Yesterday morning, Agxibel Barajas greeted me from the front page of our local paper, The Desert Sun.  Agxibel is the office manager and scheduler for Manuel Perez, the powerful progressive Democratic candidate for California’s  80th Assembly District.  We’re going to lose her in the fall when she heads to law school, and that’s going to hurt.  She and Manuel go way back:

Six years ago, Agxibel Barajas was asked what she wanted to do with her life.

“Her response was: ‘I hope to be the first woman president of the United States,'” said Manuel Perez, who at the time was a field representative for Assembly candidate Joey Acuña.

Barajas had arrived at his office wanting to volunteer her services for Acuña’s campaign.

Six years later, the Coachella native is featured in a documentary by “Mad, Hot Ballroom” writer Amy Sewell that attempts to get people talking about why the United States has yet to elect a female president.

Coachella resident Agxibel Barajas, 22, took part in CosmoGirl magazine’s Project 2024, which gave Barajas the opportunity to intern with Merrill Lynch for eight weeks and led her to be a part of the documentary “What’s Your Point, Honey?” The documentary looks at women in politics. She was photographed in her home Monday in Coachella. (Marilyn Chung, The Desert Sun)

Agxibel rocks, but it took this article for me to get a better idea of her accomplishments, because she downplayed this when we talked about it the night before the primary.  This campaign is rich in excellent people like Agxibel, just doing their part to restore California and change America.  Of course, most of us aren’t quite this young!  With women like this coming up, we’re going to be just fine.

“My parents were farmworkers for a long time. I’m a first-generation college student,” she said.

Eyes on the Oval Office?

Does she really want to run for president someday?

“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t,” she said. “I’m not going to say no because you never know.”

Barajas is no newcomer to politics.  She volunteered for Acuña’s campaign, and is now working for Perez’s 80th Assembly District seat campaign as his office manager/scheduler.

Perez said he has no doubt she will succeed at whatever she decides to do.

“She’s going to do a lot of great things in her future,” he said. “She’s very effective in what she does, very efficient, very thorough in her work, and definitely a leader for others in the community.”

Crossposted at dKos