Signer '95 launches bid for Virginia lieutenant governorship

Since his graduation, Signer has served as a political strategist or policy adviser to a governor, a congressman and two presidential candidates. But now the politics concentrator is throwing his own hat into the political ring, launching a bid to become Virginia’s next lieutenant governor.

“I’m running because very simply … I wanted to come home and make a difference at a time when so many of my peers are trying to go into the federal government,” Signer said in an interview last week with The Daily Princetonian.

Signer, a Democrat, currently serves as a national security policy fellow at Third Way, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“I think that economic opportunity and reinvestment are absolutely essential to getting government right to Virginians in the short term and in the long term,” Signer said, adding that strengthening his state’s economy was the cause he took most to heart.

Signer was involved in government during his days at Princeton. In addition to his time on the U-Council, Signer was vice president of the College Democrats and started a chapter of a rainforest protection group on campus.

During his first run for U-Councilor, Signer said in the USG Election Guide in an April 1993 issue of the ‘Prince’ that he understood students’ frustration that the USG “doesn’t do a damn thing.”

“The administration’s biggest problem is it doesn’t know anything about what undergraduates really think and feel,” he said. “Trust me, on the U-Council, I will make our concerns known by the faculty and administration.”

Former politics professor George Kateb, who was Signer’s thesis adviser, said he is not surprised that his former student is seeking political office.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he’s repeatedly shown an interest in political participation,” Kateb said. “He doesn’t scare, he doesn’t become irritable, he has composure. I think he’d make a fine public official.”

Kateb said that Signer’s thesis, “Performance, Politics, and the Self,” argued that political campaigns are like performances in that each candidate is forced to put on a show and receives some pleasure simply from “being active in political life apart from getting an agenda successfully in place.” The thesis received an A, and Signer got an A-plus on his comprehensive examination, something “almost unheard of,” Kateb added.

“He is one of the best students that I’ve ever taught,” Kateb said. “He’s very impressive, he’s dynamic, and it would be great if he were to win his election.”

Though Signer said that “people don’t really care” about where he went to college, he also said that his Princeton education instilled in him values that continue to influence his political career.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“The sense of obligation and purpose that the school … gives its alumni has been very powerful in my whole life,” Signer said. He added that two of his Princeton classmates shot his first campaign ad.

Virginia’s lieutenant governor has very few enumerated duties, Signer said, and too often the position has been “treated … as a placeholder.” Signer said that, as lieutenant governor, he wants to be a public advocate by sitting on or creating commissions that would recommend legislation. He said he also wants to establish a program for veterans to help other veterans readjust after returning from the battlefield.

“I told this idea to a 20-year army veteran,” Signer explained, “and he said the hairs on the back of his neck just stood up.”

In 2004, Signer served as an associate communications director and the Virginia state director of Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign. He also served as a foreign policy adviser to John Edwards during his 2008 bid for the White House.

“He brings a lot of knowledge to the table,” said Frankie Sturm, communications director for the Truman Project National Security Project, where Signer is a principal.

Signer noted that in the 2008 presidential election there was a fervent volunteerism among voters and that he hoped to channel that volunteerism if he becomes lieutenant governor.

“I think it’s absolutely clear that there’s a tremendous hunger for new leaders who will leave behind the battles of the past,” he said.

Signer is likely to face businessman Jon Bowerbank, Virginia Beach School Board member Pat Edmonson, political consultant Rich Savage and former state finance secretary Jody Wagner in the June 9 Democratic primary.

The winner of that battle will face either sitting Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling or attorney Patrick Muldoon — the candidates for the Republican nomination — in the general election on Nov. 3.