Most have never heard of a high schooler running for the local political office, but that did not stop Luke Hatler (12). Hatler always planned to be involved in politics. What started as a joke between friends soon became reality when he discovered that he met the requirements by the deadline. So, he took the opportunity.

“There were two [candidates for my city council district] and neither of them had any kind of platform or anything talking about anything they wanted to do, which means they were just running to like, really get their face out there, and I think that’s stupid,” Hatler said. “[I]f you’re gonna run for office, you should have like a platform. So I was like, you know what, I will run, and then I did.”

Hatler turned 18 just before the election could get underway, but he still had to find a way to get his name on the ballot.

“[W]hat you have to do is you need to [one,] go downtown or two, Shelby Farms to one of the two Election Commission offices,” Hatler said. “And you need to get a big piece of paper that has a list of like blank spaces, and you need to get at least 25 signatures and they recommend you get 75.”

This was not a hard ask at all for Hatler and once his name was officially on the ballot, he could start his campaign. His team and some occasional volunteers from Ms. Sugarmon’s classes helped support.

“I was very happy with it,” Hatler said. “It was all youth run and youth lead with a very diverse team and a very active team, and like I’ve really liked our platform and like our messaging and [getting] to talk to a lot of people.”

Despite the help from his team and classmates alike, they still did not have sufficient monetary support. Or at least as much support as some of their competitors.

“We didn’t have that much money, for a lot of our stuff,” Hatler said. “[E]specially our flyers [that] were made of paper. Usually they would be made of plastic, and I feel like we could have done even better if we [had] come across more professional.”

Money problems were consistent throughout the campaign, continuing all the way to the election. But, there was one silver lining..

“So we were very happy with [almost 800 votes] and we won the most votes per dollar spent, so if they would ban money from elections, which they should, we would have won upwards of 60% of the vote,” Hatler said.

Before the city election was the White Station High School class officer election. As well as running for the city election, Luke ran for the school election and lost both. However there may have been good reason for losing the former. Danielle Barbee (12) has a feeling that it was not because his policies were not sound, but because they were too serious for the senior class.

“You want [school officials] to be responsible of course, but you’re looking for your party people,” Barbee said. “Whereas in the government, you’re looking for people who are going to do different things. They’re gonna work on transportation, they’re gonna work on bills and stuff, and it’s just, those are just two different types of dimensions. And I think that Luke is a more serious politician, that’s what he’s going for … that’s a good thing for him, but it just did not fit what we were trying to go for as a class.”

However, Barbee did feel as though Hatler would be a plausible candidate to vote for in the future.

“I might [vote for Hatler], not just because that’s my friend, but because I feel like a lot of people, they don’t get to [until they are] thirty or something, actually see people their age doing stuff in government or holding positions of power,” Barbee said. “So it would be like really cool if somebody our age held a position of power instead of a bunch of like seventy year olds.”

At the same time, Dakota Carter (12), does not believe the loss at the school and city levels were related, but does still think that there was another major factor.

“He’s still very young,” Carter said. “Most people won’t take someone who’s still in high school seriously. Like the fact that he got any votes at all is still good, running for city council.”

Carter also believes he would have voted for Hatler if he could and might again.

“I didn’t look too much into the other people, but [from] what I know about him, [I probably would have voted for him],” Carter said.