A Different Kind of Politician Val Carpenter is currently serving as mayor of Los Altos, California, but she’s no stereotypical politician. It is the fall of 2012, and the United States is buzzing with excitement over the upcoming presidential election. It is almost impossible to go a day without hearing different opinions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the Democratic and Republican candidates. Social media preaches the benefits of this candidate or that, and propaganda commercials are all over tv. The stereotypes we have heard of are often enforced by the figures we see on the news. It seems as though most politicians are working for their own power, instead of the good of the community. Meanwhile, in Los Altos, California, city council elections
are long over, and Val Carpenter is almost a year into her oneand-a-half year run as mayor. However, stereotyping is still a constant part of the political system. When I first visited Val’s house for an interview, I had many expectations regarding her appearance and behavior. I had expected someone very much into their own appearance, as she was in the public eye often, and a speaker who was so rehearsed in her words that she would seem unapproachable. In fact, the first thing I noticed about her upon or meeting was that she wasn’t wearing shoes. She apologized for it, in case it would create a problem for any of my pictures, but said that
she just didn’t like them. From there, all of the ideas I’d had about her before the meeting began to fall away. She was easy to talk to, and was happy to talk through a subject with me, instead of only speaking in rehearsed lines. It became clear that she is a different kind of politician. Val is currently serving in her second and last term of city council. She has gotten to be mayor twice, and has helped to create many new policies in order to benefit the city of Los Altos. She has spent time on both the planning committee and the historical committee, where she was chair.
Val first came to Los Altos when she was in graduate school at Stanford. She stumbled onto the downtown area and “just fell in love with it”. As she progressed through the business world, she kept her eye on the city, “wishing, hoping, dreaming that this is where [she’d] live.” She was finally able to buy a lot near the downtown area and begin building her own dream house there. Through this process, she discovered that there was a committee who was in charge of approving designs for new houses. She first attempted to join this committee but was unable to because there were no openings. She decided instead to be a part of the historical committee, since she had become interested in the idea of helping her community.
From there, she decided to run for city council. Val says she thought “I have something to contribute. I think my managing/ marketing background would be useful, and that would be enough, that’s the next step, right?”. In her first race, she was unsuccessful, coming in 5th out
of 8. It seemed to be the end of her journey in politics, until one of the winners of the race approached her and told her that she should run again. Val thanked him but declined, until he promised to help her in the race. In the next election, she won a seat on the city council. In her first race, Val ran as a registered Democrat. In the United States today, politicians are generally situated on the far wing of their party. It is unusual to find a candidate who believes in only some of their parties policies, and those who do are rarely successful. As a Democrat, Val received “virtually no support from [her] party.” After she was unsuccessful, a veteran city council member who was helping with her campaign convinced her to switch her registered party to Republican. She agreed that this was the right thing to do, because “[Her] first
motivation is that [she] love[s] this community”. Her story taught me a lot about the stereotyping of politicians in regards to their parties. Many people will take the side of one party and believe that the other one is completely wrong in every respect. Joseph Farah, a successful writer and CEO of a small business says that “The national Democratic Party is immoral to the core. Any American who would vote for Democrats is guilty of fostering the worst kind of degeneracy” (1). It isn’t possible for every Democrat to be immoral, but he holds a strong commitment to his party, and has been taught to assume the worst about others. Because of the political stereotypes we’ve been taught to believe in, when Val first told me she had switched parties, I was a little judgemental. It make it seem like she isn’t loyal to her party, and that she would be willing to change her beliefs in order to gain power. Instead, the opposite is true. Val explained how most people were not on the far edges of their party, but instead situated somewhere in the middle. As a politician, it is rare to see someone who only holds some of their beliefs of their party, but Val wasn’t afraid to show her ideas. She believes in many different policies that can be combined to better the community, and they aren’t all from one side. Based
“There’s sort of this line, before Los Altos and after.” on the community I have been surrounded by, and the community that is especially prominent in some parts of the bay area, I was taught to associate the word “Republican” with a negative connotation. Michael Feingold of the village voice says that “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet”(2), which is a heavily biased view. Val broke through the stereotypes of either party and took the best of both worlds with her through her
campaign. In the media recently, the focus for presidential candidates has been predominantly on men. While Michelle Bachmann was a part of the race, she was often criticized for her lack of political knowledge. Sarah Palin was also in the political focus for a while during the last election, and she too was mocked for her unintelligence. Stereotypes of female politicians have only grown in the last few years, completely ignoring women who are intelligent and capable. Val Carpenter worked hard to make on city council. After losing her first election, she quit her job in order to put all of her energy
into the new campaign and has done lots of fantastic work on the council, yet it’s possible that some people don’t believe her to be equal to her male counterparts. NBC’s Ann Curry tells about how people have asked her if anyone “forced” NBC to give her the anchor job she earned (3). Val does not succumb to any of the stereotypes that are too-often applied to female politicians. She was never weak, or a token of a minority. Before working on the city council, she was a VP in the marketing industry, another position that she earned through ability. Val never once allowed herself to be stopped because of her gender, and works in a way that would never let anyone say that she shouldn’t have her position because she is a woman. When Val finishes her second term on city council, she has no plans to return to the
industry. She’s been teaching part time at Mission College, and wants to continue her work there, where she uses her industry experience to help teach classes on marketing and business management. She also serves on many committees regionally, and has plenty of work to do there. I can only imagine that she will continue to help the community she loves as much as possible in the future. Her journey
here has been a hard one, but in the end it allowed her to make her mark on the community she loves. Val says that, “Moving here was like being reborn. I bought a house, the same year that we bought a house and moved here, I got married again, it really was sort of re-beginning life for me, my current life. There’s sort of this line, before Los Altos and after. I still love downtown... I wanted to have my kids walk to downtown, cuz they were small, so i wanted them to walk to the ice cream store, the toy store, the library, and they did. And we did. I still walk to downtown just about every day...It’s all about downtown. Where we’re sitting right now. And I hope it doesn’t change.”