On June 7, Rev. Kathryn Jones, a Wiccan minister from Uniontown, Penn. announced her candidacy for state representative in the 51st District. Rev. Jones is running on the Green Party ticket against Democratic incumbent Timothy S. Mahoney. Although this will be her first time running for public office, Jones has had years of experience working around and with the structure of local politics.
Rev. Kathryn Jones [Campaign Photo}
Then in fall 2013, local officials began to reject her requests to enter the very prisons that she had already visited. In May 2014, Jack Henekes, the local district attorney and a member of the county prison board, told the Pittsburgh Tribune that Rev. Jones was denied access because her religion “is not federally recognized.”
Although these verbal attacks focus on her Wiccan practice, Jones believes that religion is not really the issue. Over the past decade, she has become an outspoken political activist in Fayette County. She joined the local Occupy movement and is currently fighting “the construction of a new $100 million prison facility to be funded by taxpayers and contracted out to for-profit corporations.”
Jones firmly believes that religion is just a reason to stop her activist work. She says, “Being refused the opportunity to minister to Pagan inmates is why I am [now] running for office.” She sees her candidacy as the next step in her personal crusade to make the local community a better place. She explains:
Our community is falling apart. We have lost too many of our young people to gun violence and drug overdoses, while the rich get richer and the poor fill the prisons for profit. … I am fighting decades of corruption in an area that votes 60%+ for Democrats and where Obama lost [twice]. I am fighting apathy and poverty and illiteracy.
The 51st District of southwestern Pennsylvania is a region with a long coal mining history. It has been a Democratic stronghold for years. Rep. Mahoney has been the district’s state representative since 2006 and, before him, other Democrats have won the seat since 1969. Republicans do not even regularly offer opposition. Jones says that if she doesn’t run, Rep. Mahoney will run unopposed once again.
For years Jones herself was a Democrat but, over time, she became disillusioned with the local political scene. She says, “The [region’s] Democratic Party has done a disservice to our community and to the national Party in general.” She adds that they are “way too corrupt” and only want “perpetuate the status quo.”
![Kathryn Jones during local Occupy protests. [Photo courtesy of K. Jones]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/kaj4-500x375.jpg)
Kathryn Jones during local Occupy protests. [Photo courtesy of K. Jones]
At first she looked to the Tea Party for support because, like herself, it wants to see Mahoney out of office. However Jones quickly realized that she, “could not overcome the social issues divide.” Then a friend told her to contact Jay Sweeney, chair of the Green Party of Pennsylvania. After speaking with Sweeney, Jones says that she “found a home.” She likened the feeling to first finding Wicca in the mid-nineties.
The state’s Green Party fully supports her candidacy. Sweeney says, “The Green Party is Wiccan and Pagan friendly … I don’t anticipate any backlash, but, will certainly cite our values if necessary to defend any such controversy.” Those values include a “respect for diversity” which includes religion and spirituality. These ideals are incorporated into the Party platform.
After filling out a questionnaire and meeting with representatives from the Green Party of Allegheny, Jones attended the Party’s June 7 state committee meeting in Bethlehem. She says that the delegates asked probing questions but nothing out of the normal. Sweeney agreed saying:
Kathryn has been clear about her religious beliefs. I would say she was universally accepted. The only question was a clarification in regard to her position as a minister. Someone wanted to know if she was a UU minister. A member immediately raised an objection to any question regarding religion.
Along with being the first Wiccan candidate to run, Jones will also be the first third Party candidate. And if elected, the first woman to hold that particular office for the 51st District. She says that the pressure is now on. She wants to be a good representative of the Green Party and of the Wiccan community, saying, “I don’t want to let down either group.”
Kathryn Jones performing a local wedding ceremony. [Photo Courtesy of K. Jones]
One of these goals is to show her community that regular people can run for office on a shoestring budget. Whether she wins or loses, she wants to prove that individuals can be heard and can make a difference in politics.
Currently Jones is working on the petition needed to add her name to the district ballot. She is confident that she’ll have the needed 300 signatures by the July 31 deadline. She and her campaign team are aiming for 500 just in case there are any questions. In the meantime, Jones will be setting up the back-end logistics to run her campaign, raise funds and garner support. Her focus is now on social media outreach and the petition.
Supporting her is a group of dedicated volunteers made up of locals from all faith back grounds. Jones has yet to experience any backlash from the community due to her religion. The local press has covered her campaign with interest and curiosity. Jones says there there have been some light jokes about “bonfires in the parks, but that has been it.” Local Wiccan Priestess Lady Annabelle of Grove of Gaia, says:
It is good to see someone who is openly Wiccan run for public office in Pennsylvania. It sets a standard for other Wiccans to lead and become candidates for State Representatives themselves, or seek other government roles … Her chances depend on how she presents herself. It will be interesting to see if she is successful as this would suggest that PA voters can look to the substance of the candidate, regardless of her religion.
Once Jones collects the needed signatures, her name will go on the ballot for the November 2014 election. At this point, it is too early in the process to know if she will receive any real resistance due to her religion but Jones says that she is ready for anything. She welcomes a public debate, open conversation and whatever else may come.
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Too bad I’m not in her district! I’d love to have a Green Party candidate to vote for. I’m in the 58th, and just finding that out after a recent move was a lot more difficult than it should be, with all the gerrymandering in this state! Our map of districts looks like a drunken game of connect the dots.
But still, good to see this happening in PA. We finally got marriage equality, but no non-discrimination protections to go along with it. And we have a state government that routinely mixes (their) church and state to an increasingly comfortable degree, issuing Biblical proclamations and such. I’d really like to see some fresh air blowing through this area!
The Green Party is fielding candidates in PA for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. They have a huge signature threshold to overcome to even make the ballot. Maybe you can reach out to folks in your area to let them know that there is an alternative to the status quo. Paul Glover and Dr. Wendy Lee are passionate and dedicated leaders, and ballot placement is a very important step towards permanent and sustainable change. Thanks for your enthusiasm and support. ~K. Jones~
Took a peek at the PA Green Party platform. If you’d told me it was the PA Progressive Party platform I wouldn’t’ve been able to tell the difference.
This is exactly the kind of situation where U.S. third party candidates have a chance: a local election where talking to people one at a time can substitute for expensive advertising, and the incumbent takes his or her seat for granted and is unresponsive to local needs. In these circumstances, the third party candidate has a decent chance of winning and keeping the seat on the basis of her personal qualities, rather than being a spoiler or running a merely educational campaign. School boards, water boards, city councils and state assemblies are good places to build a party or factional power base.
BTW: “her personal crusade” “Crusade” is not the right word. Watch out for these fossilized metaphors.
“Crusade” is the Christian equivalent of “jihad”.
Right. “Campaign”, “mission”, “drive” and “effort” are possible substitutes.
Agreed on all fronts and particularly seconding the comment about “crusade”. It’s a wince-worthy word choice (although weirdly something like “X has been a tireless crusader for the rights of Z for the last 20 years” doesn’t give me the same reaction). Someone with a “drive” or a “campaign” to do something sounds like an involved, passionate citizen. Someone with a “personal crusade” reads like an over-invested kook.
More on the subject of third party candidates. At various times, I’ve been registered as a voter with three different third parties, though I never was an activist in any of them. In the decades that I’ve been following the fortunes of these parties, none of them has had any electoral success other than one candidate who was elected to a single term in the state legislature and promptly changed her party affiliation to advance her career (it didn’t work). Rarely do their candidates even get enough votes to affect which of the major party candidates wins.
In a state with a large and growing number of independent registered voters, third parties ought to be winning elections once in a while. Certainly the deck is stacked against third parties in a non-parliamentary system, but IMHO a greater reason for the dismal failure of these parties to do the most important job of a political party, which is to elect their candidates, is their electoral strategy. Third parties tend to put most of their energy into campaigning for candidates at the top of the state ticket and for national office; these candidates have no chance of winning. Because the party knows they have no chance of winning, they frequently nominate celebrities and party activists who don’t have relevant experience or qualifications for the post they are running for. (An exception is third party nominations for the more technocratic statewide offices like controller. These offices are less political and third parties can sometimes find qualified ordinary citizens to run for them.)
Because their candidates always lose, all these parties have is a bench of perennial losers. No wonder they aren’t taken seriously. In this country the way to build a political party that fields more than protest candidates is to forget about the glamour jobs and make a serious effort to elect 1) candidates for local offices where they can build local support and 2) candidates for state assembly in districts that have historically been safe seats for one of the major parties, which is most of them. Once a candidate has been elected, he or she can climb the ladder in the normal fashion: run for re-election, run for another local post, serve one or two terms in it, build a resume, a track record and a contact list of supporters and allies. Then run for a more powerful office as a credible candidate.
All I can say is ^^^THIS! I also see the shoot-self-in-foot strategy with third parties and I don’t understand it at all. As much as I hate to cite them as an example, people should be paying attention to how the Christian right took over the Republican party– pretty much exactly the way you stated. Going for the smallest, most local positions and building a turnout machine that produced passionate voters for positions that were otherwise a political afterthought, and then slowly proving the potency of that reliable turnout machine for more and more powerful offices. It isn’t quick or easy, but a quick look at the mess we’re dealing with in this country as a result of that strategy proves that it really works. It’s such an obvious lesson that I don’t get why progressive groups have proven so incapable of learning from it.
I definitely had the Christian Right in mind. Besides the fact that shoe leather and personableness can beat money in a local election, local elections often have a low turnout and three-quarters of the voters know little or nothing about the candidates. That means that a single issue, point of information or conversation can sway the voter to check off your party’s candidate instead of any of the others.
When Quentin Kopp was running for an office in San Francisco, I voted for him even though he held more conservative positions than I usually favor, simply because he stood outside my local supermarket and shook my hand, and none of his opponents did.
A small but determined faction of activists can get their people onto a school board running either a stealth campaign or an open one, because the vast majority of voters are uninformed and apathetic. The Christian Right has used this tactic successfully again and again.
would someone PLEASE tell those jackasses that Wicca IS Federally recognized? Pagan/Wiccan military can now have the pentacle on their headstones in VA Cemetaries! and the religion has been federally recognized for about 20 years now; give or take a year or two.
The real answer is that there is no such thing as a federally-recognized religion. The military is not the federal government, and only deals with a narrow slice of religious life. Likewise, the IRS can grant tax-exempt status to certain organizations, but its doing so is not “recognition” in the sense of a big book of religions which are official. The term is a red herring.
Just want to say I think its excellent that Kathryn Jones ,a Wiccan is standing for office and wish her good fortune.
I wanted to read more about Rev. Jones but couldn’t find a twitter feed or website. If anyone finds any links please post. Her facebook page didn’t have a follow option. I’d love to follow this story as the election draws closer.
I don’t use Twitter often, but my FB page is open and I adjusted the settings to allow you to follow my posts. I don’t foresee anything of any consequence happening between now and Aug 1. All I can do now is seek signatures on the petitions….and take in everyone’s opinions and advice. Thanks for your interest.