Kate Daniels, an alumna of LCV’s Candidate Academy, started her new role as Supervisor of Monterey County, California this year. Before she decided to pursue the candidate training and run for the position, Kate began her career in LCV’s Conservation Voters Movement as a phone canvasser with California Environmental Voters. After a long career supporting the policymaking of other elected officials, Kate is now in the decision-making seat herself.

Reflecting on her run for office and her Candidate Academy training, Kate said the program  helped her understand the formula for a successful campaign. She started fundraising and secured resources for her campaign early, allowing her to shift her focus to endorsements and voter contact before the other candidates.

“Learning from the training what I had to do was huge. I just went back to my notes from 2020. Campaigns are a science and the training provided the steps that allowed me to complete my campaign successfully,” said Kate.

There were two key learnings for Kate from her time on the campaign trail. First was the importance of grassroots strategies like house parties. “Never let an offer of a house party go by. Go meet with those five people; nothing is too small,” she said.

Second was how your values need to be a clear part of your messaging. “It was important because I had to be clear about why I was running and who I was doing it for. I remembered an elderly friend, who was living in her car. The shelter here has 550 families on the waiting list, living in their cars. I needed to put equity and justice at the heart of my campaign, and it became the anchor for all of my messaging,” Kate reflected.

One surprise for Kate was how ugly the campaign was at times, how sexist and how negative. She explained, “I was unprepared for the hostility. When you put yourself out there to run and for leadership, a lot gets thrown at you. You become a punching bag.” Her two male opponents and their supporters began to work together in various ways to assassinate her character online, post photos distorting her appearance, lie about her ties to donors and endorsers, spread conspiracy theories, and make false accusations about her voting history on the local Planning Commission.

“It was all men doing it, and there was such a sexist undertone to it all. The two men assumed that they would be in the runoff and would run against each other; neither of them thought I could beat them. One of them told one of my endorsers that he expected me to drop out once he joined the race,” said Kate.

Kate got the last laugh, winning with 59% of the votes in the primary and avoiding a runoff altogether. Her opponents were shocked by her success. But she says she doesn’t think she will run again because it was such a negative experience. Luckily she has four years to make that decision.

Now that she is in office, Kate plans to use her Supervisor role to focus on housing. As in the rest of California, it is a huge issue in Monterey County. “Twenty percent of our students here qualify as homeless,” Kate explained.

The previous Board of Supervisors focused on developers’ vision for housing in the area. As a result, the new housing has mainly been luxury housing and investment properties at the expense of affordable housing and housing for local families. The lack of affordable housing, along with an influx of wealthy Bay Area residents during the pandemic, has driven an increase in homelessness in the area.

Kate’s vision is of a regenerative economy in Monterey County: to build new housing and create new industries without displacing current residents or importing skilled workers from other parts of the state or country. This will involve workforce development so that local residents can take advantage of new economic opportunities, changes in agricultural practices, and a focus on adapting development for the impacts of climate change on the California coast. She is working with a new organization called Regenerative California to develop this vision.

Looking back on the path that brought her to office, Kate’s advice for future candidates is to really lean on their learnings from the training in developing their campaigns. “I used the training to write my mission, vision and to understand ‘why me’ and not someone else. I became so clear on that, that I would have had to step aside if a better candidate had emerged. When you are clear about ‘why you’, it’s a powerful answer to the question in an endorsement interview,” she said.

And lastly, “You have to put the work in. No one is going to do it for you. You can have the best team, the most dedicated volunteers, but the person who will raise the money and keep the train moving forward is you,” said Kate. “Looking back at the campaigns I worked on that failed, the candidate was expecting too much from other people.”

Our country urgently needs more leaders who share our vision of a world with a healthy environment and healthy communities, protected by a just and equitable democracy. To empower more people in our movement to become leaders, LCV and our state affiliates offer robust leadership development opportunities. Read more about LCV’s Candidate Academy and other programs.