Fred Karger

When I was growing up in Glencoe, a bedroom suburb north of Chicago, I didn’t quite fit in. I looked like the other kids, but I was different. I wasn’t a good athlete, nor a good student and used to spend a lot of time in the principal’s office. I was gay and trying to figure things out.

When I was eight I helped my father hand out campaign brochures to commuters at the Glencoe train station. We’d also go door-to-door on the same mission. I liked it a lot.

In 1964, when I was fourteen, I heard about a Republican business executive who lived nearby running for governor of Illinois, Charles Percy. I called his headquarters to volunteer.

They told me to report to the campaign office in No Man’s Land, an unincorporated area smack dab between Wilmette and Kenilworth. I’d hop on my bike and pedal the five miles each way down Sheridan Road every weekend.

They assigned me to the basement to run the postage machine, sweep up, and do whatever odd jobs a kid could do in the small headquarters. Percy lost the race to Otto Kerner, but I discovered my passion – something that I was good at and loved.

At 16, I volunteered on his race for U.S. Senate in 1966. This time Percy won, defeating incumbent Paul Douglas by over ten percentage points.

In 1972, after graduating college, I worked full time on the Senator’s reelection campaign. He won that one by a landslide.

The thrill of those early days led me to a three-decade career as a political consultant.

And then?  That confused kid from Glencoe became the first openly gay candidate to run for President of the United States, when I sought the GOP nomination in 2012.