Amherst College Democrats Resurfaces for an Important Election Season

With election day looming, Amherst College Democrats has emerged from a multi-year hiatus.

The club hosted a highly-attended presidential debate watch party on Sept. 10 and plans to host a similar event for the upcoming vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, but club leaders have bigger plans to assist with get-out-the-vote efforts ahead of the November vote.

“Our main focus is to hit the ground running on the immediate run-up to the election … just because of how important both the presidential, Senate, and control of the House elections are,” said Henry Pallesen ’25, co-president of Amherst College Democrats.

In addition to watch parties, the club plans to host a postcard writing event, organize phone-banks for campaigns, and partner with community organizations to get students involved with canvassing, potentially in a closely-contested congressional district in upstate New York.

The organization was last active in 2022 and primarily hosted watch parties and other events, with less of a focus on making impacts on elections.

“The leadership at the time … had other priorities, and then no one stepped in to fill the gap,” Pallesen said.

He and other current leaders had not been involved in the club in past semesters, but they felt an urgency to step up this fall.

“This past summer we realized that the people who were nominally in charge for the past years had graduated … with no succession plan.”

This semester, the group has gathered interest not only from students, but from “the administration and outside groups that want to help us and are motivated to do a lot of work to help Democrats and Harris,” Pallesen said.

“[We want] Amherst students to realize that [they] have the capabilities and skills to be able to work on political campaigns,” Pallesen said.

Amherst College Democrats also have ideas for after the election, including getting involved in local town politics.

Club leaders said that they are confident in the political energy in the student body.

“I think there’s a lot of infrastructure at the school and in this community that wants to have opportunities to get involved in politics,” said Isabella DePreist-Sullivan ’27, another co-president.