1. You first ran for City Council in 2017 (correct me if I’m wrong here!). What do you remember about your first run for office? Can you share a story or paint a picture of what running for the first time felt like?
Looking back through my 2017 calendar and scrapbook, those days of juggling two jobs while planning fundraisers, participating in 23 candidate forums, and knocking on thousands of doors was so exhausting and yet so heart-warming! When I assembled a team of friends and neighbors to help me run for City Council, I knew we would be running on a tight budget and without political party infrastructure, but it was exciting to innovate ways we could mobilize working, poor, and compassionate people that shared a vision for ways Asheville could “Be ‘Bout it Being Better.”
Two of my favorite innovations were our seed packets and hand-made signs.
The seed packets we ordered were custom-printed at Sow True Seed, sharing information about the campaign while calling on neighbors to grow food and share with their neighbors, an invitation to the transformative practice of connecting with and taking better care of each other and our mountain home. At first, it was another part of our team’s vision to invest our community’s donations in useful materials, but I never could’ve imagined just how beautifully that gesture would blossom. Three years later I started getting pictures of folks growing food in their yards during the earliest days of the pandemic, many starting with the seeds they had from our 2017 campaign. Those seeds were saved, planted, and used to feed our neighbors–it worked!
Our hand-painted, wooden signs were a tremendous, group effort and definitely a labor of love. Thanks to the vision and tenacity of artists and wood-workers in our network, we rescued wood, screws, and leftover paint from the landfill as we built a collection of over 400 signs made from repurposed and repurposable materials still in use today. It was hard, messy work that I couldn’t have done without a skillful, core team and dozens of volunteers. I often joke that if I never see another pallet again it will be too soon, but our process changed my way of thinking and now I can’t walk past a construction site without peeking into the dumpster and estimating how many signs could be built.
2. How has your previous campaign experience informed how you campaign today? What lesson have you learned? Since you’ve both won and lost local races, how do cope with those outcomes?
I was heartbroken by that first loss in 2017, mostly because I felt the weight of the deferred hope that had been growing. Instead of prioritizing profit and our extractive tourism industry, we almost joined a majority of Council committed to sharing the work around deeply-affordable housing, racial equity, and environmental stewardship. Safi, my friend and fellow gardener, shared wisdom that has stayed with me: it’s not about wins and losses, it’s about growing, so compost that energy into the next season of change.
No one person can save us from the mess we’re in, we’re connected and we need each other. I remain hopeful for Asheville and North Carolina because I know that many people aren’t yet showing up to vote, and that we can bring more people out if we’re showing up and doing better beyond elections.
I really love this excerpt from author Miriame Kaba: “Changing everything might sound daunting, but it also means there are many places to start, infinite opportunities to collaborate, and endless imaginative interventions and experiments to create.” So that’s what I do no matter what the outcome of an election: I lean back into my relationships and keep growing community focused on better. Staying in proximity with working, poor, and compassionate people keeps me accountable to owning that there are plenty of things I can’t do and to doing what I can. For me, that looks like being in attendance on good days and hard ones, paying attention and bringing attention to what needs to be on the table at the potluck of ideas.
3. What do you think contributed to your first electoral win in 2020? Did you do anything different during campaign season that year?
The 2020 election was the first time our local elections were on even-numbered years, and it was very difficult to get attention on local elections even though the outcomes impact our everyday lives through decisions including housing, water, sanitation, public safety, and transportation. Our nation and our local community was wrestling with overlapping crises of the pandemic, an uprising demanding racial justice, rising cost of living and unsheltered homelessness, economic uncertainty, and fear of the unknown.
It was a season of change personally and professionally too. My service-industry job ended due to pandemic-related closure, and my educator role shifted as my students and families required different services and support. Like many folks, some of the necessary innovations at work took a lot more time and energy, all while navigating incredible grief as friends moved and loved ones passed away without the usual ways of processing or healing together. Through it all I grew a deeper love for myself, my family, and my community, and I was having to campaign too.
More than campaigning though, it was a season of showing up for people when and how I could. That included participating in public engagement and meetings, elevating the needs of impacted people when decisions were being made about them without them. I imagine a difference was in the deeper and broader relationships built through community organizing I’d been part of by staying in the work beyond the 2017 loss.
The process of listening to and knowing my neighbors means I learn and get better at serving and representing, and I hope that was among the reasons voters participated in trusting me then and now.
4. How do you connect with voters? What do you think makes your campaign different or stand out?
I hear that it’s the yard signs that get the attention, and I’m encouraged that our team effort at plastic and waste reduction is resonating with people, plus prioritizing post-consumer, recycled paper for printed materials. But it’s all about the issues, right? It’s about taking better care of each other and our mountain home. Even though campaigning can feel so ego-centric, I trust that friends and neighbors are getting on board around my commitment to affordability, true public safety, government accountability, and climate and neighborhood resiliency. As an incumbent Councilmember, I work really hard to maintain my public record: my votes, my correspondence, and my statements–in civic meetings and in the press. I have the courage to vote no when needed, but am also bringing to the table what an enthusiastic yes looks like.
5. What do you think needs to change about how folks campaign today? What is missing or overlooked?
One thing that’s missing in Asheville and Buncombe County is collaborative governance, a model of community organizing beyond elections that supports candidates during elections and maintains support when they’re in office. Filling this gap might look like organizations and endorsers working together to advance issues like affordability or climate justice, building bridges and platforms strong enough to hold up more than one candidate and organize year-round to achieve success.
6. What could folks in the local media do to keep voters engaged in local races in years where national politics take center stage and many people are experiencing political burnout?
I believe that returning our local elections to odd-numbered years would help return focus on local issues, removing barriers to first-time and grassroots candidates who might not have the name recognition or infrastructure to run parallel to the huge national and state elections. It would be interesting to see a multi-media panel with local, state, and regional data to compare local election turnout and outcomes.
I also miss the yes–no questions in the Mountain Xpress questionnaire! Life is not binary and there’s nuance in every situation, but yes-no questions are as close as you get to the “yes” or “no” an elected official will have to choose during actual votes. It’s important to make us sweat, to take a temperature on what past, current, and future votes might have looked like or might be different.
7. What specific campaign advice would you offer folks who are considering running for local office?
Show up and serve now! Our community is facing serious issues and every day there are public meetings where decisions are being made. If you can’t show up in person, you can watch advisory board and Council meetings or archives on the City’s youtube page. Applying to an advisory board is a great way to bring your lived and professional experience to the table, serving our community before running for office.