Jen Ferrell ’01 is building her campaign for the North Carolina House of Representatives off previous experiences and how policy makers’ decisions directly affected her and her family.
A member of the last graduating class of Elon College and the student group that worked with the first Elon Poll, Ferrell spent time on unemployment and saw how the decision to eliminate Pre-K services brought adverse effects to her twins and their classmates. That’s all on her mind as she campaigns for the seat in District 36, located southwest of Raleigh.
“As a 37-year-old mom, I strongly feel I can connect to parents across all political spectrums going into November on issues of public education, economic security and jobs and to get these parents out there that are not voting,” Ferrell said.
At 37, she’s the youngest woman running for a state legislative seat in North Carolina, and she’ll go up against Woodie Cleary in the Democratic Primary March 15. The incumbent, Republican Nelson Dollar, has served for 12 years.
Ferrell, originally from Northern Virginia, was laid off the day before the 2008 election from a Goldman Sachs-funded energy tech startup in Raleigh. Pregnant with twins, Ferrell was on unemployment for eight months and ultimately decided not to look for a job so she could stay home to care for her twins.
“That was a turning point for me,” Ferrell said. “The policy started to directly affect me.”
Ferrell began lobbying her state representatives, calling it “learning by doing.” She voiced her concerns to the North Carolina General Assembly, and even spoke to an N.C. House Human Services Committee about the pre-K services that were eventually cut.
After another candidate — for whom Ferrell was set to serve as campaign manager — dropped out because of family health concerns, Ferrell was encouraged by the House leadership caucus to run for the seat. She filed on Dec. 23, 2015 — the last day she could — and formally launched the campaign in early January.
She’s already received endorsements from the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association and the Triangle Labor Council/NC AFL-CIO and is pleased thus far with her campaign’s recent success.
The three issues Ferrell is focusing the most on are public education, economic security and jobs and women’s personal health issues.
She said she wants to ensure that teacher pay and teacher assistant positions aren’t further cut along with textbooks and other resources. Ferrell is an advocate of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for middle class families, and she’d also like to increase the unemployment eligibility weeks.
Ferrell said there’s been a “direct assault” against rights for women’s health and wants those decisions to be left to women, not to policy makers.
“I think we need to get back to priorities and funding our schools, economic development and jobs in the state rather than this social regressive policy that is going to restrict people’s rights,” Ferrell said.
Though Ferrell grew up in a Republican household, the college climate at Elon challenged her beliefs.
She recalls her time at Elon being “incredibly challenging to balance but rewarding.” She majored in political science and public administration. She juggled her involvement in the political science department with being a member of Phi Mu Fraternity and working at Cracker Barrel to help pay rent.
“I learned so much from my professors as far as keeping an open mind, learning about worldwide policy, global policy, state and national policy,” she said. “I really think that helped shape me. That was kind of a turning point for me to help learn from them.”
Ferrell said she hopes to be a voice for the ordinary people in her district. That’s why she got involved with state politics to begin with and why she is running today.
“I’m running to bring back all of our voices to the N.C. 36 District for balance of sound and solid policy that will benefit all of the citizens here in the district and the state,” she said. “Right now, we’re not seeing that. We have a 12-year incumbent that no one really knows. They don’t know who he is. He doesn’t host town halls. He’s not very good with constituent services.
“It’s my passion, so I’m going for it … I’m doing that to ensure everyone’s being heard.”