John Anzalone is no stranger to uphill battles. He landed his first principal job at 32, and he bested a field of 43 applicants to land the top spot at Eldorado High School, where the graduation rate jumped up by 24 percentage points during his tenure.

Now at the helm of Sierra Vista High School, his latest challenge is running for Congress in a large field of viable Democratic contenders. He hopes to fill the 4th Congressional District seat held by departing Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen, and bring a principal’s pragmatic, consensus-building approach to a rule-making body plagued with gridlock.

“We don’t have the opportunity to choose to only work with one side of the aisle or another. We deal with what we face and we fix it, we handle it. Principals are very quick to be able to solve a problem but at the same time get the team together to make a decision,” said Anzalone, who describes himself as a moderate with progressive ideals. “That just makes me excited — to potentially go to Washington and have that opportunity to bring some of that civility back — that really gets me going.”

Anzalone, 41, hails from a big Italian family in Buffalo, New York. His dad worked construction — an unsteady job where the good times and the bad times ebbed and flowed depending on the snow.

“The one thing that I always wanted for myself and my future family is stability,” he said in an interview with The Nevada Independent. “And even people growing up, that I felt were powerful leaders weren’t necessarily the richest people in the community. They were the people who I could depend on, the people who my family could depend on, the people that followed through and brought consistency.”

His parents dreamed he would be a medical doctor — their ideal of success.

They eventually moved to Las Vegas, where he attended Chaparral High School and went on to study biology at UNLV. He struggled with the material.

But he had grown up playing baseball and had started coaching Little League. Soon, it clicked that he was good with kids, and he realized that he’d be better off majoring in education.

“After [my mom] shed some tears and realized her dream of having the doctor in the family was over, she did nothing else but support me in going into teaching, and that’s where I really found my niche,” said Anzalone, who later went on to get a master’s and a doctorate in education.

Partly in an effort to make up for her “lost dreams,” he said, he sought leadership positions as soon as he could. By 32, he was at the helm of the Cowan Behavioral School, becoming the youngest high school principal.

“It was a tough run,” he said of his time at the school, which takes in students who have been kicked out elsewhere for behavioral issues.

From there, he applied to and landed the principal job at Global Community High School, a small, diverse school focused on English learners that included students from more than 46 countries and the place where he was first exposed to the plight of DREAMers — young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally. He had a chance to work closely there with Democratic Rep. Dina Titus in that role.

“And that’s when I think I started getting the itch in the politics a little bit and maybe helping people on a bigger scale,” he said. “But I kind of put that aside because I think principal is tough enough. I didn’t really know if I needed to get into that yet.”

He pushed forward in the education realm, applying to be principal at Eldorado High School. He was one of 43 applicants.

“I really probably had no business applying. I was a young guy, still learning, but I went in and I just shared my story,” he said. “I think they saw that there was something there, some authenticity there of how I worked with kids and it was really a team effort to get these kids across the stage.”

Eldorado had a 46 percent graduation rate; he said he didn’t even know where to begin. His best-laid plans seemed inadequate for the situation, but he also didn’t want to pursue the “turnaround” model where schools receive an infusion of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but must fire half the staff and hire new people.

“What I realized right away was there was this hope,” he said. “There was this hope and there was a certain respect for educators in a community that was primarily Latino.”

The “magic dust,” as he calls it, was figuring out ways to get the kids excited to come to school each day. If there were clubs or programs that students wanted, he and his team were going to make it happen.

In three years, the graduation rate had jumped to about 70 percent. But after his third year there, he got a call from one of the top administrators in the district asking what he thought about Sierra Vista High School, located in a fast-growing area in southwest Las Vegas.

“‘Well to be honest, it’s a little stagnant,’” Anzalone recalls telling the administrator. “‘It hasn’t really moved much. The graduation rate could be a lot better,’ and I started finding myself selling myself on being the next principal there without wanting to be.”

Soon, Anzalone had himself a new assignment.

“In some ways I’ve become a little bit of the guy who kind of goes in and helps pump life into schools, which I never really asked for that,” he said. “But it’s not a magic formula. I think it’s just finding what gets kids motivated and giving it to them.”

In spite of his successes as an education leader, Anzalone is setting his sights on Washington, D.C. He said he’s motivated because he thinks Title I funding — the federal money provided to schools with a high number of students from low-income households — is the biggest game-changer in a school, rather than initiatives the state government undertakes.

“Those are the funds that really help you bring in the technology and ... you can use that money to bring in extended funding for your teachers. That’s what helps build the morale for the school,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that the administration that’s in Washington right now hears loudly and clearly how important those funds are, but without a voice from education, working every day directly there, I worry that those funds potentially can go away.”

He also points to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida as a defining moment in which he thought he could be a champion for students fighting for safer schools. He believes that he would be the first principal from Nevada to serve in Congress if elected.

“To me it makes total sense that an educator from what is consistently one of the lowest ranked states in the country in education going to Washington to fight to potentially raise our ranking. That’s exhilarating to me,” he said. “And so I’m willing to kind of sacrifice this career that I’ve worked so hard for to go and fight.”

Congress, which offers $174,000 a year in base pay, would also be a boost from his principal base pay of about $122,000.

But winning is a tough prospect. Several of the candidates in the Democratic primary already hold elected office, and established political groups are throwing their weight around former Rep. Steven Horsford.

Not only are Horsford’s fundraising numbers about triple that of his other competitors, but he also has early support from powerhouse unions such as the parent of the Culinary Union and the AFL-CIO. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also waded into the primary, inducting Horsford into its “Red to Blue” program and promising organizational and fundraising assistance.

“I really like Steven, but one thing to look at is that most of Steven’s numbers aren’t really coming from us,” Anzalone said, referring to out-of-state contributions. “I think it says a lot that our money … our donations are coming right from Nevada.”

Anzalone believes his path to victory could be through educators and the school community. He’s been heartened to see his volunteer list swell to 200, and to have current and former students and their parents — regardless of political leanings — help out on his campaign.

In addition to loaning his campaign $29,240, he collected $54,495 from donations, many from people who are teachers or administrators. He’s also getting advice from Dave Schwartz, a political consultant who helped Joe Biden and the state Democratic Party.

The pace of the campaign has been tough for Anzalone, who is married to his wife Sarah, a school-based speech pathologist, and has three children ages 3, 6 and 11. Two of the children are already enrolled in Clark County schools.

“A lot of times we work and then we’ll go to a campaign event, and they’ll be in bed by the time we get home,” he said. “That’s tough … But I think they understand, I hope they understand, that dad’s kind of fighting for something a little bit bigger, and that, you know, we’ll be together again soon.”