Frank Cirillo isn’t your typical candidate.

He rides a motorcycle and built his own campaign website. A 21-year-old recent University of South Florida graduate, he’s running for Florida’s State Senate District 23, one of two democrats in the race. Unravel caught up with Frank to discuss his interests, why he’s running, how he wants to improve Sarasota.

Why are you running?

I’m doing this because I want to inspire people our age to be involved in whatever field they’re choosing to get into. I think we have a lot of good insights. I want to change politics and make it more reflective of our generation whether that means integrating technology into government so it’s quicker, more responsive to the people or making legislative tracking easier. Our generation is more comfortable with traveling. Government is so normally conducive to people staying in one state, and so many people of our generation want to travel the world. They’re not necessarily looking to settle down and literally stay in Florida for the rest of their lives. It’s important to have a government that’s flexible to people moving in and out of the state.

When did you first get interested in politics?

2008 watching President Obama get elected. It was a pivotal moment, and I think it’s going to be a historical moment in history. That really got me interested because I was in eighth grade taking civics class then, so we debated and talked about the presidential elections. And going into high school, I interned at a public defender’s office my sophomore year and I got really involved with more legal stuff. I did teen court for two years and Model UN. So I was really interested in policy making. But it wasn’t until college where I interned in the State Senate my freshman year that I got interested in state politics.

When did your family move to Sarasota?

I was born in Plantation (Florida). They moved to Sarasota before kindergarten. I stayed here until fifth grade and then we moved. I moved 15 times in the state of Florida; my dad was in building construction; I’m just a native Floridian. I’m not really from anywhere, but I really knew that I liked the Sarasota area and my mom lives here. She’s a teacher now at my old elementary school, Ashton Elementary School. When I knew I wanted to graduate, I knew it would either be move here where mom is or move to Jacksonville where dad is.

When did you get your motorcycle?

February of this year. I can’t afford a car. It was $2,500. It was cheap. Florida doesn’t require insurance on motorcycles so it’s really affordable and coming out of college and my job right now is campaigning, I’m not getting paid for that. I needed something cheap to get around.

How did you balance campaigning and school?

There was definitely an idealized version of what I thought I could do while being in school. I was in an honors program, which made me graduate in three years. I had to write a thesis, and the thesis was 42 pages long and it ended up being seven drafts and that took a lot more time than I thought. I also was a little naive about how much consultants would charge for their services. Before I had everything concrete, because I announced during spring break, the consultants’ estimate came in way above what I was able to afford or what I thought it would be. And they were planning on doing the website, so I at that point I couldn’t use them because I didn’t have the money. So I coded my own website, and I am not a computer designer and I didn’t study that. It took me basically all of spring break, which is when I was planning to do my campaign kickoff and get signatures all that week.

What was it like coding your own website?

It was a learning experience, but I think our generation is really used to learning new things. I think that’s just where millennials are right now. We like to do new things, and I didn’t really have too much of a problem with it. I pretty much figured it out. It still doesn’t look as nice as a professionally done website but I’m pretty proud of it considering I did basically all of it. It’s been a learning experience. I would say this whole campaign has been a learning experience. Even though I worked on a campaign before, it’s definitely different being the candidate. It’s a lot more stress, but what I lack in money and expertise I have in time and energy. I wake up seven or eight o’clock in the morning and don’t go to bed until three in the morning. I spend all my time on this campaign so hopefully that shows my dedication.

What’s a fun fact about you?

One thing is really nerdy and the other is about me. The nerdy thing is I’m related to Obama. My grandma’s a genealogist. She’s taken my lineage back to the first families of the United States, and I think I’m his eighth cousin once removed through our mothers’ sides. The gentleman came over on the thirteenth voyage of the Mayflower, and we have the same lineage all the way back.

The other thing is I like to surf. There’s not as many waves on the west coast of Florida. There are waves sometimes. I surf at my grandparents’ house in Fort Pierce, and then I surf in Jacksonville at my dad’s house. That’s like my me time. I haven’t surfed in a while just because having a motorcycle is not conducive to having a surf board. I’m really a board sports guy. I used to snowboard. In college, I longboarded everywhere. I like anything with a board really.

What your favorite drink?

Kentucky Mule. It’s ginger beer with bourbon or whiskey instead of vodka and a hit of lime juice. Or if it’s a really nice place they’ll actually squeeze the lime into it and then mix it up, and it’s served in a little copper mug.

What would you want to change in Sarasota?

There’s a lot of things I think need to be fixed. I would love to see better transportation alternatives, whether that’s light rail or just another transit option to get people around because we’re so reliant on cars and our road system here. Traffic is bad on Tamiami Trail. Really just alleviating congestion on roads is really important and mass transit is a lot safer than cars. That’s something that I’d like to see and something millennials are really passionate about.

— By Caitlin Ostroff, Herald-Tribune intern