His middle school peers weren’t convinced the “playful and hilarious” superfan of Ariana Grande would make a good president. “He definitely proved them wrong,” says Rhagan McKie, a close friend and fellow seventh-grader. He won handily, and takes the job seriously — occasionally even donning suits in the halls.
At CJ’s house in an Augusta suburb, overlooking the lake, his parents were surprised to see a reporter show up on their doorstep. CJ had, apparently, forgotten to tell them. But his parents — two Democrats, at that — seem used to CJ running his own show. “My husband goes, ‘Well, I think he’s just doing this for now,’” Robin Pearson said. As for her? “I told him, ‘You’re a child. You’ve got to run slow.’” Like many moms, CJ’s plays chauffeur plenty. Only instead of shuttling him between swim practice and quiz team, it’s 8 a.m. breakfast meetings. He devotes at least 40 hours a week to political business — as soon as he gets home from school, it’s straight to the telephones to agitate legislators.
Democratic backgrounds aside, it’s arguably the Pearsons’ family history that led CJ to the right. The son of a retired sergeant major, CJ remembers his political awakening taking place in 2008. He was in the second grade. John McCain’s story of military service and his prisoner-of-war days captivated him. Obviously, he took the opposite stance from what some would expect a young black boy to adopt. “I didn’t look at it as a race thing,” he said. “For me, it was more about who really cared about your country.” He stands his ground on the “not a race thing” mantra, including over Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri: “I was on Officer Wilson’s side.”
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