Bonus Interview: Former Boston City Council candidate Lee Nave

Rethinking with Alex Torpey

Join Alex for this bonus interview as part of the Special Series: On Running for Public office.

This interview is with Lee Nave. Alex and Lee met while Lee was a student in Professor Torpey’s MPA course at Seton Hall University. Lee moved to Boston five years ago and began to engage in various local redevelopment and affordable housing issues. He ran for City Council in District 9 in 2019, earning nearly 10% of the vote in a seven-way race where the winning two vote getters received about 25% of the vote.

Alex and Lee talk about running for office for the first time, sharing their experiences as introverts, what you learn as a candidate knocking on doors, and a lot about local housing policy.

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This is a special edition series from Rethinking. Based on the demand and interest right now from people who want to learn more about getting involved and becoming more influential, or a decision maker, in government, I decided to create this free, nonpartisan, totally open tutorial. This may be valuable for those who are thinking about running for office, but need a place to start or don’t have access to these sorts of resources already. There will be more episodes on other ways to get involved.

This series provides an overview in the following areas:

1. Should you run for office?
2. How to start your campaign from scratch
3. Running your campaign
4. GOTV and Election Day
5. Win or lose – now what?

Each section provides an overview of helpful information. It is not meant to be exhaustive, nor is it meant to be definitive – there are many ways to approach this, and there is lot more detail you can go into. But for those of you who may not have access to partisan resources, or wish to run outside the party/power structure (go you!), I hope this is a helpful starting point.

Do you wish I went into more detail in any area? Let me know on social media or by email!