Julia Nall is someone who knows what she wants.
Nall, who graduated from Bryant High School in May, was a busy person while in high school, and that will help her as she continues to grow in this world.
Nall helped organize the first Bryant High School Young Democrats club, was the editor of the Bryant High School newspaper and played drums in the Bryant High School Marching Band. She was also recently elected as the national committeewoman for the Young Democrats of Arkansas. This doesn’t surprise Nall’s former teacher Shawn Regan.
Regan, who teaches Advanced Placement English at Bryant, is the sponsor for both the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans at Bryant High School.
“[Julia Nall] is the most driven student that I have ever had,” Regan said. “I’ve had some unbelievable kids who have gone to Ivy League [schools] and were also unbelievable athletes.”
Nall got the Young Democrats going at Bryant prior to her junior year, the 2015-16 school year. She said she became a fan of the Democratic Party when she was in elementary school.
“I’ve always been really interested in politics,” she said. “In third grade, I wrote a love letter to Al Gore. I watched An Inconvenient Truth and thought it was the greatest thing. I wrote two letters that day. One was to Al Gore, telling him that I loved him and I was very sorry that I voted for George W. Bush in our mock election in kindergarten. I lived in Texas at the time.
“Then I wrote a letter to George Bush telling him that the way we did insurance was unfair and that my grandmother, with pre-existing conditions, should receive good coverage. Basically, I invented Obamacare. So, I’ve always loved politics.”
During her time at Bryant High School, Nall said, she got away from politics for a while.
“I got involved in band, which was great, but then I got involved with Model United Nations, which really sparked my interest in politics again,” she said. “I did Model U.N. my sophomore year, and I started Young Democrats my junior year.”
Nall said she wanted to help organize the Young Democrats group with her friend Emma Goad because she saw a lot of liberal-minded students, and they needed a way to express themselves.
“We were coming up on an election year, and there are tons of volunteer opportunities,” she said. “I looked into starting Young Democrats so we could provide a place to talk and have opportunities. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
Regan said Nall was always heading up something in high school.
“She’s always leading something, being the voice of an organization, marching, fighting for a cause,” he said. “This girl just has a myriad of ideas. It wasn’t here is what I’d like to do. … [It was] here is what we’re going to do. She really led the way.
“Her networking skills are unbelievable. She has congressmen and senators on speed dial. When I was in high school, I might not have been able to name all the congressmen from Arkansas. She can call them. She’s motivated and passionate. There are not enough adjectives to describe what I think about her.”
Regan also said that Nall was a role model for his daughter Jewell.
“Julia’s senior year was my daughter’s freshman year,” Regan said. “In grades nine to 12, they could join some of the same clubs. My daughter joined Young Democrats. Julia was a huge role model for my daughter. Jewell will tell you that of Julia … she became a fan. She would sit and listen.
“For my daughter to have a female role model in school, that was big for me. Julia has done more that just impacted the community or school or her peers. She had no problem reaching down to a ninth-grader and talking to her and showing her the ropes. I just appreciate that. She’s not a selfish leader. She’s always tried to pull others in.”
When Nall wanted to start the Young Democrats chapter at Bryant, she said the administration at Bryant was “great.”
She approached principal Jay Pickering about the group.
I was ready to walk in and put up a fight,” she said. “I just knew I was in the middle of rural Arkansas, and I was trying to start a liberal organization. So I wrote out a speech, wrote out the constitution. I had it signed by teachers and students who supported it. I thought I was going into a battle. I walk in, sit down in his office and tell him that I would like to start a Young Democrats club. Before I could say anything else, he said, ‘I’ll sign off on it.’”
When Nall decided to get involved with politics, she thought it was all about the national level.
“I really underestimated the role of local politics,” she said. “I was so focused on the national level, but things that really affect us are the city council, the county level and the state Legislature. I didn’t realize that. So I got involved with the Saline County Democratic Party. I didn’t realize how important the party is in everyday politics.”
While working with the Young Democrats of Arkansas, she took interest in the annual caucuses that are held at the spring convention.
“That is when I learned about leadership positions,” she said. “I got really involved in the Women’s Caucus and the Stonewall Caucuses. Those two are the most active.”
She decided to run for national committeewoman, who would represent the Arkansas Young Democrats at the national convention in August. She was elected in April.
“I really thought, going in, that I wanted to be the vice chair for the Women’s Caucus,” Nall said. “I took on the national committeewoman, which turned out to be the perfect fit for me. I love it.”
By holding that position, Nall is on the executive committee for the state Young Democrats.
“I am the female representative to the National Young Democrats of America,” she said.
The convention is Aug. 9-12 in Dallas.
“I will be representing Arkansas, voting on the new chapters, the new caucus members, talking about national issues for Young Democrats,” she said. “I’m kind of like a stepping stone between the individuals and the Young Democrats of America.”
While getting involved in the political process, Nall was not old enough to vote in the 2016 presidential election, but she turned 18 in January.
“It was hard [not being able to vote],” she said. “I think I pushed myself harder to work on the campaigns because I spent a lot of time working on that when Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters opened in Little Rock. The whole Bryant Young Democrats did. We spent a lot of time campaigning. We did a ton of voter registration.
“I think not being able to vote really motivated me to push hard, but there was a benefit from it.”
However, the first election that Nall was able to vote in was a special election in March for a millage increase for the Bryant School District.
“I knew if the millage did not pass, there is no way I’d change my voter registration [when attending college],” she said. “I would stay registered in Saline County so I could vote for the Bryant millage. That political event is what I’m most passionate about. That is probably the most important thing I will ever vote for in my life.”
Voters approved the 3.6-millage increase by almost 1,600 votes. A special election in 2015 failed by eight votes.
“I remember when it failed my sophomore year by eight votes, people were crying at school the next day,” Nall said.
When deciding where to go to college, Nall originally planned to attend Abilene Christian University in
Texas. She was all set to study journalism.
“I loved journalism, and I still do,” she said. “I loved writing, photography. I was going to be a journalism major; then the election happened.”
She said Arkansas House Bill 1249, the campus-carry legislation, helped convince her that journalism wasn’t in her future.
“I was reporting a lot on that for the Bryant High School paper and writing about campus carry,” Nall said. “With those events, I realized very quickly that I was not comfortable. I just can’t stay behind the scenes. I want to be the person up there debating. I want to be the person up there making the legislation.”
She said she woke up one morning in January and decided she wasn’t going to be a journalist.
“Without really talking to anyone about it, including my parents, I texted the admissions counselor at Abilene Christian and said, ‘I’m not going to your school.’” Nall said. “I then committed to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I told my parents a little while later.”
Nall had never visited the campus in Fayetteville before making her decision.
“It’s really going to be a great environment for me,” she said. “One thing that I was upset about going to Texas is that I’m very involved in Arkansas politics. I’ve started networking [in Northwest Arkansas]. I love talking about the issues here. I was upset that I was going to have to start all over in a much larger state. Going to the University of Arkansas, I’m able to keep those connections.”
Nall plans to double-major in in political science and international studies with a focus on international security.
“I’m taking Arabic and hoping to make that my minor if I can fit in all the credit hours,” she said.
Nall has a reason for taking Arabic.
“I immediately want to go to law school and focus on immigration law and constitutional law,” she said. “With the Trump administration’s executive orders on the Muslim travel ban, I see a really high need for lawyers who know immigration law who can speak Arabic, because that is a group that is severely underserviced with refugee populations or immigration populations.
“We need immigration lawyers who not only speak Arabic but understand the culture.”
With all that Nall is doing, she also has time to intern at the Democratic Party of Arkansas, where she is the director of social media for the party.
Nall met Jessica Sabin, the wife of state Rep. Warrick Sabin, D-Little Rock, at a town-hall meeting. Jessica Sabin is the communications director for the Arkansas Democratic Party. She is also a former Young Democrats national committeewoman.
“We met for coffee just to talk about Young Democrats,” Nall said. “We decided that I should be an intern for her department. After that, I starting coming to the headquarters. I’m there pretty much every day. [Sabin] decided to stick me on social media because she is so busy. There is no way she can handle it. She has more important things to do.”
Nall had plenty of experience handling social media for the Young Democrats at Bryant.
“Since my role as a national committeewoman, I won’t have a lot of large things to do with my elected office until convention in August,” she said. “I have been spending a little more time on the Democratic Party of Arkansas than I have been with Young Democrats. It’s been great. I love working for them.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.