Adam Casey

Nebraska is known for having one of the youngest legislatures in the nation, and Megan Hunt is hoping to make it even younger. The 31-year-old single mother and business woman just added a new item to her already full plate — Democratic candidate for state senator representing the 8th district in Omaha, Nebraska. Hunt, who has long mixed activism with Hello Holiday, her online and brick-and-mortar feminist fashion boutique, spoke to Cosmopolitan.com about her campaign plans, how she uses business to promote her favorite causes, and how she prepares for the challenges that come from being a Millennial female candidate.

You are a young businesswoman who has never held an elected office. How do you intend to convince voters that you are experienced enough for the job?

Just because I don't have experience in government office doesn't mean that the other work that I've done isn't relevant to the job. I'm a mother and I've built a business that employs a lot of local women. It brings hundreds of thousands of dollars into Nebraska, and the experience I have working on the boards of nonprofits has really given me a lot of skill with building consensus and developing public and private partnerships between nonprofits and different companies and other interests in the community. I know how to run an innovative and profitable company, and I've been recognized for my ability to grow staff and revenue, in a startup environment, without incurring a bunch of debt. I think that it's really great that I have this creative mind, and I have this experience, and I think that that is something I can apply to the state budget.

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When I think about, what is a politician really? A politician is somebody who sees problems in government and wants to fix them. OK, well, what's an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is somebody who sees a problem with a product and wants to fix it. And an advocate and activist is somebody who sees a problem in society and wants to fix it. I don't think that being from the private sector or having a background like, I'm not a lawyer, I haven't been a lobbyist, things like that ... It doesn't mean that my experience isn't completely applicable to the work of politics.

You mentioned you combine your activism with your business. How does that work exactly?

Right, so feminism is definitely the lens to which I view the world, and I've always kind of run my businesses that way, and my [business] partner Sarah Lorsung Tvrdik, we just share the belief that you should know the people you're doing business with, and we're not shy about saying, "Yeah, we support gun control. Yeah, we support driver's IDs for DREAMers in our state. We're pro-choice people. We support reproductive justice." Next Saturday, we're sponsoring this event with [reproductive rights organization] Lady Parts Justice at the Reverb Room here in Omaha. It's like a comedy show. It's going to raise a bunch of money, and I'm really excited about it.

We just believe that when you have this platform as a business owner, to not use it for good in the community, to impact people who don't have the same privileges, who don't have the same rights as you, is a waste. It's a harsh word but I think it's a waste. We make revenue. We bring a lot of revenue into the state from outside the state, because we're an online business primarily. We also employ a lot of people, and so that gives us a lot of opportunities to increase the breadths and depths of our reach, of not just the company to make money, but the message that we think is so important that inspires us so much to do this work.

One example is — Sarah and I are not rich people. We can't donate a lot of money to a nonprofit or something like that, but we're both huge supporters of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. Sarah and I probably couldn't make $500 donation to Planned Parenthood, but we worked with designers and we created a T-shirt that says, "Girls Support Girls," and we did a limited-edition color, and just a limited time, and we sold it for more money, and then we were able to turn those profits into a gigantic donation for Planned Parenthood. In the last year, we've raised over $10,000 for them.

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We've done the same thing with the ACLU. Over the holidays, we did a huge drive to collect menstrual products, like tampons and pads, and cups and wipes, and all kinds of things that people from all over the community brought in to donate, to homeless and other underprivileged women in our community.

We just saw a female congressional candidate in Iowa drop out of her race because she was getting death threats. Do you worry about the sorts of attacks you might face as a woman running for office?

I think that the mental and emotional stamina it takes to run for office as not a white man is staggering. I've gotten a lot of death threats before. I've gotten rape threats before, just from the reproductive rights stuff that I've worked on, and I don't make a big deal out of it because I think that most people who make threats like that are cowards, and all the great changes that happen throughout the world, throughout history, were met with a lot of resistance at first. But I'm really grateful of the support I have from my friends, because that's what really gives me the strength to keep on doing the things that I think are important in the community, even in the face of stress. Even in the face of violent criticism, honestly. It is something that I'm prepared to handle. I think I'm a very strong person but I'm definitely steeled for it. I do expect it.

You’re a single mother of a young girl too. Are you concerned how your campaign could impact her, especially when we still see people criticize female candidates for running while they have small children?

When I was pregnant, I started a company called Camp Co-Working and it was Omaha's first co-working space. I was having a lot of construction meetings and this was throughout my entire pregnancy. By the time I gave birth, we were about two weeks out from moving into Camp. It was from then that my daughter, Alice, started coming to work with me every day. She's here at work with me today. She came to a Planned Parenthood of the Heartland board meeting with me today. She came to a meeting with me today with one of our community leaders and she comes with me when I testify at hearings. To her, it’s normal, and I think that I'm really proud to be an example to her of a woman who is modeling the type of integrity and moral courage that I would really want her to emulate in her life.

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We have a lot of honest conversations about what other people say — what other people say when they talk about us, and how we don't care for bullying, and how we handle things like that. That happens all the time in life, no matter what it is you end up doing. I really want my daughter to understand how powerful and important her voice is, and to have the courage to use it. That's why I don't squash my own voice. I want to show her that she can have the courage to decide who she is instead of letting others kind of tell her who she should be.

We just watched Democrat Heath Mello lose the Omaha mayoral race to Republican incumbent Jean Stothert. Does this have you worried about losing to your Republican challenger if you become the Democratic candidate?

My district is luckily very blue. My district is very progressive, and I have a strong reputation in my district for my progressive work, for my work with nonprofits, for my values, and for not being afraid to share them. So, with me, I'm really a candidate where, it's like a what-you-see-is-what-you-get situation. I think that has served me well as a business owner and as a member of the community, because even though people don't agree with me all the time, they know that I'm being honest.

I think you can run a really good campaign and still lose. I think it's very important to be direct, especially on wedge issues, like immigration, abortion, of course, what you believe. When your record doesn't reflect what you say you believe, you have to come out even stronger and be prepared to address why that discrepancy is there, between your record and your contemporary beliefs, and maybe that was a problem [for Mello, who was accused of being against reproductive rights]. I don't blame any one factor on what happened in the Omaha election, but if there's a lesson to be learned for me, as a candidate, it's just that you have to be direct with voters and constituents about what you believe. For better or worse, that's never been a problem for me.

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