Classnotes
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CLOSE-UP CLASS OF 2012
From Campus to the Campaign Trail Jon Zlotnik’s political aspirations may have taken root when he was in high school, but his first campaign got off the ground in his UMass Lowell dorm room. Zlotnik, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in history, ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. The Central Massachusetts district includes his hometown of Gardner as well as Ashburnham, Winchendon and part of Westminster. Driven by a desire to promote economic development in an area he says is struggling to
rebound from years of disinvestment, Zlotnik decided to run for the seat while he was still a college senior, deferring plans for law school. His suite at Sheehy Hall served as unofficial headquarters for the nascent campaign and his roommates were his first campaign volunteers. “We had everyone working together on an assembly line in the common rooms at Sheehy, putting together mailings,” he says. One of his roommates, Brad Heglin, who earned his bachelor’s degree in English in May, is Zlotnik’s campaign manager. The two have
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known each other since sixth grade and graduated from Gardner High School together. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” says Heglin, who is working on his master’s degree at the Graduate School of Education with a goal of becoming a high school English teacher. “It’s been a lot of fun.” On Nov. 6, Zlotnik, a Democrat, won the seat previously held by first-term incumbent Rep. Richard Bastien, a Republican from Gardner, in what was widely called an upset. —JG