Shootings put mayor in position compelling her to speak out
DAYTON, Ohio – A shooter had just torn through a Walmart more than 1,300 miles away, and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley was in her car on the way to a cookout, agonizing over when to call El Paso Mayor Dee Margo. She wanted to let Margo know that she cared, that she would stand by him as he tried to lift his city out of the darkness.
After a back-and-forth with her husband, Whaley decided to give Margo some space and call the next day – let everyone sleep on it.
But her slumber that night was brief: An early-morning knock at the door woke her. Another shooter had opened fire, this time in Dayton. Nine people were dead. The city would forever change, Whaley knew. That darkness would descend here, too.
“I am sorry that we share this affinity,” Margo said when the two mayors connected later that bloody weekend. Whaley was standing in Dayton’s convention center, wails from grieving families trailing through the hall.
“I agree,” she replied. So many mayors have this in common: a mass shooting with a high-powered weapon, lifeless bodies strewn on the pavement, a community grappling with how to move forward.
Whaley, a trustee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, knows this all too well – these phone calls, the shared grief.
Underlying the connection between the mayors is a central tenet of Whaley’s leadership: The office of the mayor should matter to the community, in times of joy and especially in times of grief. It took her two years to decide to run for mayor, and she declared her candidacy only after realizing that she could turn the position, described by her predecessor as “part-time,” into one of legitimate power. Since her election in 2013, Whaley, 43, has become a visible leader throughout her city and its greater region, spearheading education reform and taking on the opioid crisis.
Now, with her city grieving, the Democratic mayor has risen as a leading voice on gun control. She has appeared on national news programs and produced op-eds calling for gun policy action.
But the limelight has downsides. A pile of letters from constituents angered by her “disrespect” for the president sit on her desk, and hundreds more fill an email folder that she painstakingly sorts through. For days after the Aug. 4 tragedy, a security detail drove Whaley around her city and followed her into her favorite restaurants.
“If I had my choice, I would just never have it,” she said of the detail. “I respect the fact that you need to stay safe, but this is the job.”
Whaley’s critics have chastised her for turning a tragedy into political capital. But she sees it as an opportunity to use her bully pulpit for good.
Only once has she felt uncertain that she would do good by her city – and that was when President Donald Trump came to town.
Whaley’s decision to join Trump during his Dayton visit was not an easy one. She believed the president was a divisive figure whose presence could further fracture her grieving city. On the other hand, he is the president of the United States, and she thought it was her duty as mayor to greet him.