Who Would Run for Local Office Again Right Now? Me, Apparently.
Local officials are spent after the pandemic year. What could make a person want to stick with it?
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I occasionally remember my last campaign slogan with the grim recognition of an accidental hex. Let’s Do More! was plastered over the website and handouts for my small town, non-partisan city council reelection. Back then, in the time before the pandemic, global shutdown, and a downhill abdication of governmental responsibility for everything from public health to confronting generational, systemic racial injustice, Let’s Do More! seemed like smart branding. I like doing. Need a volunteer, I’m there.
Oh, how naïve I was. Plucky, cheerful. Eager for more, more, more.
Last year took so much, many local leaders have little to nothing left to give.
The New York Times recently published a story about the surge of U.S. mayors exiting due to burnout after managing their cities through Covid-19. It was a year of perpetual crisis stacked atop crisis, with none of the community togetherness — volunteer events, ribbon cuttings — that keep public officials going. Stack atop that the reality that local officials are, by virtue of proximity alone, in many ways bound to answer to those they represent in a more…
