Early last year, a conservative lawyer and activist named Candice Jackson went to work for Donald Trump, taking an acting role at the head of the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. Jackson is a sexual assault survivor who's married to a woman, and some of the president's critics hoped those facts meant the Trump administration might do a better job protecting the rights of sexual assault survivors and LGBTQ people on campus than they had feared. Jena Hatch investigated how that turned out. We asked her about her piece.
What interested you about Candice Jackson?
I wanted to know how she became who she is now, both personally and politically. I was interested in her education and what she did after college, what made her feel so connected to conservative and libertarian groups and what made her stick to those groups so closely, considering her background.
She's this conservative powerhouse who has had her hands in so many major political moments, from Bill Clinton's affairs to the Trump campaign. When I looked at how she presents herself — often standing or sitting quietly to the side of more notable public figures — and then how she actually conducts herself to accomplish what she wants to accomplish, it sometimes felt like I was looking at two different people. So I wanted to get to know her as a whole person.
What was the hardest thing about reporting, writing or editing this piece?
The hardest part was not having access to her and those closest to her. Her family was so interesting to me. They are so interested in being a part of conservative celebrity culture — from her Dad's Fox News country concert to her brothers being in a Christian rock band and all that. I thought they might be interested in talking to me. I would have loved to hear about all of their careers, how they became who they ended up being, too, and what Candice's place was in this family of pseudo-celebrities.
It was also difficult to get sources to talk about what things were like at the the Office of Civil Rights under Jackson's leadership. I think that speaks to how polarized the department must be in transitioning from Obama's administration to Trump's.
What did you find that most surprised you?
I was gobsmacked to find out she was married to a Clinton supporter. I would have loved to talk to her wife, Patty, a lifelong Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Jackson discussed Hillary Clinton in the absolute harshest, most critical terms in her 2005 book, and then again in the media blitz that she orchestrated after the second presidential debate. She put her career as an attorney on hold to fight tooth and nail to make sure Clinton lost the election.
How did you think about the decision to include your personal story in the piece?
I had no plans to include a personal element in this piece until my phone call with professor William Anderson, who knew Candice after she graduated from law school when they worked together at the Mises Institute. We talked a lot about her controversial campus rape comments in The New York Times last summer.
He said that "real survivors" are women like his wife, who was raped at knifepoint. I remember breaking out in a cold sweat and feeling incredibly nauseous while he said this. About three months before this phone call, I'd been sexually assaulted in a bar bathroom while I was drunk. Of course, he couldn't have known that. But I went home and journaled about the conversation as a therapeutic exercise, and a version of that journal entry ended up being the conclusion of the piece. I hadn't written or talked about that publicly, so I grappled with it before we published. I ultimately thought it was important to include.
What do you want readers to take away from this piece?
People in positions of power are as nuanced, complicated and layered as the rest of us, and it's important to look at public figures as whole people. But they also all need to be held accountable when they use their positions of power to eliminate the rights of vulnerable people.
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