Past as prologue for Dana McLean

Representative-elect Dana McLean reflects on her path to Jackson and what it could mean for other potential candidates

Dana McLean remembers going to the McLellan dime store at Main and Fifth streets with her dad in the 1960s and ‘70s as a child growing up in Columbus. 

He’d let her pick out anything she wanted, usually a plastic toy or candy. 

She recalled Andrews’ Shoe Store for children down the street and locally owned shops for various odds and ends scattered throughout downtown. 

As a 4-year-old in 1964, McLean and her family moved to Columbus from Russellville, Alabama, after her father accepted a job as manager of the Sears catalog store on the east side of town. 

Her parents rented a house on McArthur Drive, now Hospital Drive. Then, they bought a corner lot on Williamsburg Road in 1970 in the “friendly” and “close-knit” Arrington Park neighborhood and built the ranch-style brick house in which McLean and her younger sister grew up. 

Columbus was home then, and since moving back in 2013 from Tampa, Florida, where McLean lived for 20 years, it’s home once more — down to the house on Williamsburg, where McLean lives with her mother.  

One thing is different now, though. After unseating 28-year incumbent District 39 Rep. Jeff Smith, in the August Republican primary she will represent her neighbors in Jackson come 2020.  

“Being able to represent my hometown and surrounding area in the legislature is a tremendous honor and privilege,” McLean said weeks after her victory.  

When she discusses the race and her new job, in a southern drawl she hasn’t lost, it seems as though the dust hasn’t yet settled. 

“It feels weird for me to say that word, politics,” McLean said. “I never aspired to be involved in politics at all, and I still don’t feel like I am. I still feel like I’m just a representative, and not a representative with the big R, but just a representative of the people.”

Education “the most important thing”

It wasn’t until a couple years ago that she even considered running for public office, after attending a public forum in which legislators sparred over education funding.

“Education to me is the most important thing for a child and for your future,” she said. “I was going to the public forums, and I realized that … the state officials were not focused on education.”

McLean, 59, described her public-school experience, first at Franklin Academy and later at Stephen D. Lee High School, in glowing terms. To her dismay, people encouraged her to avoid public city schools when she moved back to Columbus with her daughter, Madison, then a high school sophomore. 

“I really wanted her to have the same high school experience that I did, but things had changed a lot,” McLean said. “I’d heard … the best schools were in the county.” 

Recognizing the need for complete education reform, McLean wanted to find a way to help. One option was simply to become a state legislator and work from the top down.

Then, Smith voted in opposition of renewing the 2-percent restaurant sales tax for tourism in 2018 — something McLean called “unwise and just bad decision-making” because it cut funding to the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau for a year — and she was even more interested in running for the representative seat. 

Ahead of the March 1 qualifying deadline for the primary, McLean patiently waited for someone to step up and challenge Smith. No one did, so she got in her car and drove to Jackson to file for candidacy — the day before the deadline. 

“On the drive there I kept going, ‘Should I or should I not?’” she recalled. “Oh my goodness, I was terrified. I thought, ‘Do I have any idea what to do and how to do this?’”

A friend of McLean’s wrote her a note after the election quoting “The Lorax”: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” 

It’s an apt summary of what McLean did and what she wants others to understand: Someone who is “totally green but who is passionate about an issue” can make a difference if they’re willing to step out of their comfort zone. 

“I was confident in myself that I could do it, but whether I could convince others I could do it, that was kind of an issue or a fear,” she reflected.  

The vintage Airstream 

After studying political science and French at the University of Alabama, it was a sales job that pulled McLean to Florida from Birmingham, Alabama, where she worked as a sales representative for fragrance and cosmetics companies. McLean became an attorney in her 30s after attending Stetson University College of Law. 

Not long before she moved back to Mississippi, McLean bought a 25-ft. 1988 Airstream Excella travel trailer with a kitchen and bathroom, hoping for an adventure, or at least a change. 

“I’d just gone through a very contentious divorce, (and) (Madison) was unhappy with school,” McLean said. “We knew we wanted to leave Tampa and just kind of have a fresh start, but we weren’t sure what we wanted to do, if we were going to come to Mississippi or we were going to maybe travel and go to all the national parks out west in our Airstream.”

They moved to Columbus and ultimately decided to table their road trip, but once McLean became a candidate, the Airstream was no longer idle; it became crucial to her campaign. 

Using bungee cords, she attached a vinyl banner identical to her billboards in Lowndes and Monroe counties to the top of the trailer. 

“I would just park it at different places, like I parked it at Cadence Bank on a Sunday, (and) I parked it in the old K-Mart parking lot for a while,” she explained. 

Without a legitimate campaign strategy or a base of supporters, she raised $14,550 in contributions from individuals, according to campaign finance records. Smith’s war chest exceeded $74,000, with numerous political action committees having contributed most of that total. 

“It was me just getting out there and doing what I felt like would appeal to me as a voter,” McLean said. “Getting out and just talking to people and listening.”

Kathy Read, who’s lived in the Arrington Park neighborhood since 1975, got to know McLean after she moved back home. McLean described Read as one of her “biggest cheerleaders.” 

Read said she was “very impressed” with her intellect, focus and involvement in organizations, including the Columbus Arts Council board, Exchange Club of Columbus and the Columbus-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce. 

The fact that she sought to unseat an established politician in her first political race shocked Read and showed her what McLean was made of. 

“Whenever she decides that she’s going to accomplish something, she makes that her goal, and she does it,” Read said. 

Women in politics 

It was a good time for a change. 

That’s what McLean said about her win. 

“I think it wasn’t necessarily people were voting for me; I think they were voting against my opponent in some instances,” McLean said. “I think they had become disenchanted and they didn’t feel represented.”

Relatability was her main draw, she said. Voters could relate to a mother who’s struggled as a single parent and battled the related challenges. Some voters could also relate to a successful attorney who’s dabbled in other lines of work, she said

“I feel like everything I’ve done in the past, the experiences I’ve had will really help me because I’ve been in a lot of different places,” she said. “It hasn’t always been a bed of roses.”

In McLean, voters put their weight behind a female candidate, a rare anomaly in Mississippi. Between the House of Representatives and Senate, only 24 women currently hold seats, amounting to 13.8 percent of the legislature, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

“There’s something wrong with that picture,” McLean said. “We need more representation in our legislature, and hopefully this is one step in the right direction.”

The #MeToo movement has had a profound effect on women, McLean said. In the 2018 primary elections, a record 589 women ran or said they would run for U.S. representative, senator or governor seats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics and the Women in Public Service Project. Out of the hundreds, 125 women were elected. 

The movement inspired McLean, and she thinks it will inspire more women to enter the political arena. 

Greater female representation will also require more women supporting one another, as well as elected officials leading by example and actively encouraging them to run for office, she said. 

“I think if there are those that are willing to run, if the other women, friends and coworkers and just community activists would step up and just stand alongside these women and encourage them and support them, then I think we can make a difference in having more women elected,” McLean said. 

The next adventure 

McLean prevailed with 51.93 percent of the vote, a narrow margin, so she knows she will have to win more people over. 

“There will be a lot of naysayers going ‘She has no clue,’” McLean admitted. “And a lot of that may be true, but I have a real passion for doing a good job.” 

She plans to beat the learning curve through reading, research and analysis — her “forté.” 

Mike Arzamendi, president of the Columbus Arts Council board of directors, has known McLean, whom he described as “articulate” and said she “brings a lot to the table,” for about three years as a board member. 

“I really admired her attention to detail,” Arzamendi said. “She’s very careful and very analytical in approaching different tasks.” 

He was “thrilled” when McLean told him she was running for office. 

“She has talked about representing a wider base … and that other people’s voices need to be heard,” he said. “I think she’s going to be able to take that to Jackson.”

It turns out that the adventure, the fresh start McLean desperately desired when she bought the Airstream and left Florida in the rearview mirror were realized in her own backyard. The next chapter, though, and the arduous yet empowering “trip” that got her here are parts of her life she could’ve never predicted. 

“I think I had lost a lot of self-esteem through the divorce,” McLean said. “It’s amazing to think that now, five years later, I would put myself out there and run for office when I felt so broken and just lacking in self-confidence … You can see really what’s inside you when you can, on your own, build yourself back up.”

Story by Victoria Cheyne

Photos by Jennifer Mosbrucker