By Griffin Rogers
Senior communication major Abigail Dimeler has found herself working inside a tight election race as a communications intern for the Charles Booker Senate campaign.
Booker, a Louisville politician, is seeking to unseat incumbent Sen. Rand Paul who has been in office since 2011.
Dimeler said she has been working with the campaign since the middle of August.
“It’s been I think about six weeks now almost, which is crazy because six weeks in campaign time feels like three months because of how fast-paced everything is,” Dimeler said. “My priority is to help the communications team with anything they might need, so that is research for talking points and finding quotes or content that can be used for strategic communication or social media materials.”
She is a communications intern, but Dimeler said that she helps other teams at the office as well.
Organization Director Alayna Milby and Abigail Dimeler work a table at the Kentucky State Fair.
Photo courtesy of Abigail Dimeler.
“I actually work really closely with the organizing department,” Dimeler said. “They’ve definitely stolen me a little bit because I do have kind of a knack for that, so I do help them.”
Dimeler said the organizing department is not the only department she helps.
“I also help finance,” Dimeler said. “I really just help fill in with whatever tasks might need to get done, especially if they’re time-sensitive.”
Working as an intern for the Booker campaign happened mostly by chance.
“I was finding that I wanted to be even more involved than the normal volunteer opportunities that you have, like phone banking and canvassing and texting,” Dimeler said. “I contacted a member of the staff for the Women for Charles Booker Facebook group, and then at an event we connected.”
All communication majors need to complete an internship to graduate, so Dimeler said she jumped at the chance to use her work with the Booker campaign for internship credit.
“She (the Women for Charles Booker staff member) mentioned something about internships, which I didn’t even realize that the campaign had internships, and as soon as she said it, I was like ‘Yes, like I absolutely want to,’” Dimeler said. “They reached out to me when they were ready to start hiring, we did an interview, and I was hired.”
Dimeler said she’s always been emotionally tied to politics and thinks it’s great that the people in her life will finally get to see her take on a real role in the field.
Dimeler proudly wears a Booker promotional button on her coat.
Photo courtesy of Abigail Dimeler.
“My dad particularly is extremely proud of me,” Dimeler said. “All of my family has Charles Booker shirts, so whenever my dad is out and someone says something about his shirt, he always says ‘My daughter is on the campaign.’”
Dimeler said her friends were also very supportive about her internship.
“My friends were also so encouraging through the processes because I was posting a little bit about it on my private social media,” Dimeler said. “People were like ‘Oh my god, you have this, you’ve got this, you can do it, I believe in you.’”
Dimeler’s best friend and fellow Bellarmine student, Kaitlyn Kalehuawehe, said she’s so proud of her friend’s internship.
“I am very proud that she’s doing this because she’s always been really interested in Booker and his campaign,” Kalehuawehe said. “She’s always, like, had a passion for what he’s passionate about and so, like, it was just such a perfect fit.”
Kalehuawehe said that when Dimeler told her about the opportunity, she coached Dimeler through the application process.
“One of ladies reached out about becoming an actual intern and I, like, helped her with her resume and stuff like that,” Kalehuawehe said. “Basically, I was the one who was like, ‘Just turn it in and do it, you’re going to get the job, this is what you’re made to do,’ so I was kind of, like, encouraging her to do it.”
Dimeler said this encouragement helped her get over her own fears.
“I felt really supported by everyone and that really influenced my confidence,” Dimeler said. “I went into it with a lot more confidence, like, ‘No I deserve to be a part of this, and I know what it takes to help with this.’”
Kalehuawehe said that she was happy to see her best friend follow her dreams.
“I was very excited when she got it because I knew she would,” Kalehuawehe said. “I knew it because she’s amazing.”
Campaign Staff Member Ashley Taylor, Dimeler, and intern Savannah Dowell work at the Highlands Pride Festival.
Photo courtesy of Abigail Dimeler.
Balancing work and school is somewhat difficult, Dimeler said.
“With school, yeah, it is challenging, but for me I am honestly kind of prioritizing the campaign because I know that it’s like, a shorter experience that’s not even going to run the full length of my semester here because of the election in November,” Dimeler said.
Even though it’s been two months since she started, Dimeler said she still can’t believe she’s a part of Booker’s campaign.
“I literally said hi to him the other day, and it’s the coolest thing having a kind of history of supporting him because I supported him in the 2020 primaries,” Dimeler said. “I saw something that I had put on my Instagram story about a year and a half ago when he first announced he was running for Senate, and literally a few hours before I saw that old post, I had just said hello to him as he was walking through the office.”
Dimeler said working with this campaign has inspired her to pursue this line of work.
“Depending on what happens with the campaign and with the election, there are some people on the campaign who would probably end up working in offices around the state for Charles' Senate seat,” Dimeler said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to working in regional offices for an elected official, but something that this has taught me is that campaigning is definitely something that I want to go into.”
Dimeler said that her experience in the field of communication at Bellarmine will only help in her future career.
“A huge part of it as well, especially with organizing, is that I use my communications knowledge for is tabling at events,” Dimeler said. “Our job is to talk to people and help get them engaged with the campaign if they’re already familiar with Charles or help them get familiar with Charles if they’re not, so we do have to use a lot of communications skills for that to kind of gauge where people are at.”
Dimeler shadows a Kentucky Labor Union Roundtable.
Photo courtesy of Abigail Dimeler.
Working with the public is another of the internship's perks, Dimeler said.
“We get to see the everyday working people that the campaign tries to represent, and seeing that is just incredibly rewarding,” Dimeler said. “It’s also taught me that I do want to be in grassroots movements and organizations for the rest of my life in some capacity because it really speaks to the actual material conditions that people in that area are experiencing, and it helps to guard from exploitation.”
Regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 8 election, Dimeler said that she will definitely hit the campaign trail again.
“I want to experience this more and go into different departments,” she said. “Like I would love to work more in an organizing setting or on strategic communications. This has taught me that I want to seek out actual career opportunities that coincide with the things I’ve been doing in the Booker campaign.”
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