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BY LINDA HOU

In print | Published February 11, 2010

Natalie Litton ’12 was one of many Swarthmore students who helped Democrat Bryan Lentz defeat a 28-year Republican incumbent to become the Pennsylvania State House Representative for Delaware County in 2006. Litton, now president of College Democrats, will be working for Lentz again this semester for his campaign to be the U.S. House Representative for Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district.

Lentz was on campus last Thursday to speak to students about his campaign.

Joe Sestak, the current U.S. House Representative, will be leaving the seat vacant in his efforts to overtake Arlen Specter in the upcoming Senate primary.

“I think it’s great for both Swarthmore College Democrats and the community to have him here, and that’s something that Bryan knows because he has an office right down in the Ville,” Litton said, referring to his office on Park Street.

Lentz, an Iraq War veteran and a graduate of Temple University, spoke to a group of about 30 attendees last Thursday in Bond Hall on topics such as the environment, transportation and the national budget.

He then took questions from students about his stance on current legislation and issues such as the army’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibits openly gay citizens from serving in the military. Lentz said that he believes the policy should be repealed.

One major focus of Lentz’s speech was his advocacy of a high-speed rail system.

“Do we want to live in a country that has a second-rate transportation system?” Lentz said in his speech. “Fifty percent of the flights [from Philadelphia] are to places within 500 miles … those 50 percent of people can go on a high speed rail … yet in China, where much of the place is rural, they have high speed rail that goes 300 miles per hour.”

Lentz also spoke in support of stopping the war in Iraq and increasing healthcare coverage, noting that a big problem of balancing the national budget is the heavy cost of the war.

In addition to his comments on specific issues, Lentz spoke of his theories on how government should work and said that he would like to have more progress in government.

“In your lifetimes, you have probably grown to think of government as something that doesn’t get anything done. In your lifetimes, there’s nothing big that’s been done in the government. And I think that’s a problem,” Lentz said.

This problem, according to Lentz, is in part due to the wish for the maintenance of the status quo by large corporations, which are giving large sums of money to Republican politicians.

“If you look at our government now, it’s progress versus status quo. It’s people versus corporations. I want to go there to stand for the people,” Lentz said. “We have to deal with the fact that the other side has lots of money because the Supreme Court said that corporations are the same as people.”

In addition to bringing Lentz to campus, College Democrats plans to help his campaign by holding weekly phone banking sessions throughout the semester. Phones and phonebooks will be provided in Parrish Parlours during Wednesday evenings beginning this week, and all students are welcome to help.

College Democrats has been working with Lentz since his race for Pennsylvania House in 2006, when he beat 28-year incumbent Republican candidate Tom Gannon for the seventh district seat. Lentz, whose mother and sister are Swarthmore alumnae, said that the college’s students were especially important in the campaign.

“I was elected to Congress in 2006, and the Swarthmore CD played a big part of that. I had many volunteers and a couple of staffers who were Swarthmore students. And I only won by 800 votes, and so every door they knocked on and every phone call they made helped me win my race and my reelection,” Lentz said.

In 2008, College Democrats again endorsed Lentz and campaigned for him as well as for President Barack Obama and Sestak. When Lentz announced that he was running for Congress last fall, College Democrats decided to back Lentz in the primary, a rare move for the group.

“We often don’t endorse in primaries. But because of our long-standing relationship with Bryan and also because he’s likely to win, we decided to endorse him now,” College Democrat member Harry Apostoleris ’12 said.

Apostoleris said that Lentz’s young age — he is 45 years old — allows the politician to focus on issues that will matter more to college students.

“For me, personally, Lentz is this young guy, out of Iraq actually. I like seeing this young guy going out there and talking about things that matter, that are going to stick to things for all of our lives,” Apostoleris said. “A big part of his speech was about energy and having green jobs. He talked about high speed roads and Internet … those things that are affecting the future of the country that we’re going to live in.”

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