01 - Why On Earth Would You Run for Office?

In this first episode of the show, we step into the reasons Joanna decided to run for public office. With politics and our nation feeling more divided than ever, it can feel like a wild choice to get into politics at this time. Joanna talks about her past and what kicked her into running for the Michigan House of Representatives. 

CITIES IN JOANNA'S DISTRICT: Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Melvindale and Southgate, MI

PRIMARY ELECTION DAY: August 4th, 2026

DONATE TO THE CAMPAIGN: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/joannawhaley

VOLUNTEER WITH THE CAMPAIGN: https://www.joannawhaley.com/volunteer

(Paid for by the Committee to Elect Joanna Whaley)

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Why on earth would you want to run for office? This is the number one question that I get from my friends and family and loved ones. Asking the question in the chaos of today's politics, why would you want to get in the middle of that rat's nest? The answer to the question is equal parts. Exciting, full of fear, full of joy and sorrow. But all of them are not just my story, but they're all of our stories. Let's blaze the trail together.

SPEAKER_07 0:59

I'm holding my hand on my heart. I'm believing during the Pledge of Allegiance and the promise of America. But that promise is what I'm forty of America.

SPEAKER_06 2:00

So why did I choose to run for office? The answer to that question is not necessarily why, but it requires a specific when. This podcast will be really focused in on the campaign and the issues that many of us face. And I do encourage you to go check out a podcast that I ran for a few years, just called the Joanna Whaley Podcast, which goes into more background depth of my story. And you'll get bits and pieces of my story, not quite in a linear fashion here on the show, but the win is really important. It was February of 2022, and I was working for one of the largest mega churches here in the state of Michigan. Multiple locations all over the state. You know, tens of thousands of people all over the place. Doing a lot of good things within the Christian space and within its communities, uh, you know, offering lots of uh community and civic engagement. Uh, and I really liked working there. I now, you know, a lot of the political things beginning to happen in this time. This was really near the tail end of uh a lot of the lockdowns that were going on with COVID. I started working for this church weeks before the COVID lockdowns began. So my tenure at this church, this large mega church, was really an odd one, and the way it ended was equally as odd. The clip you are about to hear comes from the church that I was working for at this time.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Um you you understood that we're we're talking about the balance of grace and truth. We're we're talking about living the way that Jesus lived and standing where Jesus stood, and that is is to balance both grace and and truth. Because here's what we know if we if we're all truth and no grace, then we're practicing judgment, masquerading as religion. If we're all grace and no truth, then we're practicing enablement.

SPEAKER_06 4:36

It was a February day, a Monday, I'm sitting in our pastor's office, and I'm being fired from my job as a pastor.

unknown 4:50

I'm not perfect, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_06 4:51

Because I was considering coming out as LGBTQ. I'm a trans woman. And at that point in my life I wasn't even out. I was walking through the uh the beginning stages of transitioning and coming out as a queer person. And that experience was really formative in my world. As I said, go back and and listen to that other podcast at some point if you want more of the story. But my life and my career seemed to be falling apart seemingly overnight.

SPEAKER_04 5:39

Jesus does this perfectly. I'm not perfect. I'm not Jesus. I am broken. And in the fear and the anxiety is always that I'm gonna say something wrong, or I'm gonna use the wrong tone or the wrong word or wrong phrase in a certain spot. And so I ask for your grace as as we seek to balance grace and truth, that we receive your grace, that that if I accidentally say something the wrong way, that you understand that I'm I'm I'm doing my best, and my intention is never to hurt you, because we we have two really important objectives that I want you to know. Because it's important because I know that some of you with us right now are are experiencing gender dysphoria. Some of you are Christian teachers. I mean, think about it. You're business leaders, you're not gonna be able to do it. When you're a pastor, right?

SPEAKER_06 6:19

And you're trying to figure out how in the world why now pastors work in these churches, but they also have their communities within these churches, their friendships within these churches. And here I was losing my job, not just my employment, but also my whole network of people. I remember in college learning that it's not about what you know, it's about who you know. And in this instant, everything overnight was completely crumbling around me. I had to figure out what to do. I had a young family and I had to figure out how to pay the bills and the struggle of life that not just I experience, but many people experience this in their lives. And it and it and it doesn't necessarily revolve around being LGBTQ. It revolves around just life. Sometimes it falls apart. So there I was divorced, living with my mom at the at the age of 34. This is not what I had planned for my life. But I had to do something, I had to rebuild it somehow, some way. I didn't have a college degree because that's a long story short, but had dropped out of college. I did eventually go back to get my bachelor's and my master's degree. But at this point in my life, I had nothing. I had nothing to show for my life and career other than this weird skill set of being a pastor. I don't know if you can relate to that, but that that is what it felt like sometimes to feel as if I had nothing and nowhere to go. So there I am living with my parents, rebuilding everything, not just financially, but spiritually as well. I mean, this spiritual fallout was challenging enough, but to rebuild my life with all of these things just felt insurmountable. This clip you're about to hear is from May 5th, 2024 podcast. If you stuck with me last week for the the pad the last four weeks of this podcast, I was doing my master's kind of thesis, and you were all my uh my professors. I hope you judged fairly. But this week we're entering a brand new series called Mother God, and I'm actually going to be interviewing my mom live on the podcast. And right now, she's here on the podcast with us. Mom! Hey, what's up, Joanna? Oh my gosh. Listeners, it's my actual real life mom here. I I'd love to know what were your thoughts in that moment. We I remember you picked me up and I just broke down in the car and I told you what was going on. What were your thoughts in that moment? Raw, unfiltered thoughts.

SPEAKER_08 9:56

Uh scared to death.

SPEAKER_06 9:58

So walking through that each and every day was back when you were a child that there may be some difference. One of the biggest six or seven transformational, but one of the biggest challenges and hurdles uh I had faced.

unknown 10:11

Right.

SPEAKER_06 10:12

Um had no means. I found myself eventually moving into my own apartment, making very small salary at a at a dental company doing data entry. Because that's the only job I could get. Where my rent literally cost more than one whole paycheck. It took two pay periods to cover rent. That's the reality so many people face in our world today. When I went to rebuild and and I didn't realize the backdrop of what my own mother was dealing with and the fallout of my own life and everything that fell apart. So, how did we get from life falling apart to becoming an advocate for people in the civil rights world and the in the LGBTQ rights world? When we come back from the break, we'll dive in more about what that looked like and how all of this, how this campaign, how everything came to be out of the ruins of what seemed to be hopeless. Okay, so you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking to yourself, this sounds like it took a lot of time to make. And you're right, friends. This podcast took some time, but we're doing it because we want to tell the story of this campaign. And we want more people to hear about our campaign, and we want to win in August and in the primary and in November. So do me a favor today, go to Joanna Whaley.com slash donate today and support our campaign. Or you can just go to Joannawaley.com and select any of the donate buttons. If you can give anything five, ten, twenty, one thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars. That's the maximum here in the state of Michigan, it would go a long way to making sure that we can represent the voices of the people in our community who have needed to be represented for so long. Thanks. After picking up my whole world off the floor, I found my way into a church in the Detroit area that fully accepted me for who I was. And honestly, it was a risk with everything that I had been through. But this is where things began to take shape in my world of what made sense of how I would spend my days other than just clocking in to work, clocking out, and watching TV every day. Now, listen, for some that is good. That is what you need to do. That's how people like to live their lives. But for me, I had a life that was so marked by purpose and outpouring to others that I had to learn what to do with my time and my days and the great work that I had always participated in. But once I joined this church, I began to understand that I was safe as I am, that they were trying to create and shape and shift the world around them to be much more inclusive and welcoming to all different types of people. The pastor would say this wonderful phrase each and every Sunday this morning.

SPEAKER_09 14:42

Royal of First is an open and affirming congregation that opens its doors wide for anyone that would come. So no matter where you've been, what you've been through, who you love or who loves you, the color of your skin, the language you speak, the country you come from, the doubts you carry, or the beliefs you struggle with, we are so glad that you made it into this house today, and you are welcome. No matter who you are, we're really glad you're here. How you show up in the world, the language you speak, the money in your bank account.

SPEAKER_06 15:14

Who you love, it just was beautiful. And it made me, it put this fire in me to try and reconcile this place and this thing and this faith system that I had fallen in love with my whole life to being a more welcoming place to those who were like myself. So, you know, I started a podcast and I started making TikTok videos talking about the journey of being myself and holding on to my spiritual uh faith. I began speaking and preaching in church uh in this in this, you know, open and welcoming and affirming church. Uh and I began singing and and visiting churches all over the place. And it just began to build into this amazing work of building up marginalized people within a faith system that seemed to regularly want to push them down. And it was in this work, it was in the pursuit of all of this work, that I made a connection with a person who then, you know, you know how it goes? It's you I know you got a person who knows a person who knows a person. And this person that I know had been invited to speak at a local political rally, but because of their uh status within a 501c3, they they had turned it down and suggested me to speak instead. And this is when I got involved with our local indivisible group. Here in the Downriver area, it's Indivisible Downriver United 734. And I that's when I met my dear friends Ashley and Jessica, and I shared my story with them over the phone. And they were like, you know, uh we're we're looking for somebody to share about uh the LGBTQ experience and to talk about Christian nationalism, and I had both of those things, and that's when I said, Yeah, I'll do it. I had never in a million years thought about politics, running for office. I just thought this was another thing in my advocacy work. And boy was I wrong. This event, the hands-off rally, changed everything in my life. This one speech, this one moment would change the trajectory of everything.

SPEAKER_07 18:22

Holding my hand on my heart and believing during the Pledge of Allegiance and the promise of America. But that promise is yet a hope. I stand before you, a queer person in America, wondering where the promise is, and I am seeing it in front of me today. So my challenge to you, the queer person in this room, the person who is an ally, be the chief diplomat in your world. When you're in the park room at work and you hear the microaggressions, fight back. When you're in your top service and your pastor starts to say something against my community, like that. When you're at the family table and Uncle Town says something against somebody who loves it.

SPEAKER_06 20:13

Thank me for my speech. And then other people started to say, have you ever considered running for something? And I remember thinking, no, no, no, not not not sure. That's what I was here to do. But I began to think about it more and more and more. But all of this had really been kicked off by Trump's inauguration speech.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

SPEAKER_06 21:27

I remember going to work the next day, and at that time I was working at the University of Michigan, working towards my uh, you know, my chaplaincy certifications, and I remember just breaking down in a work meeting. Just feeling incredibly unsafe in my nation for the first time. So you we had this Trump speech, we had what was coming. Coming down the hill with DC from DC and then my state representative made a vote and sided with something that House Republicans really wanted to mimic the chaos going on in DC and they decided to vote against trans girls having access to sports here in the state of Michigan. Mind you, there had only been two athletes in the state of Michigan within two years. And when this vote was taken, there was zero. And my Democratic state representative voted against our community.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

There are, in fact, biological differences between men and women, and those differences matter, especially when it comes to the integrity of women's sports.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

We are demonizing children with these bills. We are punching down on the most vulnerable in our society, and for what?

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Having a bill passed out of this house that does erode civil rights.

SPEAKER_06 23:24

I remember reading the article while I was on the bus to go to work. Because that's what you do in Ann Arbor. You drive a bus, you ride in a bus to get to your job. And it was right there on that bus. Coming from the orange lot in Ann Arbor. In my drive of the university hospital. The reality is we are living in abnormal times. And politics is really seeping into every little aspect of our life. I would be honored to have you give, maybe for the first time ever, to a political campaign, or maybe you've given a thousand times to a political campaign. But we believe that our campaign, this campaign, matters. That it's making a statement here in the state of Michigan and broadly across the country. You can go to Joannawhaley.com slash donate right now and donate whatever amount is comfortable for you. You can give monthly and you can give one time. Every little bit helps. You can go to the link in the show notes or go to joannawaley.com slash donate. Thank you. So the decision was made. I was tired of all the attacks on not just my community, of queer folks, but of our community. The city that I live in, I live in a city called Lincoln Park. It has a huge foreign-born population. Many people who do not speak English in our communities. And seeing everything that was going on in our federal government, and now our state government beginning to act like this too. My mind was made up. The work that I had been doing was in the church's space for years at this point. I was about to pour into the public space. Many people within our community trying to remind me of who I am. Many people told me when they found out I was considering to run. The more I heard this, the more motivated I became to say, you know what? This is why we have to run. This is why I have to run. Marginalized communities in our city are waiting to have their voice heard. They've been screaming from the rooftop for years and years and years, and I'm not going to listen to passage in my faith. I will go, Lord. And it is in that vain. That led me into this. To say that there are people who need to be cared for and included in this nation, in this state, and in our communities. We need a voice screaming out of the wilderness. To say, I don't care what you say about us, we belong here. So I started showing up at city council meetings in all four cities of our community. Because I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing in the beginning. I had been an LGBTQ rights advocate within religion. What did I know about public policy? What did I know about city leadership? So I became a student of our communities. And I went to every single city council meeting for literally an entire year. In all four cities. Never missed one.

SPEAKER_05 29:17

I started listening.

SPEAKER_06 29:27

Because it wasn't about what I believed anymore, it was about what do we believe. What do we believe we need in this world and in this life? How do we pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? The evolution from expanding and broadening your advocacy work is challenging. But it's been the greatest work I have ever had the joy of being a part of. So the time came. Ready to blaze a new trail. One that many people say can't be done. One that many people wonder. Will it change the course of politics in our area? Maybe. We're ready for something new. We're ready for something fresh. We're ready for leaders who show up. We're ready for leaders who can lead us through the darkest times. I'm equipped for this. I had to lead myself out of the darkest moments. As a nation, as a state, and here in our community, we'll find a way out of this. We'll keep going. So we will blaze this trail together, friends. And we're going to do everything we can to make sure we center the voices of those who have been pushed down the most to lead us to a better, more inclusive community. So I leave you today with the speech from the launch party of this campaign. And together, friends, we will blaze this trail and go where we need to go together.

SPEAKER_07 32:14

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome.

SPEAKER_06 32:18

We're here. We're here. We're finally here. I'm so thankful each and every one of you came. And to the Jasons, thing one and thing two, thank you. The former mayor, Mike Higgins, is here tonight from Lincoln Park as well. So thank you for being here. Do we have any other elected officials or candidates in the room? No? Okay, great. Well, I I want to just first of all thank each and every one of you for being here.

SPEAKER_07 32:48

This is uh the fourth event today. We have three uh No Kings rallies today.

SPEAKER_06 32:58

And I said this at the Why Not Rally, I said we're gonna run this campaign like a protest. And because it's what we need. It's what we need right now. And I wanna bring you back a little bit, um, a little bit of my life. My mother is here, I'm gonna embarrass her.

SPEAKER_07 33:22

Um when I was a kid, when I was she made the shirts and that's good enough.

SPEAKER_06 33:34

Um my mother modeled for me as a young kid what it meant to stand up for those who society was pushing down. She modeled that for me from day one. As a kid, I just remember her always standing up for the people in our church that were being pushed down because of who they were, who they loved. I remember her teaching me how to look out for those that everyone was overlooking. She taught me that. And I'm so thankful for that because that has been planted inside of me. And the other thing my mom taught me was hard work. Um and it really uh one of the things she used to say to me as a as a kid is that uh, and I know that she worked a lot of hours, a single mother trying to raise me, this crazy kid, right? She worked tirelessly. But I never thought she was absent. I knew she worked a lot, but she always told me that she wanted better for me. She always wanted better for me than she had. And I believed that promise. I believed that prayer that she had all those years ago, and she still held on to that prayer. Um and the reality of what's going on right now in our world, in our country, is that my generation is starting to feel that we're losing grip of that prayer. Where we feel like we're kind of losing the hope of having a better life than our parents. I was talking with somebody at a city council meeting in Melbourne the other day. And he's like, you know, he introduced himself and said, I'm retired, and in my head, maybe this is just me, this is my own therapy session, but I thought to myself, boy, wouldn't that be nice. I thought to myself, like, we my generation is losing that hope. But I don't want to lose that hope. I don't think any of us want to lose the hope that we can have a better life than our parents. And for those parents in the room, you want that for your kids, and you want that for those around you and the generation beyond. But it's what's happening right now in our country, what's happening in DC, is trickling down, and I used the term this morning, it's trickle-down crap. Um, I learned I learned a lot of right-wing talking points when I was a pastor. So um, you know, we have this trickle-down effect happening, and what's going on in the white in the White House in the Oval Office is made its way into our statehouse. It's made its way into the halls of Lansing. And what we have is we have a party that is more worried about being right in their version of right, than actually doing the right things. We yeah, yeah, thank you. We have we have to we need leaders who can call out the garbage that's happening in our government and do something. We need Democrats who can do something. We need Democrats who will vote to protect human rights. We need Democrats who will work every day and show up to try and make life easier for the generation, for this generation and beyond. We need Democrats who are not going to sit by and just let investment companies buy up our houses and jack up the rents so that all of us are priced out of our own homes. We need people who are gonna fight back. We need people who are not just gonna sit on their butt and just, you know, show up when it's nice and convenient for them. We need, we need we need politicians who are gonna show up when the water turns off. We need we need that person to show up when a neighboring city, when their city council member decides they want to go on an anti-LGBTQ rant publicly. We need leaders who are gonna stand up against it. My life completely fell apart four years ago. I was an evangelical pastor, I got outed by someone in my church and lost my job, and I was met by my mother at the front door of my home, who picked me up and says, I know, and we're gonna get through this. And I moved into their home here in Allen Park and rebuilt my life. I had to go back to school, it was not fun. I went back to school, I finished that degree, which he was very angry with me when I dropped out. I got the bachelor's from Eastern Michigan University of Eagles. And then I went to seminary. Yes, you heard that right. I went to seminary, and I studied liberation theology. For those of you who may not be familiar with my church speak, um, liberation theology is the study of marginalized groups in the story of God, in the story of the divine. And I have seen through those things, and I got the degree, by the way. And with that degree, I was able to rebuild my life again. It took me, here's another thing. It took me going to school, what I had as a white male in this world was handed to me. And when I came out as myself, I had to work a thousand times harder to get where I was before I came out. Women trying to scan. And this is the fight that we scan with as women, and the fight that queer folks fight every day. And we need people in our government who understand that. And who will actually try to help and make it better. So I thank my mother for teaching me to stand up for the marginalized. Thank you. And I'm going to take that work ethic that she showed me, and I'm gonna keep showing up. Even when it's not, even when it's not a fun event, if the city is falling apart, I will be there on the line with our city leaders working. And I will go to Lansing and I will fight for what is right for each and every one of us. No more. No more Democrats who are gonna sit by idly and do nothing. The do nothing democrat era is over. And right here in District 2.

SPEAKER_07 41:16

Are you with me?

SPEAKER_06 41:22

I am so thankful for all of you to be here. I was worried that no one was gonna show up. But um, that might say more about me, you know, but I'm just really thankful, like each and every one of you, for the connection we had, and if I am elected to be the next state rep, I am elected. When I am elected, I will keep showing up, like Jason said. I will keep showing up, and you can call me, and I will show up for you. Even if it gives me no votes, it does nothing for me. If it helps you, I'm there for you. Okay? That is my that is my um my work that I am doing. This is not about me, this is about us. This is about lifting up this district, one of the poorest districts, one of the lowest income districts in the state of Michigan. It's time that one job is enough to survive. It's time that healthcare does not bankrupt our neighbors. And it's time that each and every human being, no matter who they are, who they love, who loves them, how they identify, what country they were born in, what their immigration status is, that every single person who walks in this state is safe to be who they are and to be.