Early last year, Kevin Oyakawa made local headlines when the then 20-year-old North Central student announced his bid to run on the Democratic ticket for the Dupage County Board in District 5.
Despite his age and lack of experience, the junior political science and economics major was gathering endorsements from community leaders and elected officials such as state Sen. Tom Cullerton and state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia.
Oyakawa was ready to ride what he saw as a local Democratic wave that had won six of eight seats in 2017 in the usually Republican Naperville and Lisle townships. His platform focused on the area’s handling of the opioid epidemic as well as green energy and public school equity.
Now, just a month away from the Illinois primary elections, Oyakawa should be knocking on doors and beginning to put up yard signs to build his name recognition. However, when voters mark their ballots in March, they will not find his name.
On the candidate filing deadline in December, Oyakawa had a similar experience when he saw his name absent from the list of candidates on the newly posted sample ballots.
“It was heartbreaking really,” says Oyakawa. “I had to make up for my inexperience through my energy, and I put all that energy into building up the campaign and building momentum (and) just to have it taken away on a technicality was really saddening.”
The technicality was an error on his petition forms which he had been delivering door to door while pitching himself and his platform to the community. Since it was already the day of the deadline there was no way for him to fix it.
“At that point I knew there was nobody to blame but myself,” says Oyakawa. He was aware before the ballots were submitted that there may be an issue, but decided against checking with a lawyer.
It took him a few weeks before breaking the bad news to his supporters and those who had endorsed him, but he found that generally people were sympathetic.
“Most of them understood that I’m a 21-year-old college student so mistakes do happen,” says Oyakawa. “And that being only 21 years old it won’t be too difficult to build myself back up again.”
He admits, however, that there still are some phone calls he needs to make about the race, “just to give them a bit of closure.”
For Oyakawa, for the first time in a year the road ahead looks pretty unclear, but he’s still optimistic for the future. The Akron, Ohio, native still has more than a year of school left at North Central and can take his time working with grassroots campaigns in the community and building up his resume before deciding to embark on another campaign.
Until then, he plans to volunteer in local campaigns. Oyakawa is also involved in the College Democrats at NCC as well as serving as political director for the College Democrats of Illinois.
“(I’m) just finding out ways I can make an impact in the community without being an elected official,” he says. “The only thing I think the younger generation needs to find is the audacity to just show up.”
Despite his recent setbacks, Oyakawa does believe that another opportunity to run for office will come his way in the future. “Now,” Oyakawa says, “I’m going to actually be able to come back with the experience that people said that I lacked before, and I’ll be a lot better candidate.”
