Random Democratic Candidates' First Jobs (25 items)

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  (#1) Elizabeth Warren

  • US Congressperson

  She may have spent the majority of her life mastering the law and navigating the intricacies of public policy - publishing a number of books on her areas of expertise in the process - but Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren got her start in the workforce in much more humble circumstances. At just 13 years old, with her family struggling to make ends meet, Warren took a job waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant - about two hours away from her hometown of Oklahoma City, no less. How did she land the job? Well, it was her aunt's restaurant. That was Warren's first official job, anyway, but she'd also been getting babysitting and sewing work for years beforehand.
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  (#2) Bernie Sanders

  • US Congressperson

  Long before he became the galvanizing voice of a self-described political revolution, Bernie Sanders tried his hands in a number of different vocations, struggling to find a permanent foothold before finally finding his calling in Vermont politics. Among his many early career choices - which also included freelance writing, pre-school teaching, and working as an aide at a psychiatric hospital - was carpentry. He tried his hand in that field for some time but, according to those who knew him, it was never the right fit.  “His carpentry,” his friend Denny Morrisseau said, “was not going to support him, and didn’t.”

  Another acquaintance, John Block, was more unequivocal: “He was a shitty carpenter.”
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  (#3) Kamala Harris

  Prior to her ascension to the United States Senate in 2017, Kamala Harris had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the legal world, from a 26-year-old deputy district attorney to San Francisco D.A. and finally to Attorney General of the state of California. But her work life all started under parental supervision. Harris's mother was a scientist who specialized in breast cancer research, and she would bring her kids along to help out at the lab.

  “My mother had two goals in her life - to raise her two daughters and end breast cancer,” she said. “She would take us to the lab with her, you know, after school and on weekends. Little known fact... my first job ever was cleaning pipettes.”
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  (#4) Joe Biden

  • US Vice President

  More than perhaps any other Democratic candidate in the 2020 race, Joe Biden's career has been well-documented, thanks to his military service, his decades in the Senate, and his eight years as Vice President. His first foray into the workforce, however, is less known - except perhaps for his classmates during his teenage years. Biden attended Archmere Academy, a Catholic prep school that he acknowledges "[his] mom and dad couldn't afford." As a result, he got a job as a gardener at that very school.

  "My working there, it paid part of my tuition," Biden asid. "That was the first job I had."
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  (#5) Peter Buttigieg

  • Politician

  Those who want a more adorable origin story of Pete Buttigieg's professional career might point to his early years taking care of his neighbor's dogs - it's certainly good work if you can get it. But the South Bend mayor and upstart presidential candidate didn't get a more grueling taste of the work life until his own uncle recruited him for a catering gig.

  "My uncle had kind of a catering operation," Buttigieg said on the South Bend Beat podcast. "So I worked at stands selling water and drinks at festivals over the summer."
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  (#6) Cory Booker

  • Politician

  After a prolific collegiate run that included a host of different degrees, a Rhodes Scholarship, and a couple of brutal years in the Pac-10 for Stanford's football team, Cory Booker didn't miss a beat when he took to the workforce en route to a successful political career. His earliest major professional endeavor was working as a housing organizer in inner-city Newark, starting a non-profit that advocated on behalf of the low-income residents of the area - where he himself also lived.

  “You can’t live in a community like this and not live with a sense of urgency,” Booker said.
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  (#7) Beto O'Rourke

  • US Congressperson

  El Paso native Beto O'Rourke enjoyed a massive rise in public notoriety after his closer-than-expected 2018 challenge to Ted Cruz's seat in the U.S. Senate, a run in which he gained a reputation as a charismatic new figure in Texas politics with a gift for fundraising. But raising funds as a private citizen was much more of a challenge in his younger years, during which he worked a series of jobs - including working at a publishing house and moving fine art. But perhaps his most noteworthy early job was working as a live-in nanny for an Upper West Side family, charged with taking care of two young children. He lived in a small room with a futon.
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  (#8) Kirsten Gillibrand

  • US Congressperson

  Officially, Kirsten Gillibrand has been serving her home state of New York since 2007, but she's been around politics a lot longer than that. In consecutive summers while she was still in school, Gillibrand interned at the office of Republican Alphonse D'Amato. She eventually completed law school and launched a successful career in law, but perhaps inevitably she eventually returned to her political roots.
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  (#9) Amy Klobuchar

  • US Congressperson

  Amy Klobuchar, the accomplished lawyer and long-time Senator from Minnesota, kept herself busy throughout her high school years, not just in the classroom but in the real world as well. Those who frequented the fast-food establishments in Wayzata in those days might remember seeing Klobuchar at her very first job at the local A&W, at which she served as a carhop - a job that came with another very A&W-specific part of the job description:

  My job for A&W involved cleaning the mugs by plunging them into a series of vats of hot water with varying concentrations of soap. Then I would put them in a freezer and, voilà, they were frosty, just as advertised. The only prblem was that we hardly ever changed the water and it didn't even stay hot for very long.
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  (#10) Andrew Yang

  Enterpreneur Andrew Yang may have firmly established himself as the "business candidate," and his advocacy for Universal Basic Income has earned his candidacy a bit of attention. But despite his own financial success, no one can say he hasn't paid his dues as a blue-collar employee. In fact, he remembers his days on the low end of the restaurant totem pole well, and has mentioned them frequently in interviews and social media:

  I was a busboy at a local Chinese restaurant as a teenager - "The Imperial Wok." My English surprised the patrons. We got paid primarily in tips. Now I always tip well.
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  (#11) Julian Castro

  • Politician

  Julian Castro and his twin brother have been a dual force in the Texas political scene for far longer than one might assume given their relatively young age. Among other political accomplishments, Julian has served on the San Antonio City Council and, under President Barack Obama, served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. But his proximity to mainstream politics dates all the way back to the mid-1990s, when he served as a White House intern during the Clinton administration.
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  (#12) Jay Inslee

  • US Congressperson

  Washington governor and Democratic hopeful Jay Inslee has spent decades in public service, but he still fondly remembers his first taste of hard work - back before he was in high school, working alongside his father with a couple buckets of paint:

  Around 13 or 14, I started painting houses with my dad during the summer. Those were glorious, beautiful, paint-filled days. To work with my dad, I felt like I had achieved manhood. The great thing about painting is that while you are on the scaffold, you can talk and work at the same time. I learned a whole bunch from those talks with him.
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  (#13) John Hickenlooper

  • Politician

  For the 2019-2020 election cycle, John Hickenlooper is officially a candidate for the Democratic nomination. But he's worn a number of different hats over the years - among them geologist, bar owner, mayor, and Governor of Colorado. But in his younger days, he held a much less glamorous position, and one all too familiar to teenagers nationwide: lawn mower:

  When I turned 16 I got a summer job with a company called Lawn Kare. They had teams of five kids each, and we would go out and mow lawns for places like country clubs, estates and churches... The bad part was that you had to be there at 6 a.m. Since I had to ride my bike four miles to get there, I had to get up at 5. That’s way too early for a teenager. But the nice part was that we got off work at 2:30, so we still had a big chunk of the day to play.
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  (#14) Tim Ryan

  • US Congressperson

  Democratic candidate Tim Ryan has served in the Ohio Senate and a Congressional representative for his home state, but his political background extends back to 1995, when he served as a congressional aide for the US House of Representatives - the very legislative body of which he has been a part since 2003. Internships and a law career eventually led him to where he is today.
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  (#15) Tulsi Gabbard

  • US Congressperson

  Hawai'i congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is well known for her military background, but she's been helping her community since even before she could officially serve the country. As just a teenager, she, along with her father, co-founded People for Environmental and Community Health (PEACH), which specializes in educating children about land protection and natural resources. The organization has since be re-named the Healthy Hawai'i Coalition.
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  (#16) Michael Bennet

  • US Congressperson

  One of a handful of Democratic candidates with a strong business background, Colorado senator Michael Bennet once served as the superintendent of Denver's public schools. Before that, however, he worked in private equity, handling investments for billionaire Philip Anschutz.
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  (#17) Steve Bullock

  • Politician

  As governor of Montana, one of the most wide-open nature-heavy states in the US, Steve Bullock probably won't surprise anyone when he talks about his first job - which of course was in the great outdoors. Specifically, he was a tour guide on a boat tour called Gates of the Mountains - and to this day, he reportedly can still rattle off his tour-guide spiel from memory.
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  (#18) Bill de Blasio

  • Politician

  One of the last entrants into the 2020 race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has been a known commodity in New York politics for the entirety of the 21st century, but his work goes back to 1984, when he was first hired by the Urban Fellows Program for the NY City Department of Juvenile Justice.
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  (#19) John Delaney

  Maryland congressman John Delaney has a business background and going on two decades in Washington, but manual labor is where he got his start. Specifically, as a landscaper in New Jersey when he was a teenager. He has Dad to thank for that.

  I think it was probably after my... eighth grade, maybe?... Yeah, my dad was a construction worker, so I always had what I would consider to be physical labor jobs growing up.
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  (#20) Mike Gravel

  Alaskan senator and Democratic firebrand Mike Gravel may have been a late entry into the race, but his work résumé - both in and out of politics - goes back decades. Back in the 1960s, he worked as a railroad brakeman and also drove a taxi. But even earlier than that, he painted houses - which was a family affair:

  My two older brothers and I worked with our father from our early teens in house painting and general construction/rehabilitation business. During the same period, I became interested in civic affairs and worked on numerous local and state political campaigns.
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  (#21) Seth Moulton

  • Person or entity appearing in film

  One of the younger candidates in the Democratic field, Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton cut his teeth in public service on the battlefield, serving as an infantry officer for the Marines during the Iraq War, earning a Bronze Star in the process.
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  (#22) Wayne Messam

  Athletics took up a great deal of Wayne Messam's youth, to the extent that he played four years for the Florida State Seminoles during the Bobby Bowden dynasty, and was part of their 1993 National Championship squad. After his career as a wide receiver ended, but before he entered Florida politics, Messam started his own company the construction industry as a General Contractor.
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  (#23) Marianne Williamson

  • Writer

  Self-help author Marianne Williamson is one of the more unknown of the Democratic candidates, at least from a national perspective. But those who have bought her books or sought her advice - including celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey - are more than familiar with her work. The same could be said for anyone hanging around the New York lounge scene in the 1970s, as Williamson briefly served as a cabaret singer after dropping out of college:

  'Work' is relative... I sang, the same way Bill Clinton played the saxophone.
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  (#24) Joe Sestak

  • US Congressperson

  Compared to his more nationally renowned counterparts, not much is known about Joe Sestak beyond the broad strokes of his military and political career. The former Congressional representative from Pennsylvania has spent the vast majority of his adult life in some degree of government service - aside from a few stints in academia. He joined the Navy right out of high school, and his first job was as a damage control officer on a warship during the Vietnam War. Having been a late addition into a 2020 Democratic group predicated on doing some damage control of its own, Sestak may be coming full circle.
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  (#25) Tom Steyer

  • Producer/Director

  A late entrant into the 2020 Democratic field, Tom Steyer has never held public office but has a long history in finance. In fact, that's where the now-billionaire got his professional start. He spent two years as an analyst for the investment bank Morgan Stanley before forging ahead toward a lucrative career as a hedge-fund manager.

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