Politicians with Disabilities – Pushing Limits – December 29, 2023

KPFA - Pushing Limits

What does it take to run for office
as a person with a disability?

We talk to Rebecca Lamorte, who ran for city council in New York on a platform on disability rights. Listen as she talks about her experiences running for a major office in the Big Apple.

We also talk to Ventura City Council Member Liz Campos about working at a city hall that is inaccessible, her challenges finding accessible housing, and how she ran a successful campaign on only $3,000.

Lastly, we talk to Denver City Councilman Chris Hinds about the unique challenges of being Colorado’s first elected official with a physical disability.

This episode of Pushing Limits is hosted and edited by Denny Daughters, and produced and written by Jacob Lesner-Buxton.

Check out this database of elected officials with disabilities. Add your favorite politician with a disability to the list.

Rebecca Lamorte Website
Campaign website for Liz Campos
Website for Council Member Chris-Hinds

Transcript

Denny Daughters: Welcome to Pushing Limits, KPFA’s program by and about people with disabilities. We air every Friday afternoon at 2.30 p.m. I’m Denny Daughters and I’ll be voicing a script written by Jacob Lester Buxton.

According to a 2019 estimate by Rutgers University, 10.3% of elected officials serving in federal, state, or local government have a disability. People with disabilities are twice as likely to serve as local officials rather than as state or federal representatives. Today we will be talking to people with disabilities who have run for public office at the local level.

Our first guest is Rebecca Lamorte. She’s a lobbyist for a labor union and she lives in Manhattan. In 2021, she ran for a seat on the New York City Council. There were a total of seven candidates. Unfortunately, she lost the election, coming in at third place.

We asked Rebecca. What motivated her to run?

Rebecca Lamorte: Anger, honestly. When I was pushed on the subway, I was 22 years old. And I had just finished college. I had just moved in to my first apartment alone in New York City. You know, I had my student loans, I had my bills, I had my friends. And in an instant, everything changed for me where I went from taking my body for granted and not looking at a flight of stairs, for example, and thinking twice about them to not being able to really leave my own apartment building for a long time because it had stairs and dealing with rude and invasive questions and comments and being faced with discrimination on the job and in public places.

The most egregious thing for me that really made me and pushed me to take that step to decide I am gonna run for office is one day I was at New York City Hall for work. I’m a lobbyist, I work for a labor union, and I have for 12 years now. And at City Hall that day with union members, I was there with my cane and security told me if I couldn’t walk up the stairs, maybe I didn’t belong there. And I got so angry. I almost couldn’t speak. I was so angry because I felt if this is happening to me, what’s happening to other people?

Who cares about us? Who’s fighting for us? Who else is experiencing this? And so angry and so upset right now when they’re just living life and going about their day like everybody else. And I wanted to take my anger and do something positive from it. And for me, working in the government space and being interested in politics, that was running for office to give disabled people like myself and others a seat at the table where decisions are made. Where I was now witnessing and now very aware that those decisions were being made in ways that harmed us and harmed our community and ignored our needs, ignored accessibility, ignored disability rights and the inclusive society and city we could have. And that’s what made me throw my hat in the race for 2021.

Denny: Lamorte put disability front and center of her campaign. It raised some eyebrows among political people in the city.

Rebecca: Yes and no. So, there have been some people in public office with disabilities. Not everyone has been comfortable speaking about their disabilities, which I very much so understand. You know, not many people go out every day in the world and get asked about their bodies and have people expect that we’ll respond and share everything that’s happening with us. But that’s unfortunately reality for people with disabilities. And there have been people in elected office in New York that haven’t been comfortable speaking about their life, speaking about their accessibility needs, speaking about their lived experience as a person with a disability because of that stigma and discrimination, which is really unfortunate and keeps other disabled people from speaking out, feeling that commonality, knowing they have an ally in government.

But outside of that, we’ve had some really great people in office right now. We have our first disabled New York City council member, a woman named Shahana Hanif from Brooklyn. We used to have another amazing woman, Yuh-Line Niou in the New York State Assembly. She unfortunately isn’t there anymore, but we have some other great people out there fighting for us and making sure we have a seat at the table.

But we need some more people. Just having, you know, between five and 10 people with disabilities in office isn’t going to change the conversation. We need more voices in the chorus for us.

Denny: To create the campaign she wanted to run, Rebecca first had to look inward. There’s the nitty gritty stuff, filing your paperwork to run for office. Like you said, I made my decision and then I was like, well, what do I do now? Like how do I make it a reality? I’m, I’m, I’m here. I’m going to run, but what do I do?

And so I did the like the nitty gritty stuff, file paperwork, tell the government I’m running, told local elected officials in the neighborhood that I was running, reached out to people in politics, consultants, other people I knew saying I’m going to run, what’s your advice?

And unfortunately, in doing that, I started getting back comments that wanting to run on a platform of disability issues, disability justice, as I refer to it for my campaign platform, that that was a niche issue. And I should first run, then win, and work on it and tell people I care about it. And that was really hurtful for me as a disabled person, because it’s like, well, do you see me every day when I’m out like this? Like my life isn’t a niche issue. There are so many New Yorkers that have this experience too.

So my first real campaign thing was getting comfortable, being uncomfortable as a disabled person, getting comfortable sharing things about my life, about my opinions, my experiences, my feelings, about my physical body — about certain social and emotional impacts that I deal with from being a person with a disability out in society that can be really difficult at times for us.

And so that was the first thing. Getting comfortable as a disabled woman, what I was comfortable talking about, how I was comfortable talking about it and really rooting myself that this was a campaign for disability justice, and everything would always pivot back to that center.

Denny: We asked Rebecca how she handled being perceived as the woman who only talked about disability issues during her campaign.

Rebecca: That was the lady with a cane, the one trick pony with a cane. I would call myself at a point in time. Um, what you’re saying is true. There were some people that would be able to see the far through the trees with me of affordable housing is a disability issue. We need affordable, accessible housing and it’s not just accessible with an elevator in the building. That’s my disability experience, but there are other people with disabilities that, okay, you need to have your handles lower. You need to have your counter heights changed.

Denny: Surely a candidate like Rebecca, who is so passionate about disability would be fully embraced by everyone in the community.

Rebecca: So unfortunately, there wasn’t much support from formal disability groups for me during my campaign in New York City. We have what is called the 504 Democrats, which is a citywide disability center Democratic club. And they endorsed a person without a disability in my race. And it really upset me. And that unfortunately kind of colored my experience and opinion with them and some other formal groups going forward.

Coming from the political space, I understand wanting to go to the power and wanting to have a seat at the table. And sometimes you have to choose the person that’s going to win, even if there’s someone else you like better. But with something as personal as running for office with a disability, how few people do it and to have a candidate running so vocally, opening and powerfully as a woman with a disability on a campaign rooted in disability justice — that was really, really hurtful. I’m not going to lie to you.

But outside of that, I was very blessed to have individual disability advocates from throughout the country come together to help me learn about disability issues that are not personal to me in my experience as a disabled woman, to help me meet other people that could offer advice that had run for office or were working within the government space and had experience with this. And so it was those individuals that really surrounded me and gave me the cocoon of love from our community that I do wish had been there from other larger organizations, but just unfortunately was not, because politics makes for strange bedfellows as the saying goes, right?

Denny: As a result of her campaign, Rebecca became more active in disability rights movements, including mentoring others who want to run for office.

Rebecca: I’m a board member of an organization called Disability Victory, which is aimed specifically at helping disabled people run for office and or work on campaigns that are accessible and engender real disability justice and disability inclusion in them. And through that, we do campaign trainings where it’s everything from how do you talk about being a person with a disability on a campaign, getting comfortable with that, what you want to share, what you don’t want to share. Kind of like I spoke about with my own journey and experience on that — things like how do you develop a campaign platform? And how do you then pivot those issues back to disability justice and disability rights?

We actually just did a great hour-long talk about that specifically where I led the conversation. I had everyone choose a policy. And by the end of the hour, we took that policy from not being about disability rights to making it about disability rights to show that it is possible and these aren’t niche issues. And, if people are interested, they can follow Disability Victory on Facebook, X and Instagram. And we also have a website, DisabilityVictory.org. And we’re doing more trainings coming up in 2024.

Our next one will be about canvassing with a disability because, not surprising for anyone here that’s listening, it’s not so easy. And campaigns are not made for disabled people. And that’s people like myself with mobility aids and mobility issues. That’s for people that are blind, that’s for people that are deaf, that’s for so many different disabled people because campaigns are made for one kind of person and it’s a cis white rich man — typically.

And that’s not politics. That’s not my politics. That’s not what I want our country, our society, my city to be. And so Disability Victory is working on that specifically. And so in January, we’ll be talking about canvassing with a disability. We’re going to be having some fireside chats to also just offer more emotional support for candidates in this space because running for office is so difficult and isolating. But when you’re running with a disability, it’s even more so because traditional spaces in politics aren’t made for us and they don’t include us.

And when we do go to them, we’ll be made to feel that way, at least in my experience at times here in New York. So, making sure that we have a space that is specifically for us. And I’m really proud that that’s Disability Victory now.

Denny: In the world of politics, we were interested how Rebecca developed a thick skin.

Rebecca: I was born with a bit of a thick skin. It definitely got thicker, though, after my subway accident.

You know, when you go out every day and people see you and they’re gonna pry and they’re gonna ask questions, they’re gonna look at you differently, and I am out here with an invisible disability with my cane — and I still get those stares and those questions and those uncomfortable moments. So, it’s made me develop a much thicker skin. It’s also made me get really quippy. Like for example, when I walk down the sidewalk in my neighborhood and people are staring at me, I like to stop and look at them and go, “Show’s here all day everybody” and then watch them laugh and get uncomfortable. I also like to call people out if they’re staring. I’ll be like “Let me do a trick!” And then, they like look away anxiously and uncomfortably. It’s made me develop a thick skin but also, it’s given me a confidence in myself that [pause]. I was always a confident person before, but it’s a different and it’s difficult to put into words the kind of confidence that comes from knowing who you are when you may be at your lowest. And even if you’re not there physically, but emotionally at your lowest from what someone has said or done or how you’re feeling that day or (for me), what my mobility is that day. And just knowing that still doesn’t define who you are. And if people see you as just that, that’s a reflection on them.

And it’s such a confidence that I feel very lucky to have. And it’s something that it took a while for me to develop, but I’m here now and I’m really thankful to be. And to feel this good about myself 10 years in the game. Lately, Rebecca offers motivation to those with disabilities who are interested in running for political office. If you’re a person with a disability, thinking about running for office, it’s probably the scariest thing you’ve ever thought about for big and small reasons but it could also be the best thing you’ve ever thought about.

I didn’t win, but I am so thankful that I ran for office. I am thankful for what it taught me about myself, what it taught me about disability rights, disability issues. I’m thankful for the community it helped me create around myself. And I’m also thankful for the platform it’s given me as a person with a disability to now call out things that I see, share my experiences, shine a light on things that so many people have said, ‘I never thought about that, Rebecca’.

Just today, a friend texted me, ‘a woman with a walker can’t get down the subway stairs right now, and I wouldn’t have thought about that if it wasn’t for you’, — talking about subway accessibility. And that’s a small thing, but that’s someone that would have never thought about that if I hadn’t been out there running as I was and talking about things like I did and getting comfortable being uncomfortable at times. And so it’s the scariest thing you may be thinking about, but it could be the best thing you’ve ever done, not just for yourself, for your community, for our larger disability community, for our country. Because if we don’t have a seat at the table, we’re on the menu and policies never have us in mind. And so we have to put ourselves in people’s mind.

So take that step! Be bold! Don’t be afraid! And feel free to reach out to me on social media, because I’m always going to be here to tell you that, you know, you’re either a Smart A [Beep] with a mobility aid like me or, you know, something else that will build you up and get you back out there in the streets fighting for us. Because we need more voices in our disability chorus.

Denny: You’re listening to Pushing Limits on 94.1 KPFA. I’m Denny Daughters. We just heard from Rebecca Lamorte who ran for a New York City Council position in 2021. Today, we are talking to people with disabilities who run for public office. Our next guest is Liz Campos who sets on the Ventura City Council. Campos decided to run for office because she was frustrated that city hall wasn’t responding to the needs of the people in her community. 94.1 KPFA.

Liz Campos: Well, I’ve been active in my community for 20 years and particularly the last 10 years I spent on the board of the Westside Community Council, my neighborhood community council. And after becoming chair of that board, I realized that City Council wasn’t listening to the people, the diverse voices in the community properly. I also, for almost seven years, attended every city council meeting, listened to what they were doing, spoke to them many times often with no result. And I decided that it’s important for people to be on an elected body who will listen to the entire community.

So I didn’t come just to be a voice for people with disabilities, but to be a voice for everyone who feels disenfranchised.

Denny: While many people in the Compos community were excited by her candidacy, those in City Hall sang a different tune.

Liz: Because I had been active in my community. Ventura has districts. My district is about 8,000 registered voters. But I had spent two and a half years in my community holding public rallies to fight against the expansion of a Southern California gas compressor that is across the street from an elementary school. And that alone is disabling many children not just with asthma, but with central nervous system problems and cancers.

So the community knew me already from that battle and had gotten accustomed to seeing me in the wheelchair, but knowing that I was there for them. So, my community didn’t show a lot of disdain or problem for me as a person with a disability.

Where the pushback came was from a couple of the other candidates but also from some of the higher-level city staff who looked at me as an imbecile or had the attitude that I would never be able to serve on city council. And so, I shouldn’t be encouraged. And that was a difficult battle, both before and after getting elected.

Denny: Ventura City Hall wasn’t ready for Campos to assume office, or any person with a physical disability for that matter.

Liz: Ah Ventura City Hall is not the most accessible location, in part because it’s up on the top of a pretty steep hill, California Street. It has a beautiful view of the ocean, but for a person in a wheelchair — a manual wheelchair cannot make it up the hill by its own steam. I’m in an electric wheelchair and I can roll up to City Hall, but when I leave City Hall, I have to roll backwards because the hill is too steep. And that’s just to get to City Hall. There is a ramp on the street level that goes up into the building. And that is there because about 11 years ago, I sued the city for access. So they made the public area more accessible with bathrooms and a ramp and electronic doors.

When I got elected to City Council, anyone would have expected that the council dais and council area would be made accessible. December 12th will be my one-year anniversary and I still cannot use the bathroom where all the other Council members use the bathroom. I have to leave the dais, exit the Council area out into the hallway, and go to the other end of the building for an accessible bathroom during meetings.

For the first several months, the way I got up on the dais was they threw a piece of plywood over a steep staircase. And so I would roll up, but again, I had to roll backwards off of that. And this was all during the tenure of that acting city manager who was here, who wasn’t happy about me being here. My wheelchair ultimately got broken rolling down because it started to slide sideways, and the brakes broke. So, the city’s paying for the repair of that wheelchair.

That acting city manager resigned, and our new city manager is incredibly kind and generous and working very hard to ensure not just my access, but everybody’s. He’s had the city hold trainings for every staff member to learn about disability access. And so, I appreciate that none of that would have happened had I not been here. And it’s not just about me.

It’s about every person in the community that is challenged with barriers to access.

Denny: One of their priorities for Liz is creating more accessible and affordable housing in the city, an issue she is currently experiencing.

Liz: So, I still have not found housing in my district that is wheelchair accessible and affordable. And the cost of housing in Ventura just keeps getting higher and higher. So, I’m currently living in a [pause]. It’s, it’s a van, but it’s not a little tiny van. It formerly was an access bus and a paratransit bus. So, it has a ramp. It’s pretty big. It’s about 16 feet of living space. I have solar panels on top. I can cook. I have a camping toilet. So, it suffices while I’m still looking for housing.

But really — Affordable housing for people with disabilities and seniors on limited income does not currently exist in the city of Ventura except through Section Eight. And the Section Eight waiting list currently is 15 years long.

Denny: Upon hearing what Liz spent on her campaign, our interviewer Jacob was speechless.

Liz: I didn’t raise a lot of money. I probably spent the least money of anyone who’s ever run for Ventura City Council. And people who are rich will spend a lot of money, but it really isn’t about the money as much as about how you connect with people. I put a website up that cost me $100, and I used it for fundraising. And I had all the videos from the rallies I did and from public meetings and… I think I posted a video from one of the events I did with the ILRC [Independent Living Resource Center], and then I just made a couple short videos talking about the cost of running, but how important it is for me to be there to represent the people.

I put a PayPal link to the campaign bank account, and I raised just about $3,000. Of that money, I had two events in a park and gave away free tacos that cost about $1,200. And I spent $800 on t-shirts saying Vote for Liz Campos in two languages. And I gave away the t-shirts free. I had 2,000 t-shirts of all sizes. So, people in my district were walking billboards for me.

The other thing that’s important to do is to meet with unions or organizations. iIf you get their support and get an endorsement who will knock on doors for you. Because both Santa Barbara and Ventura, for example, are a little bit hilly and they’re old. There’s narrow sidewalks. There’s front gates that a wheelchair can’t get through. People don’t answer their doors to strangers.

Because I couldn’t knock on doors myself, I held events at the park. But I had CAUSE who endorsed me, and Stonewall Democrats and the county Democrats endorsed me, and they knocked on all the doors in my neighborhoods for me. And they also paid for mailers. Because they endorsed me, they paid for the mailers. So, when I finished my campaign, I had $800 left that I donated to a local nonprofit organization.

Denny: Like Rebecca, Liz also offers words of encouragement to people with disabilities who are interested in running for public office.

Liz: Don’t hesitate to do it. Get to know other people as much as possible. Speak at rallies and events. And make sure you get video of those things so that you can put it online when you’re running. That way other people who don’t know you get to know you.

But I think that there are people still who have animosity to us as people with disabilities, but more and more people are recognizing we’re not so different from them. So, I would encourage everybody who wants to run for public office to run. Even if you lose the first time, keep at it because it helps everybody in the disability community — win or lose — if people see us in public and hear us speak and recognize that we’re good people.

Denny: Our last guest is Chris Hinds on the Denver City Council.

Chris Hinds: I’m the first elected official in Denver’s history, local, state or federal, who uses a wheelchair to get around. My decision to seek elected office is because we’ve never had disability representation in Denver. I have an acquired disability. I grew up as an able-bodied individual. I was in a crash in 2008.

The Democratic National Convention was here in Denver in 2008. I was on a bike and got hit by a car. So, um, I went from being on three soccer teams to, uh, learning how to sit up in bed and, uh, I have a spinal cord injury. It is a T-3, do, um, third thoracic vertebra and, uh, I now use a wheelchair to get around.

I started looking around and I didn’t see people with disabilities in areas of power or influence, or I couldn’t find a lot of role models that I really wanted to aspire to be. You know, as the Gandhi quote is, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. I realized that it was important for me, if I felt like I could represent people with disabilities, then I had an obligation to do so.

Denny: Chris talks about a few challenges he faced while trying to run for office.

Chris: You know, much of campaigning is knocking on doors and telling people, you know, sharing with people, one-on-one, your story.

I can’t do that because most of the homes have at least one step right before the front entrance. In some ways that was great for me because I can’t knock on any doors at all because of my wheelchair and those steps to get to the front door, but no one else could either. Because 80% of the people I represent in central Denver live in apartments or condominium buildings, you know, secure access buildings.

Campaigning is grueling for anyone. It, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy. It takes, it takes a lot of focus. And so, someone with a, you know, with a disability has to spend more time doing things and can’t do things that other people can. And so being a candidate and campaigning and making phone calls and worrying about pressure sores, some pressure ulcers.

I don’t have control over my bowel or bladder function like I used to, because just it’s all paralyzed. I would be at a venue, turns out that the restroom wasn’t wheelchair accessible. I mean, there were times when I would pee on myself. In addition to having to learn how to say something compelling to someone and really get them to want to vote for me instead of anyone else, I also had the more basic thing of I’m being myself, how do I minimize that? How do I keep someone from realizing that I am embarrassing myself in a public space?

Denny: There are people with a wide variety of disabilities serving in various positions all across the USA. The National Council of Independent Living maintains an online database of elected officials that Jacob used to find guests for today’s show. A link to the database can be found on the KPFA archives page for this show.

We’d like to thank today’s guests, Rebecca, Liz and Chris.

And thanks also to the whole Pushing Limits collective for another great year of Disability Radio. Today’s interviews and script were done by Jacob Lesner Buxton, announcing and audio production by Denny Daughters. Contact us by email (all one word) PushingLimits at KPFA.org, catch us on Facebook at Pushing Limits Radio, or you can visit our website at Pushing Limits Radio.org.

Stay tuned for Talk It Out. This is 94.1 KPFA.

Keep on Pushing Theme Song. [Keep on Pushing sung by Curtis Mayfield]

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