Launching My Campaign!

Hi everyone! I am Rebecca Hollister and I am running to be one of your next Leavenworth City Commissioners. I am so beyond excited to continue connecting with my community in this way. Some of you may remember that I used to be a Leavenworth Times Columnist, writing about whatever modern day issue was in my head that week. Well, in the interest of one of my campaign values which is transparency, I wanted to start a blog here that I hope to keep up! I think Leavenworth deserves to hear exactly what our city commissioners are up to, and how they continue to serve the people of Leavenworth.

I’ll be honest—while I knew that eventually I wanted to run for City Commissioner, I did not think it would be this soon. I was worried it wasn’t the right time, as I have a busy summer. But, one of my mentors helped convince me that there never really does seem to be an “exact” right time. If we keep allowing life to get in the way of our goals and dreams, we will never make space to reach them. So I decided to make space, and completely dedicate my time to this effort.

I have spent the last few weeks getting everything sorted for an announcement. It’s sort of a chicken and egg situation; what can you do before you file? What do you have to have in order to file? How do you get the money to file if you don’t want to announce until you file but there is a filing fee? I’ve had to make some compromises. Ideally it would be a huge surprise, but I’ve had to tell some people in order to get things in line. Now I have a Treasurer, a bank account, at least half of a website, a logo, a donation page, etc. I’m twenty-five, and I do decently well for myself but I can’t spend a ton of my own money on this campaign! Not to mention I still have a full-time job.

My own mild struggles may point to exactly why not a lot of people appear to be running at all this year. The process of campaigning has become extremely exaggerated and inflated. Back when I worked on campaigns in 2020, I remember that you usually wanted to raise about $40,000 in this area for a State House race. Now I hear it’s more like $60,000. And while city races are certainly not that bad (I could not live with myself if I asked people for 40 grand in this race), it still requires quite a bit of money, manpower, and risk. So as I was getting all this started, I faced questions like: if I run a large campaign, am I contributing to these non-partisan races slowly becoming as much of a spectacle as state races? If I don’t run a large campaign, am I shooting myself in the foot? Is any of this that deep anyway?

I don’t know the answer to all of these questions, but I know that I need to run this campaign authentically and by putting my all into it. That means relying on friends, family, and community members to not only help me run the campaign but help me build it. I have great ideas but not all the answers. I need to ensure that the right people join me in the conversation: the city manager, parks & recreation staff, the chief of police, small business owners, fellow commissioners, and most importantly, the voting public.

So join me!