I hope to make a positive, productive contribution, as cheesy as that may sound.

I hope to make a positive, productive contribution, as cheesy as that may sound.

I just hope that I will be as good a mom to my child, and hopefully children, as my mom was to me.

The solid, middle-class values of hard work, responsibility, family, community, and faith my father talked about tirelessly from Iowa to New York, he lived at home. The hopes he had for his family and for me, he had for all Americans. I think Americans understood this.

That's who my mom is. She's a listener and a doer. She's a woman driven by compassion, by faith, by a fierce sense of justice and a heart full of love. So, this November, I'm voting for a woman who is my role model, as a mother, and as an advocate. A woman who has spent her entire life fighting for families and children.

My parents have been incredibly supportive from perhaps the first real independent decision I made to become a vegetarian at 11, which was certainly not consistent with their diet at the time.

My parents were definitely on the incentive side of parenting. Like, they told me that my father had learned to read when he was three. So, of course, I thought I had to, too.