Raised to serve: Lawrence Mayor-elect Deb Whitfield discusses path to political office

Deb Whitfield didn’t really want to run for mayor — not initially. She was finishing her first term on the Lawrence Common Council and enjoyed working as part of a team to oversee the city’s fiscal health, economic development and opportunities for the city’s increasingly diverse population.

She said when a group of supporters approached her to run as the Democratic candidate for mayor, “I told them no three times.”

What finally convinced her, she said, was a vision of sorts. Whitfield joined members of her church who were fasting and prayed about the question of running for mayor. She said one day, she decided to take a walk and listen to gospel music.

“I always walk a certain way, but this day, I was led to walk a different route,” she said.

That route took her just past the city’s boundary into McCordsville. When she returned to Lawrence, she said she saw a sign that said, “Welcome to Lawrence — Mayor Deb Whitfield.’

“I was like, ‘Are you serious?’” she said,

But when she looked again, it was still there.

“So, I said, ‘OK, I got it,’” she said. “That was my sign.”

And she hasn’t slowed down since.

Whitfield is not a career politician, but said she comes from a culture of public service. She was born and raised in Waterbury, Conn., and many family members worked in the health care industry. That led to her longtime career as a respiratory therapist.

Other family members were members of the Armed Services; still others worked in factories and were active in their unions. Whitfield said the church was always a big part of her life.

“I remember watching my grandparents, always at the church, fundraising or feeding people — just working in the community,” she said. “My dad always had us participate in those events. That was the foundation that was given to us as we were growing up.”

Whitfield came to Indiana in 1995 when her late husband Ashland Whitfield, an elite track and field coach, accepted a manager position with USA Track and Field in Indianapolis. With help from a relocation specialist, the couple visited different parts of the city, and Whitfield said Lawrence appealed to them the most.

Her husband was originally from the West Coast, she said, and Whitfield was a solid East Coaster at the time, so they had no close family when they arrived.

“What became our family was my neighbors — getting the kids in the school system and meeting friends and neighbors and developing relationships, working at Community Health Network — all of those became my family,” she said.

Whitfield’s first foray into active politics was when she worked on the state senate campaign for Democrat Derek Camp. That’s when she first started knocking on doors.

“People would open their door and start talking to me and I loved it,” she said. “The story was if you walk with (Deb), don’t think you’re going to get your work done because she stands there talking to everybody. And I figured why not? They open their door, and they want to talk, give them their three minutes or five minutes. Sometimes, it’s 20 to 30.”

From there, Whitfield was recruited to run for a precinct committee position and she beat the incumbent for that job. Then she was encouraged to run for Lawrence Common Council and she won that, too.

“We did a coordinated campaign, where we all worked together,” she said. “We just built a really strong, coordinated campaign with all the candidates that were running out here. It was just really fun.”

And it worked. So well, in fact, that Whitfield and her mayoral campaign repeated the winning strategy of knocking on doors, connecting with constituents directly and coordinating efforts with a team of like-minded candidates.

The Whitfield team knocked on about 19,000 doors between Jan. 1 and Nov. 7 — including neighborhoods that had never seen a candidate before. Her campaign manager, Zachary Brown, said they added 4,000 homes to the tally during the final week of the campaign.

Whitfield said building a diverse team of candidates and volunteers was important to her — she’s been the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging director at Community Health for about 15 years.

“If anything, I want to make sure as things have changed out here, that we acknowledge that and build upon that,” she said. “We were excited to find the team members that we did — not only diversity of racial and ethnic and gender makeup, but diversity of ideas.”

Whitfield said a lot has been said about her as the first Black female mayor of Lawrence, and the first Black mayor in Marion County, but that wasn’t on her radar when she was campaigning. She noted that her father was the first African American constable in Waterbury.

“And so I guess my family is one that breaks barriers,” she said. “I am very humbled and thankful and grateful for that, but the vision that I have for the city is uniting the city.”

Moving forward from the election

Winning the election doesn’t mean Lawrence Mayor-elect Deb Whitfield gets to slow down. She said she’s actually busier than ever, with less than two months to prepare to take office.

She had a transition team in place about a week after the election and said it will help establish what her first 100 days in office will look like. She said one task they need to accomplish is visiting with department heads to talk about goals, and what they need to accomplish those goals in the coming year.

“I’m not a micromanager,” she said. “I want to make sure that we have people around in my administration that have skill sets, talents and perspectives that can help us move forward.”

Whitfield said she doesn’t know yet whether she’ll make staffing changes. One rumor she laid to rest was about the Lawrence Police Department. She said she has no intention of merging it with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

“We’re Lawrence. I love Lawrence. I believe in Lawrence,” she said, “We’re 52,000 strong, and we need to have our police force on our streets protecting all of our residents.”

Whitfield said she hopes to organize a citizens action group to gather input from residents, and she looks forward to working with the new all-Democrat Common Council.