Proft Makes Key Campaign Hire
LFHS graduate excited to help Illinois gubernatorial candidate
September 3, 2009
Dan Proft
By LINDA BLASER lblaser@pioneerlocal.com
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Proft pledges to clean up Illinois government and thinks Blake Dvorak, a 1998 graduate of Lake Forest High School, can help him achieve the top leadership role in the state.
Running a “policy-oriented” campaign, Proft said one of the positions that he knew would be important to his run for governor would be policy director. Proft chose Dvorak as the person to communicate policies to voters and the media.
“I take writing and communication of ideas very seriously,” said Proft, a Northwestern University graduate. “I needed a person who took that equally seriously and had the requisite skills.”
Formerly an editorial writer for The Washington Times and a reporter for RealClearPolitics.com, Dvorak said he never thought he would be working on a campaign rather than reporting on it. But Proft’s ideology struck a chord with the conservative journalist.
“I would not have chosen to work for a campaign if I would not be able to advance ideas I care passionately about,” said Dvorak, 29. “I knew this was going to be a non-political campaign in the sense of trying to decide what message works and what message does not work and to push it and take it as far as we can take it. That appealed to me as a conservative journalist.”
Married and living in Chicago, Dvorak grew up in Lake Forest and speaks with pride of his “public school kid” background, having attended Cherokee, Deerpath Middle School and LFHS
Newspaper column
After graduating from LFHS, Dvorak attended Vanderbilt University. It was there that Dvorak started writing a column for the university’s newspaper in his senior year.
“I always wanted to be a writer,” Dvorak said. “And I was always interested in politics. It took a while to put writing and politics together.”
Growing up and attending school in Lake Forest helped shape Dvorak’s interests today.
“My biggest inspiration growing up was my father and the library he had,” Dvorak said of his dad, Darrell Dvorak. “And in high school, I had a wonderful AP (advanced placement) U.S. history teacher Dr. (Sam) Bell.”
Dvorak described Bell’s class as “one of the best courses I’ve ever had in high school or college. It was one of most challenging courses I’ve ever had.”
An English teacher his freshman year at LFHS also “vividly nurtured my love for writing early on,” Dvorak recalled.
Knowingly bucking a trend, Dvorak said he’s in an age group that is first starting to get interested in politics, an interest he’s had for years.
But working for a campaign is something that was never on his radar.
“If you asked me a year ago if I would be working on a campaign, I would’ve said, ‘No way,’” Dvorak said. “But something like this, with Dan, this is doing it the way I think it should be done.”
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