About Trojan Democrats
The Trojan Democrats have had a long and proud history at the University of Southern California dating back to almost the founding of the University itself
Early Beginnings - Organization History
The first recorded instance of our club was in 1912 when Trojans rallied around the candidacy of New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson for President. In the 1920s, Trojans once again gathered to support the 1920 ticket of Governor James Cox of Ohio and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
However, it wasn’t until the late 1940s and 1950s that the club began to attain prominence. During this time, members who reinvigorated the club later became some of California’s biggest political influences. These members included Jesse M. Unruh, who went on to become Speaker of the California State Assembly and the late Joe Cerrell, a political consultant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
While the Club has changed names several times over the course of the decades (the Wilsonites, the Cox-Roosevelt Club, Trojan Democrats, USC College Democrats, then back to Trojan Democrats) it has consistently been a force of political activism and engagement on this campus. As a result, USC has drawn many notable figures to speak, including then-Senator John F. Kennedy, President Gerald Ford, Senator Al Franken, and President Barack Obama.
In recent years, the USC College Democrats have fought to elect Democrats on almost every government level. Though USC carries a stereotype of being a center-right campus, there are actually more registered Democrats than Republicans since the mid-1990s under University President Steven B. Sample.
