Hannah Hendrickson has been fascinated by politics since, as a little girl, she was caught up in the drama of national politics as she listened to her grandmother and father. So it seemed no stretch when the American Legion Auxiliary chose her as one of its delegates to Minnesota Girls State, the premier youth citizenship program the group has sponsored for the past 69 summers.
That was the beginning. Hannah – knowledgeable and outspoken – thrived during her week in St. Paul, as girls from around the state organized city, county and state governments, then debated issues that mattered and guided their bills through the mock legislature. Early on, the Moorhead teen was elected Senate minority leader of the Nationals, one of the two parties in the nonpartisan exercise. While the bill her contingent championed (advocating more comprehensive sex education) passed the Senate and the House by overwhelming margins, it was ultimately vetoed by the Girls State governor.
But that wasn’t the end: At week’s end, Hannah was selected to attend Girls Nation as Minnesota’s senior senator – the first Moorhead teenager to attend the famed national program. “I was Amy Klobuchar,” she points out with a grin. “She’s my hero.”
Hannah came home from Washington, D.C., Saturday after a whirlwind week, complete with tours of the Capital and Supreme Court and meetings with both Minnesota senators’ staffs (in lieu of their bosses, who were at the convention in Philadelphia). She promptly headed off to Concordia for this week’s All-State Band Camp. In the meantime, she took a few minutes to reflect on the once-in-a-lifetime experience of participating in the Legion Auxiliary’s week-long tutorial in good citizenship and the American way.
The intense political boot camp, she says, was eye-opening. Immersed in the nonpartisan educational program, she played an active role in the intense, realistic exercise of life in the U.S. Capitol … working and vying with a hundred other young women whose backgrounds and perspectives were much different from her own.
“Politics is not what I thought it was,” she muses. “It’s way, way more complicated.” She cited parliamentary procedure as one of those revelations.
“But the real surprise, for me, came from getting to know the other people. At Girls State here in Minnesota, we all had a lot in common – at Girls Nation, not so much,” she says. “I came to realize we’d all grown up with very different experiences and so many different assumptions. All those fresh ideas!”
Hannah, who begins her senior year next month, credits her late grandmother Claire Hendrickson of Warroad with whetting her appetite for politics. “I remember watching the ‘Election Countdown’ with her when I was about eight,” she says. “I got to her and my father them argue.” She says her grandmother, a true Hubert Humphrey liberal who chaired the DFL Party in Roseau County, made sure she understood that, as a woman, she had a voice shouldn’t be silenced.
Hannah’s father, Chuck Hendrickson, continues that family tradition, serving on the Moorhead City Council. He and her mother Renae also have three sons, Marty, 16; Max, 7; and Gavin, 3. At Moorhead High, she’s active in the stellar speech program. She has played French horn since 6th grade, now performing with the Fargo Moorhead Area Youth Symphony. The incoming senior class president has also taken part in Knowledge Bowl and the Metro Area Student Ambassadors, who sponsor Fill the Dome.
Hannah describes her time at Girls Nation, first of all, as hectic and very fast-paced. Her National Party once again elected her Senate minority leader (“I got to be Harry Reid, too!”). She served on the subcommittee for foreign policy, arguing that economic sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Russia have not worked. She and the minority whip led her party on the Senate floor. One of its bills passed; this time around, the president signed it.
“I realized that young people are politically way more in the middle than I would have thought,” she reports. “A lot of us are over the issues that older people are still debating, thought – gay marriage, abortion and most of the social issues. Transgender bathrooms just aren’t an issue. A lot of the people I met just want to move on to economic issues.”
Though Girls Nation doesn’t reflect partisan politics, she says her peers’ personal beliefs represented both modern parties. Of the Democrats, she notes, “there were a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters.” The Republicans generally shied away from social issues, expressing fiscally conservative view. “They actually leaned more toward the libertarian end of the spectrum,” she says. “I only met one girl who supported Trump.”
Though Hannah is eager to get more involved in political life, she’s unsure of the course she’ll follow after graduation. She’s applying to a variety of colleges to see what options lie ahead; the University of Chicago is a current favorite. She envisions studying political science, law and perhaps journalism. Her career goal? “A lawyer,” she says. “Maybe a political satirist.”
What has Girls Nation taught her? Many things, but here’s one of the most important: “There are really cool opportunities like this out there, if you want them. You just have to keep looking for them.”
And this: “People need to stop putting women into little boxes.”
