“I just wanted you to know what you said to me that day really did feel different.” One conversation. 4,500 voters. This is MGR Govindarajan’s story of what happens when local government and students show up for each other.

Transcript:

Talia: UW-Madison students turn out in high numbers for presidential elections. But local races, the ones that shape housing, buses and street lighting, are a different story. MGR Govindarajan is a UW-Madison student who felt like government wasn’t functioning and believed he could change that at the local level. So in 2023, he ran for District 8 alder, the seat representing much of the campus area on the City of Madison Common Council.

MGR: I wanna give students the ability to feel like they have a voice, because right now I feel pretty voiceless and maybe this is a way to fix it.

Talia: During his campaign, he knocked on roughly 4,000 doors, talking to students about the issues the city can actually do something about.

Talia: Most people took a flyer and kept walking. But occasionally someone stopped. One conversation with a student in a residence hall stuck with him. On Election Day, that same student tracked him down and said:

MGR: I just wanted you to know what you said to me that day really did feel different, and I just did just go vote for you.

Talia: But that student wasn’t the only one. In a district where no previous race had ever drawn more than 1,200 total voters, 4,500 people showed up on Election Day in 2023. Govindarajan won. But he wasn’t done reaching out. In his first year in office, he sent students a survey on the housing crisis. Within 72 hours, he received more responses than the city council had ever gotten in such a short amount of time.

MGR: Out of these 1,700 Google Form responses and 300 emails, half of these are illegal. Like landlords are just blatantly breaking the law.

Talia: The city had never had that data before. Because students showed up, government finally knew what it was dealing with. Policies changed. Zoning changed. That is what local government looks like when both sides show up for each other. Govindarajan is now stepping down and the 2026 race for his seat is already drawing candidates. What he wants whoever runs next to understand is that this is not about one alder or one election. It is about the students.

MGR: My constituents are voting in elections for the first time in their lives. So, if you can give them a reason to keep doing it by showing them the best of what government and politics could be, then that is what they will be fighting for for the rest of their life.