I ran for office three times. And I lost three times. Let’s talk about it.
And I want to be clear about something.
I’m not ashamed that I lost.
Not even a little.
Because what I did takes a kind of courage most people never have to summon in their lives. I put my name on a ballot. I stood in front of the community and said, “Here I am. Judge me. Decide if I’m worthy of your trust. If I'm good enough.”
And they did.
Three times.
They looked at me and decided I wasn’t what they wanted.
That’s not easy to sit with. Anyone who tells you it is either hasn’t done it or isn’t being honest.
But I’m still proud of myself.
Because I ran.
I put myself in the Arena.
I believed people when they said they wanted something different. I believed that if we talked honestly about inequity, about systems, about policy, that voters would choose the future they said they wanted.
I believed in the community.
Over and over again.
And yes, it hurt to be disappointed by that belief.
Not once.
Three times.
There comes a point where you start to understand something about the place you’re fighting for.
Sometimes the community you’re trying to help simply isn’t ready for the change you’re offering.
And that realization can break your heart a little.
Eventually it broke mine enough that I had to step away.
I joke sometimes that I “broke up with Rochester and ran away.”
But there’s truth in that joke.
Because it’s hard to keep pouring your energy, your time, your hope into a place that keeps telling you, in one way or another, that what you’re offering isn’t what it wants.
That doesn’t mean the work was wasted.
It just means the timing wasn’t right.
And sometimes loving a place means recognizing when you need distance from it.
In 2020 the world cracked open.
COVID-19 exposed just how fragile our systems really are. Then the murder of George Floyd forced this country to confront what Black and brown communities have been saying forever: the system was never broken. It was built this way.
And like a lot of people, I felt like I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing while all of this was happening around me.
By that point I had already spent nearly ten years working in nonprofits, including seven years at the Diversity Council. My work brought me into rooms with city officials, county leaders, school boards, and businesses trying to address disparities in employment, health outcomes, education, and civic engagement.
We had the conversations. We presented the data. We talked about race and racism and inequity in ways that made people uncomfortable.
Because the truth is those conversations should make people uncomfortable.
Sometimes we made progress.
But I also saw something else that people who haven’t done this work don’t always understand.
Pushback.
The kind that smiles politely in meetings and then quietly pulls the funding later. The kind that praises equity publicly but slows it down privately. The kind that listens, nods, forms another committee, writes another report, and somehow nothing actually changes.
After a while it became painfully obvious that nonprofits can start conversations, but real systemic change happens where power actually lives.
Policy.
Budgets.
Leadership.
So I decided if I wanted to see real change, I needed to step into that space myself. If we were going to have hard conversations someone had to talk about it. Cause the people who were running were not going to. So, I forced them to. Cause I showed up and I said the words. Defund the police.
I ran for office.
Three times.
And I lost.
Three times.
Let’s be honest about something, because people like to rewrite these stories afterward and pretend the outcome was about qualifications.
I was qualified.
I had the education, the experience, and nearly a decade of work in this community trying to make it more equitable. I understood the issues and the systems involved probably better than most people who step into local politics.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that I was not a candidate people trusted to maintain the status quo.
Because I wasn’t going to.
I ran because I wanted to create real systemic change through policy that benefited everyday people, not the institutions and business leaders who were already doing just fine.
Instead, voters chose the safer option. The familiar option. The candidate who would manage the system exactly the way it had always been managed. The old white retired pastor who baked bread.
And to be fair, those men did a perfectly fine job when they were in office. And still are in office. Being toast. Bland not even buttered toast. Because everyone loves toast. It will always just be toast.
But fundamentally nothing changed.
The same disparities remained.
The same conversations kept happening.
The same communities were still waiting for the promises of equity and inclusion to mean something beyond words.
And the longer I sat with that reality, the more honest I had to become about something.
Most communities say they want change.
But what they actually want is stability that feels like progress.
Real change is disruptive. It shifts power. It forces people to confront uncomfortable truths about who benefits and who doesn’t.
And a lot of people would rather protect a system they know is unfair than risk losing the comfort it provides them. Even if it's sucking the life out of them.
There’s another thing I learned along the way that still surprises me.
People often assume that because I smile easily, because I try to treat people with kindness and humor, that I somehow don’t understand what is happening around me.
As if kindness means naïveté.
As if being pleasant means you’re not paying attention.
But I have always been watching. Listening. Observing how systems work, how decisions get made, who benefits, who doesn’t.
That’s the part people consistently underestimate.
And honestly, that underestimation has always been a little insulting.
I don’t go around announcing how intelligent I am. That kind of performance is boring.
My personality has always been something else entirely.
I’m queer. I’m funny.
I’m weird. I'm steady.
I like people. Except when I don't.
I like learning. And I like sharing knowledge.
I’ve never believed in gatekeeping what I know.
But here’s the part people miss when they underestimate me.
I’m actually pretty damn impressive.
Even when my life is falling apart, I still find a way to get things done. When resources disappear, when doors close, when the path forward isn’t obvious, I figure it out.
I always do.
Because the world has always expected me to be three times better than everyone else just to be considered equal.
Three times sharper.
Three times more prepared.
Three times more resilient.
And even then, sometimes that still isn’t enough.
That’s a reality a lot of people in this country understand very well. If you want to survive in systems that weren’t designed with you in mind, “good enough” is rarely good enough. You have to be exceptional just to stay in the room.
So when people underestimate me, when they assume kindness means weakness or that a smile means I’m not paying attention, I mostly just let them believe it. Because eventually the truth shows itself anyway.
And when it does, it tends to surprise people.
And here’s the part that really sits heavy with me.
People spend a lot of time complaining about how broken everything is. They rant about how nothing works anymore, how the system is failing, how everything feels like a dumpster fire.
And then they turn around and vote for the same people who built the system in the first place.
Over and over again.
The same leadership class.
The same policies.
The same priorities that keep funneling benefits upward while everyone else is told to wait their turn.
People say they want something different.
But when the moment comes to choose something different, they reach for the familiar option every time. It's mostly old white dudes, but other times it's safe boring suburban moms.
They keep hoping that maybe this one will be different.
They won’t.
They never are.
They’re just different version of the same thing.
And sometimes I hear that quote rattling around in my head:
If not you, who? If not now, when?
And I’ll be honest.
Sometimes I want to scream back:
Why does it always have to be me?
Why do the people who see the problem feel responsible for fixing it while everyone else keeps choosing the same leaders who created the mess in the first place?
At some point we all have to confront something uncomfortable.
You can’t complain about the system while continuing to protect the people who built it (Hello, p-do-file politicians). 😳
Lent is supposed to be a season of honesty.
So here is mine.
2022 was the last time I ran for office.
After that, I was done.
I ran off to the desert of KCMO and licked my wounds.
Someone once told me you shouldn’t go back to the place that harmed you.
But the truth is more complicated than that.
Because Rochester is also the place that believed in me when I was first starting my life.
It’s the place that showed up for me.
And later, when I needed to rebuild myself, it was also the place that helped heal me.
So maybe the lesson isn’t that places are good or bad.
Maybe the lesson is that communities are made of people.
And people are messy.
We are capable of building systems that harm each other.
And we are also capable of building something better.
Which means the uncomfortable truth is this:
We are the problem.
And we are the solution.
We are the miracle.
That’s the work.
And Lent is as good a time as any to begin again.
Lenten Reflection
“But everything exposed by the light becomes visible... and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.” — Ephesians 5:13
Lent is not a season for polite lies.
It’s the season where you stop pretending you don’t see what you see.
Where you name the thing. The pattern. The cowardice. The comfort people confuse for peace. The “we want change” that turns into “not like that” the minute change gets real and might cost someone something.
A lot of people want resurrection without crucifixion. They want a better world without giving up their place in the current one. They want the miracle, but they don’t want to be the ones holding the bucket.
But this is the part Lent keeps dragging us back to: repentance is not a vibe. It’s not guilt. It’s not posting the right thing. It’s turning around. It’s doing something different. It’s choosing the hard truth over the familiar lie, again and again, until you become someone who can actually live inside the future you keep claiming you want.
I don’t know what Rochester will become. I don’t know what this country will become.
But I do know this: communities don’t change because people “mean well.” They change when people decide to stop protecting what’s killing them.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
Everyone should run for office. I highly recommend it: https://www.rochestermn.gov/departments/city-clerk/elections/running-for-office?
The Minnesota Vikings haven't won a Super Bowl, but you still hope, pray, and believe one day they will. 🙏
I would be remiss not to acknowledge what is happening in the world right now.
It is not good.
Historically, the United States has rarely been free from international conflict, and the reasons we give for being there--to defend freedom, to help people, to protect the vulnerable--often do not match the reality of what happens on the ground.
If we were truly there to protect people, we would not be bombing a school full of girls.
Beautiful babies with entire lives ahead of them. Girls who probably lit up rooms, who were funny, creative, whimsical, brilliant, and deeply loved by the people in their lives. Futures with wide open spaces.
Most people don’t like to think about war that way.
Because if we did, we would have to face a truth we prefer not to see. Our tax dollars, our political choices, and our national identity are tied to actions we would recognize as atrocities if they were happening in our own communities (which they are).
That realization is uncomfortable because it means we are not only observers of violence.
We are implicated in it.
I am American. That means my government acts in my name, whether I agree with those actions or not. My tax dollars help fund decisions I cannot control, but cannot fully separate myself from either.
So today, in a small way, I want to say something that rarely gets said out loud.
I am sorry. As an American citizen to the global community. I am so very sorry for the sins that we have inflicted on the rest of the world.
Not as a political statement, but as a human one.
Right now it is Ramadan, a sacred month for Muslims, a time of fasting, prayer, reflection, and community. Families gather before dawn and after sunset. People try to live more intentionally, more compassionately, more faithfully.
And in the middle of that holy time, people are also living under the threat of bombs.
That contrast should disturb us.
Because faith traditions, whether Christian during Lent or Muslim during Ramadan, ask us to examine our lives and our responsibilities to others.
They ask us to see clearly.
Even when the truth is uncomfortable.
There was a moment at work recently that has been stuck in my head.
A woman came into Circle K to cash in a winning scratch-off ticket and buy cigars. I rang up the purchase and realized I had made a small mistake with the change. It happens. I fixed it immediately and refunded the difference.
But she still wasn’t convinced.
After I explained it again, she shrugged and said, “Well, God will make it right if it’s meant to be.”
And before I could stop myself, I said out loud, “Nope. We’re not going to put that on God.”
I had already corrected the mistake. The change had been refunded. There was nothing left for divine intervention to solve.
But what struck me was how quickly people reach for God language to explain things that are actually very human. A math error. A misunderstanding. A moment that simply required honesty and correction.
God is not a cosmic cashier fixing our receipts.
If something is wrong, we fix it.
If we make a mistake, we correct it.
And as a gay person, I’m especially sensitive to people throwing God around casually in ways that shift responsibility away from themselves. Too often faith gets used as a shield, a way to avoid accountability instead of embracing it.
It reminds me of a scene from "Bruce Almighty," where Bruce, after granting everyone’s prayers and creating complete chaos, turns to God (Morgan Freeman) for help. Instead of fixing everything for him, God hands Bruce a mop.
Bruce protests, saying he only gave people what they asked for.
God calmly responds that the problem is people don’t actually know what they want. Everyone expects God to do everything for them. What they fail to realize is that the power to change things was within them all along.
“If you want to see a miracle,” he tells Bruce, “be the miracle.”
That scene seems simple but it is deeply profound.
Because the truth is we have always had the power within us to change our own lives, no matter how messy things get. Sometimes we just have to be willing to pick up the bucket and start mopping.
A little help from friends doesn’t hurt either.
When I look at the division in this country, I’m not surprised by how absurd it all feels. The mess we’re in didn’t appear overnight. It’s the result of leaders who care more about power and profit than people. Leaders who treat entire groups of human beings as expendable because the consequences never reach their own lives.
But I refuse to live in that kind of darkness.
Instead I ask a different question: How do we bring light back into the world?
Not in the way of an electrician, flipping a switch and pretending the problem is solved. But by choosing, every day, to act with courage, compassion, and clarity.
If miracles are going to happen, they won’t come from someone else fixing everything for us.
They will come from ordinary people deciding to be the miracle themselves.
And right now, the world needs that more than ever.
Faith, if it means anything, should push us toward honesty, not away from it.
And the same thing is true on a much larger scale.
When harm is done in our name, when innocent people suffer because of political decisions, we cannot shrug and say that somehow God will make it right.
Those are human choices.
Which means they require human accountability.
The scriptures are full of stories about how hard this kind of honesty actually is.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they didn’t immediately celebrate freedom. They complained. They longed for the life they had just escaped. The desert was hard. The future was uncertain. At least in Egypt they understood the rules, even if those rules were cruel.
It took a whole generation wandering in the wilderness before they were ready to enter the promised land.
Jesus ran into the same reality. People loved listening to him, right up until the moment they realized that following him meant changing their lives. It meant sacrifice. It meant letting go of the systems and comforts they were used to, even when those systems were unjust.
At that point, many walked away.
Some even helped put him on a cross.
Because the truth is that human beings often prefer a familiar injustice over an uncertain freedom.
We cling to the life we know, even when it is broken.
Lent asks us to confront that instinct.
To tell the truth about ourselves, our systems, and the harm we participate in without noticing.
Not so we can drown in guilt, but so we can begin the long, uncomfortable work of repentance.
Lenten Reflection
“Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17
Lent is a season of examination.
Not only of personal habits and private failings, but of the systems we participate in and the suffering we sometimes learn to ignore.
Repentance begins with honesty.
With the humility to admit that our lives are connected to people far beyond our borders, and that the comforts we enjoy are often entangled with harms we would rather not see.
There is a kind of anger that grows out of that realization.
Not the scattered anger that burns everything down, but the focused anger that refuses to look away from what is broken.
The prophets carried that kind of anger. It was not hatred. It was moral clarity.
Because once you see injustice clearly, indifference is no longer possible.
If we are honest about what is happening in our country and in the world, then the work ahead of us is not small. It will require confronting willful blindness, challenging systems that reward exploitation, and resisting the temptation to retreat into apathy simply because the problems feel too large.
Empires rarely collapse all at once. They decay slowly, from the inside, when injustice becomes normal and truth becomes inconvenient.
Lent asks us not to look away from that decay.
It asks us to tell the truth about it.
And then to decide whether we will participate in repairing what is broken, or simply watch while it falls apart.
Justice, compassion, and repentance are not abstract ideals.
They are work.
And the time for that work is now.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
As above. So below.
Behind Every Great Woman Is Another Woman
Everyone knows Susan B. Anthony. Her name is on statues. On coins. In textbooks. She has become the symbol of the suffrage movement.
Fewer people know Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Which is strange, because if you read the history carefully, it becomes clear that Susan likely would not have become Susan without Elizabeth.
They met in 1851 and, for the next fifty years, built one of the most consequential political partnerships in American history. Stanton was the writer, the theorist, the one who could articulate injustice in language that made people uncomfortable enough to listen. Anthony was the organizer, the strategist, the one who carried those ideas into the world with relentless discipline.
Stanton once described their partnership in a way historians still quote: she said she forged the thunderbolts, and Susan fired them.
In other words, one woman wrote the revolution. The other made sure the revolution showed up in the streets.
Their partnership endured decades of travel, public criticism, political defeat, and dramatically different personal lives. Stanton was raising seven children. Anthony never married and dedicated her life to organizing.
But they kept returning to one another intellectually. In letters. In speeches. In strategy. In the shared belief that women deserved a political voice in a country that insisted they did not.
They fought for suffrage for nearly seventy years.
Neither of them lived to see women vote.
The 19th Amendment passed in 1920, fourteen years after Anthony died and eighteen years after Stanton was gone.
Two women spent the better part of their lives pushing against a system that had no intention of changing.
And still they persisted.
Sometimes movements are not built by individuals. They are built by partnerships. By the rare and stubborn friendships where two people sharpen each other’s thinking and refuse to give up at the same time.
Susan B. Anthony became the symbol history remembers.
But the truth is, she did not stand alone.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was there, writing the thunder.
I’ve been thinking about them a lot this month (It is only March 3rd).
I’ve been celebrating Women’s History Month a little differently this year. It’s Lent. I’m busy. Law school is law schooling. The world is… well... on fire.
So instead of big declarations, I’ve been trying to be intentional.
I sent one of my women friends money and told her to take herself out to lunch (cause we're both busy). I texted her, “Empowering Women’s History Month. Go eat lunch on me.”
Because sometimes resistance looks like feeding yourself well. Sometimes honoring women looks like making sure the women you love are taken care of.
I’ve also been writing about women not choosing the bear, because we deserve better than survival. We deserve safety. We deserve steadiness. We deserve love that does not require shrinking.
And when I get tired. When it feels like nothing ever changes, I remember Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
If you ever took even one gender studies class, you know the story.
The lifelong “friendship.”
The letters. The devotion. The intellectual intimacy that history politely labels practical.
They worked side by side for decades. Writing together. Traveling together. Organizing together. Arguing strategy. Building movements.
They were, by every meaningful definition, partners in purpose.
And here is the part that wrecks me every time:
They fought for women’s suffrage for nearly seventy years.
Neither of them lived to see the 19th Amendment ratified.
They gave their lives to a future they would never personally enter.
Tell me that isn’t love.
History will not say they were in love. It will call them collaborators. Reformers. Dear friends. It will footnote their letters and gloss over the language.
But read those letters.
Read the tenderness. The longing. The devotion. The way they wrote to each other about their work, their dreams, their frustrations, and the long road ahead.
Susan once wrote to Elizabeth that she longed for the day they could sit together and talk over their work and their dreams.
That line alone is enough for me.
Because that is what partnership is.
Talking over work.
Sharing dreams.
Staying in the fight together.
And here’s the part that makes me emotional in a very dramatic, very gay way.
They did not win in their lifetime.
They did not get to vote.
They did not get the parade.
They did the work anyway.
So when I get tired and when the political climate feels like a pendulum swinging backwards. When the rights of women and especially women of color feel fragile. I remember them.
Seventy years.
No guarantee of victory.
No immediate gratification.
Just persistence. Devotion. Work.
Good in theory.
Better in practice.
Women have always done the work.
Often without credit.
Often without safety.
Often without the right to exist fully in the love they were clearly living.
This month, I honor the women who fought before me. The women who filled my undergrad classrooms and taught me how to think. The women who organize, heal, resist, write, build, and love with stubborn steadiness.
And I honor the women in my life right now the ones who deserve lunch, rest, softness, and partners who do not make them choose the bear.
Happy Women’s Herstory Month.
May we love each other loudly.
May we fight for each other relentlessly.
May we build futures we might never personally see.
And may we never again call epic devotion
“just friendship.”
Happy Empowered Women's Herstory Month!