much. Maybe my oppo­nent when I was poll stand­ing at my spe­cif­ic polling loca­tion, I was there with my oppo­nent and a cou­ple oth­er Repub­li­cans and they called, they referred to me as Young Yanchak–just my last name. And I was like, that’s a lit­tle fun­ny. You know, I would refer to them as Mr. last name just because I do feel like they’re old­er. So that’s kind of respect I had. I used to work at a Coun­try Club as well. So I’m also used to that. A lot of peo­ple who are on involved in that spe­cif­ic dis­tricts are also involved in the Coun­try Club. So I know them from that. My team specif­i­cal­ly, we have a lot of younger peo­ple, so if it was­n’t me then it was some­one like one of our City Coun­cil­man who ran for my dis­trict. He is 4 years old­er than me, so that’s not much of an age dif­fer­ence. Our may­oral can­di­date was in lik his 30s as well, just had his first child. Even The may­or of the brand, who just got reelect­ed. Sharon Stew­art. She’s in her late 30s as well. She was the youngest may­or ever. Elect­ed when she was elect­ed or not ever elect­ed but elect­ed in New Britain. But I. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

I know you’re see­ing a trend of like, younger peo­ple being involved. Why do you think that younger peo­ple usu­al­ly don’t get involved much? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

There’s two things, like a lot of my friends, they just have no inter­est, they don’t real­ly read the news. They don’t real­ly get involved. Half the time I have to like pres­sure them to vote, you know, like I was mak­ing calls at the polling loca­tions just remind­ing, like my friends in New Britain like, hey, go get out and vote. I need your vote. I’m count­ing on you. That and I think there’s just like, the men­tal­i­ty that it is for like, peo­ple who are old­er peo­ple who are wealth­i­er, peo­ple who come from that spe­cif­ic back­ground. I’m priv­i­leged enough where I was raised in an envi­ron­ment where I was sur­round­ed by politi­cians. Grow­ing up, so it’s not as anx­ious to me being able to step into that space. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

What would you prob­a­bly say to oth­er young peo­ple who want to get involved in pol­i­tics? Like what advice would you give them? 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

I had a cou­ple of friends who asked me about it after­wards, but basi­cal­ly I just say go to if you have a par­ty in mind, go to your par­ty, go. Whether you’re Demo­c­ra­t­ic or Repub­li­can, go to your town coun­cil, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Town Com­mit­tee, your Repub­li­can Town Com­mit­tee start get­ting involved there. Do it like right now because you going to start look­ing for peo­ple to start elect­ing like this year and next year. get involved. Start like mak­ing calls knock­ing on doors for them. And so by the time your osi­tion you want to run is up, you’ll get an endorse­ment by some­one in there. So how DTC or how com­mit­tees work is that there’s like vot­ing mem­bers in the town com­mit­tee. They vote on which can­di­dates they want to endorse and nom­i­nate. And then depend­ing on if there’s like one per­son for that role, then they’ll get nom­i­nat­ed for the gen­er­al bal­lot, which is what hap­pened to me. Oth­er­wise, if it’s like a big con­tin­gent where two peo­ple get nom­i­nat­ed they’ll end up in a pri­ma­ry, so you can get nom­i­nat­ed at a real­ly young age. Just go out and start talk­ing to people. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

I also want­ed to ask in regards to like the vot­ing sides of things, young peo­ple also tend to not vote, and I was won­der­ing if, like cam­paign­ing for younger vot­ers is dif­fer­ent than cam­paign­ing for old­er vot­ers too, like. If you know. 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

100%. So I feel like a lot of peo­ple. Who I talked to when they were at home. They were old­er that just could be like the dis­tricts. The trips I got were just gen­er­al­ly old­er pop­u­la­tions a lot of times it was like more fam­i­ly pop­u­la­tions. So I was talk­ing to the par­ents and like the chil­dren, they were like, not of vot­ing age yet. If not, then they were like 18 and old­er and they just weren’t reg­is­tered vot­ers, so I did­n’t have known that. What we have is this com­pa­ny called Mini Vanand that allows me like which trips to see and then it has like each like vot­er reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion. So the peo­ple who I got just were old­er and I could­n’t like real­ly get the word out to younger peo­ple that. And when I tried mak­ing calls, espe­cial­ly younger peo­ple. They like pick up think it’s robot and then just like the client imme­di­ate­ly. So it’s real­ly hard get­ting the voice out. I think for us, I think if we have like more social media pres­ence because I find that like the most active page for our town com­mit­tee is Face­book. Most peo­ple don’t use Face­book any­more, espe­cial­ly my gen­er­a­tion. But it’s also like some­thing very sim­i­lar to what our oppo­nent did. The may­oral can­di­date. And she has been. Crush­ing it in the past six terms, 6 elec­tions. So it’s just a bit of a dif­fer­ence I think to get a per­son­al media pres­ence then that’d be more attrac­tive to younger vot­ers. But at the same time, there’s not as much we can do. We send out like mail­ing let­ters to peo­ple to see. But if they’re away at col­lege or hard for them to see it, try­ing to get like a lot of absen­tee bal­lots, it’s also very dif­fi­cult as well. So. It’s real­ly hard to get like that 18 to 21, 22 range. 

Ali­cia Gomez 

So yeah, I was. I’m actu­al­ly writ­ing anoth­er sto­ry about the Mans­field Democ­ra­cy Cup, because they like, had like, a very high vot­er turnout last year. And I was won­der­ing, I was like, is it because there’s stu­dents here? But I was like, stu­dents tend not to vote but some­thing the. USG told me so yes­ter­day. Some­thing some­body told me they were like because like in a col­lege set­ting, you can’t real­ly knock on doors. But like, the best way to reach them is through social media. And so I was like, won­der­ing, I was like, is that does that work like out­side of like col­lege set­tings and like, they also said that like. Like he oh, it was a town coun­cil mem­ber. He, like, tries to make him­self, like, avail­able for stuff. Like if the stu­dents need an inter­view or, like, need help with an assign­ment. And I was like, does that, I don’t know. Do you think that would, like help in Britain? Like to con­nect with like, 1822 years and just like. I don’t know. Just help them with like, what­ev­er school assign­ments. They need or like if they need. They need to do research, maybe help­ing them with that would con­nect them bet­ter with. 

Tim­o­thy Yanchak 

New Britain has cen­tral Con­necti­cut State Uni­ver­si­ty in it. So as I was at the polling sta­tion for Cen­tral and I saw like a cou­ple of young peo­ple there, not too many. But I do think it’s like it real­ly depends a lot of peo­ple who I know go to cen­tral live on cam­pus. They pre­fer to reg­is­ter to vote in their home­town. So for me, that’s like Hart­ford. Pub­lic schools grow­ing up. But yeah, I think just like being able to get that inter­ac­tion, that’s not like as abra­sive. You know, it’s not like we’re call­ing on them not going on the doors. You know, a lot of peo­ple, espe­cial­ly younger folks, they’re going like, see a num­ber, they don’t know they’re going to decline it. So I think if you have like you put your face to the name, but in a way in which they will reach out to you instead of you reach­ing out of them, that be a lit­tle bit bet­ter for a lot of peo­ple our age. And def­i­nite­ly just like any resources we can get, we’ll take it just because the job mar­ket is strug­gling right now, every­one’s strug­gling a lit­tle bit. So if we can like add some­thing to make a lit­tle bit bet­ter, you know add some­thing to our resume might be lit­tle bit more appealing.