AFSCME Convention Delegate has Connection to President

by Joye Barksdale  |  September 05, 2012

Ed Hasegawa (Photo by Fred Watkins)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Ed Hasegawa, an HGEA Local 152 retiree elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, has an unusual link to Pres. Barack Obama: Hasegawa attended the University of Hawaii with the President’s father, Barack Obama, Sr. They even took a class together – public speaking.

He’s never met President Obama, but being part of the 2012 convention gives him the chance to show his enthusiastic support for the President’s re-election campaign.

This year’s convention is the fourth for Hasegawa, a retired school administrator. The choice of North Carolina – a “right-to-work-for-less” state –  as host of the Democratic Convention is a reminder of how important the election is for him.

“If Mitt Romney is elected, we might have a national right-to-work-for-less law, and then the whole country would be like North Carolina. We’ve got to make sure he doesn’t win.”

The daily caucuses for AFSCME delegates are among the highlights of the convention experience for Hasegawa because the delegates hear from progressive leaders, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chair of the Democratic National Convention. At the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, one of the guest speakers was Neil Abercrombie, then a U.S. senator, now Hawaii’s governor. “That was a real big deal for me,” Hasegawa said.

But an even more powerful moment came listening to then-Illinois State Senator Obama’s keynote speech at the 2004 convention in Boston.

Says Hasegawa: “When I heard him back then, I knew: I was listening to the next President.”