GRAND RAPIDS, MINN. – Teresa Kittridge is so invested in encouraging rural women to run for office that she doesn’t care what party they come from.
“We are all about better supporting each other as women,” Kittridge said. “Of course we don’t agree on everything, but we all need to learn how to be there for each other and inspire each other to lead.”
Kittridge, of Marcell, Minn., an unincorporated area 29 miles north of Grand Rapids, lives in a part of the state that has flipped in recent elections from blue to red. But what matters most to her is connecting women of all ideologies through the organization she founded, 100 Rural Women.
Running for office isn’t the only thing her organization focuses on. It’s a networking system designed to encourage women in leadership in community and business roles as well. But it’s election season, and many of the women she works with want to see more women running, or want to run for office themselves.
Candidates her organization has worked with include Amy Johnson, who was elected mayor of Ashby, a city of 475 between Alexandria and Fergus Falls, and Juleigh Prosser, who is running for Clearwater County Board in northwestern Minnesota.
Darcy McKenzie, a liberal activist from the Twin Cities who grew up as a Republican in North Dakota, has mentored Prosser and says she’s not even sure what Prosser’s politics are. Even if she hailed from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, that would be OK with McKenzie.
Prosser has good ideas about land and water use in her county, McKenzie said, and her view is that what people want to accomplish in their counties matters more than their chosen political label.
In fact, McKenzie said she would be willing to mentor members of the conservative Moms for Liberty group — with limits. She disagrees with their positions on LGBTQ issues and banning library books, so she probably wouldn’t support the group’s members in school board races. But she could see herself helping in a run for City Council.