Aidan Blain elected as Y&G Youth Governor

On Feb. 15, Samo student Aidan Blain (’20) won the election for youth governor of California, trumping 29 other candidates. This means he will be overseeing the 3,500 students in California’s Youth and Government. Blain thinks that having a Samo student as youth governor will give Samo a voice in Youth and Government and the state legislature. It will allow for topics that specifically relate to Samo to be brought to attention and addressed. “It gives Samo another level of recognition, especially within Youth and Government because a lot of the time Samo is overlooked since we are a smaller delegation, but the fact that we now have a Samo youth governor puts Samo on the map,” Blain said. In addition, Owen Halpert (’20), Hannah Skikne (’20) and Blain, were selected from California’s division of Youth and Government to go on a trip in order to be a part of the Conference on National Affairs. Only 25 people get to participate in this conference out of the California’s entire division, and three Samo students will be there to represent our delegation. Youth and Government is a model legislature and court program, in which 3,500 kids from across California participate. Every YMCA in California has a delegation that houses the children from that area.Blain’s first actions as youth governor will be to represent people who are underrepresented in the program. Two ways he will do this are to give small delegations a voice and lower the cost of the program. In order to achieve these goals he will expand alumni outreach in order to get more donations which would allow the program to charge less per participant. He will also implement a ranked voting system to represent both the big and small delegation candidates. He would like more students to join, and to accomplish that he needs to lower the cost and appeal to the public. Currently, he is working with an outside organization to create a legislative day which would mean that bills from Youth and Government would have the chance to become California state legislation. He is trying to achieve this in the next few months, before his first conference as governor, so that he follows through with his campaign promises. In order to earn this position, Blain gained the majority vote at the Youth and Government conference in Fresno, CA, which advanced him to the next round consisting of the final three candidates. He then won the vote in Sacramento, CA, which narrowed the election down to him and Piper Samuels from Culver City High School. Each delegation cast their votes individually and all 3,500 students in the program voted. Blain ultimately won by 424 votes.