Who’s Got Your Vote: Meet Michelle Mosby

RICH: Welcome to RVA’s Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. On this special election episode, RVA’s Got Issues. With the Richmond mayoral election, five candidates are vying to be Richmond’s next mayor. Each one wants to be the key decision maker that will shape the future of the city and the region. We’ll sit down with the candidates for an in-depth conversation about who they are, what they plan to do, and why they should be the choice of Richmond’s voters in November. We’re joined now by Michelle Mosby, a small business owner in the city and a former city council representative for the city’s ninth district, serving as the council’s first black female president. Welcome, Michelle.

Mosby: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Q: So, Michelle, you have a kind of leg up on the other candidates. You’re the only one who has run for mayor before. So, what’s changed this year from your previous elections?

A: Well from the previous mayoral election that had a different, a different reason. Yeah.

Q: What was the different reason?

A: This time I’m running because Richmond needs a mayor that’s going to be focused on Richmond. The last election was different, and it was a different reason for running.

Q: Okay, well what was your reason for running the last time then if that was different?

A: It just was a different reason. We needed to make sure that Richmond got its best, her best, in that election. And so, I ran to ensure that Richmond got her best.

 

Q: So I’m just curious about this, like, you know, it takes so much to run, right? We were chatting before our interview and talking to all the candidates, right? It’s an immense amount of work. So why do it if the goal is not to win? Like, obviously you’re here to win this time around. If last time around was not to win, like what’s the reason to get involved in electoral politics in the first place for you?

 

A: I have a nonprofit called “Help Me, Help You.” It is an organization, nonprofit, that provides navigation continuum of care to those who have been justice involved, who’ve been incarcerated.

 

Q: And so, navigation continuum of care, meaning you help them back into like a full life. Does that make sense?

 

Q: Absolutely. It’s connecting to service providers throughout the Richmond metropolitan area. It’s ensuring that we have lived experience experts who work for “Help Me Help You.” Those are persons who have themselves been incarcerated. And so, they are walking hand in hand to ensure that you’re getting the best, whether it be mental health services, substance abuse services, helping to find the workforce, the employment, the transportation, the housing, all of those things that are the necessity. Even working to ensure that the family dynamic can get healing, if it’s a broken family dynamic. And so, that’s when I ran for city council. I was at that time reaching out to the council person to see if there were programs that could really help the justice involved community. And the answer was, I’m going to call you. And he didn’t.

 

RICH: That’s your sort of, we call it the joker origin story, right? Like that’s what launched you is if you’re not getting the answers, then you’re, I guess you’re going to provide the answers, right? To run. So, I want to talk about your work in politics, too, but let’s roll back a little bit, right? So, I do think this is a theme in your work, right? Second chances and particularly for folks who’ve been incarcerated. You mentioned your nonprofit. I mean, I think you’ve also employed some folks at your salon, right? Yeah. So where does that come from? Like what, you certainly, you know, I understand you want to help people, but why those people? What is it about the returning citizens, formerly incarcerated people that drives you so much?

 

Michelle: I think it’s the rejection that a person gets. I’ve never been incarcerated, but I don’t like rejection. And so, I had a friend that came home and I watched them try to get employment. And I watched them put the rejection letter in the sun visor of the car until the sun visor couldn’t hold them anymore. But the goal was to show me that I’m trying, and this is what happens when you try. And so, it kind of broke my heart. I was like, this is not going to work. And so, I guess I began to pray on it, and I was led to “Help Me, Help You.”

 

Q: And then to city council, right?

 

A: Yes. Yes.

 

Q: Right. And so, what is it about your experiences or if anything about your experiences on city council that you’re sort of bringing forward into this campaign?

 

A: So, my first piece of legislation on city council was called Ban the Box. Ban the Box takes the, “Have you ever been convicted off the application?” And so that allows you to at least get an interview. It allows you to not feel as though your application is being thrown in the trash at onset. So, it gives an opportunity. The City of Richmond, we voted. It was a 9-0 vote. People have been employed through the City of Richmond. There are protections there for certain barriers. It was done in such a way that it works. There’s a win win, I believe a win wins. So, it was done in such a way that the city wins, the people win, but it was a necessity, it was a necessary. It allows people to have insurance where they wouldn’t have a job that has insurance. It allows people to take care of their families. And that’s the need here. People want to be able to take care of their families, take care of themselves and take care of them families. And so, for me, that was big because it was the very first thing that I got an opportunity to do in policy.

 

Q: So, let’s be a little more specific if we can, like, what would you do specifically? Like, right. So, banning the box was a big, almost the signature achievement of your time on city council. What kind of things would you be able to do as mayor right now? You have, you know, a sort of bump up of authority. You have control somewhat over the City Hall. What could you do to sort of move that issue along to help them, those issues that you’ve been talking about?

 

A: So, I think I think that it’s a myriad of things when we talk about affordable housing. That’s a concern for not just those who have been justice involved, but the people of Richmond as a whole. And so, it’s really working to make sure that the policies that we had an opportunity to put in place when I was on council. I worked with a great set of council representatives. Ellen Robertson, housing. It was her thing. It’s what she loved to do. And I’m a realtor of 18 plus years. So, I jumped right in. It fit right in. And so, we have the Maggie Walker Land Trust. The affordable housing trust fund. These are policies that were put in place. My concern is are the policies being executed? Are we getting the outcomes that they will put in place to do. And so, as mayor, it allows me to really look at these policies and make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to really have housing affordability.

 

Q: Right. So, but, but like the specifics, right? Yeah. What, like, everything we can, is there an example of something that you think we should do on housing affordability or something else to help those who are justice involved?

 

A: Okay. So, for example, the way that the affordable housing trust fund was put in place, it went through a board, there was a process, and through that process, the 9th district was able to build 42 and 3 bedroom townhomes. And in that, it was not where it became a debt to the city. Today, we’re doing 10 million, and it’s a debt that’s being done through the city. I want to see why we why have we shifted. What’s happened here. The reason we’ve shifted from the policy and how the policy was put in place. I believe that we needed a database. We’re saying there’s a 3,000 new affordable housing units are coming online. Where are they? The people need to know, I need to know, we need to know. Where are those 3,000 affordable housing units? To me, you can’t get to your goal if you don’t know what you got.

 

Q: And you have some interesting ideas about housing. I want to get to in a minute, but I wanted to ask on this kind of theme of second chances. You kind of talked about Richmond almost like needing to get back on its feet. I think the language you’ve used sometimes is rebuilding the village, right? And so, after some pretty high-profile stories about City Hall, about this kind of issue about data and management, right? The meals tax, the finance department, communication department, voters might want someone that they can trust to kind of shore up city government. So, how do you plan on rebuilding that trust?

 

Michelle: I think that that starts with what we were able to do again in 2012. I came into City Hall. The finances Were not in a good space. The first thing that was done was hiring a seasoned CAO at the time and so I in a Mosby administration, it’s hiring a seasoned CAO. An administrator that has local government experience. Someone who preferably has a background in Virginia localities, but particularly someone who has experience with the greater Richmond region. I think that that’s important because that’ll be the start of how we get things on track with someone with experience in local government. Local government is a different animal. You can work in state and all the other places, but it’s more intricate when you’re working in local government because you can propose a thing, but you still have to have at least five other representatives on council to agree to a thing. So, you’ve gotta have a way of being a visionary so that you can at least have someone to buy into your vision starting there. So, it’s having a seasoned CAO. It’s refining our vision our mission and our values to make sure that our priorities are lining up to that. So, those things are necessary so that we can know that we want services and excellence. So how do we get there? So, if I want services and excellence after that it’s having leadership briefings. I need to sit down with every one of our department heads and I need to see where our processes and our objectives. How are we reaching them? What’s causing us to not reach them? What’s happening here? We need to have that discussion as well as we need to have a real detailed assessment of our service level. Who do we have working for us? What’s causing the City of Richmond to not be able to provide accuracy, to not be able to be accountable, to not be transparent, those things, and from there, a system upgrades and testing, testing and upgrades.

 

Q: And so, what about transparency? Right? A lot of people say they can’t get the info that they need. They can’t get access to knowledge. Either it’s, you know, journalists or it is, you know, people just trying to find out information about their own accounts. How do we shore that up? Is this part of the kind of process thing you’re talking

 

A: Absolutely, because again, the number two thing is making sure that our priorities align with our mission, our vision, and our values. And so, transparency should be a part of the three. And so, it’s we need system enhancements because I believe our people are not being able to give accuracy because the systems are not, whatever you put in. It’s what you get out.

 

Q: I mean even like the, just the computer actual systems that they’re putting their data into.

 

A: Our technology. Our systems. They need to be tested. They need to be upgraded. And then our people need to be trained so that they understand the process, the city process. They, and not just trained between each other, but a real trainer that comes in and helps us know what our processes are and how the system, the new system, is actually working. And so, those are some pieces to the puzzle that I believe have been missing.

 

Q: So, this is, you know, sounds like good ideas, right, but then good ideas sometimes in local politics sound a little expensive, right? So where does the money for these kinds of plans come from? If you’re going to bring in more training, if you’re going to hire new people, if you’re going to, you know, upgrade systems, do we have the money for that in the City of Richmond?

 

A: This current administration has said we’ve had a surplus. We’ve reached a triple A plus bond rating that, that I believe foundationally the city is in a good place foundationally. I do believe that we have to get in to see exactly where we are with all the other missteps that we’ve seen happen, but training has to be a part of your budget. If you want accountability, if you want transparency, then you have to have training as a part of your budget. System testing and upgrades, again, affordable housing, public, everything else that we want to do will not turn out the way we want it to turn out if we do not start with ensuring that the people who are working for us are confident in the process and that our systems are working for us and providing accuracy.

 

Q: So, we’ve talked a little bit about second chances as a kind of theme. Like the city, you’ve had your own challenges in life, right? First leaving marriage then the Great Recession both those times you filed for bankruptcy, And I think people sympathize with that kind of difficulties that these types of events can have Is there anything like to share with voters about how these experiences have shaped you?

 

A: Absolutely. So 2006, I became a realtor. Had the opportunity to almost be like Oprah. You get a house, you get a house, you get a house. Everybody was purchasing homes.

 

Q: It was a crazy time.

 

A: It was. It was. And then, 2010, the market crashed. When the market crashed, I had at that time, six rental properties of my own and tenants who were trying to stay alive in the moment. And so, I took a lot of my savings trying to keep things afloat. And in doing so, it caused foreclosure. It caused bankruptcy. It caused a lot of things, and at the time, when it was happening, I felt like a failure. I felt like, oh my gosh, what is happening? But the home that I actually live in today was one of my rental properties. And I ended up in the home that I live in, and it was there that I was able to get my footing. “Help Me, Help You” was already a nonprofit but it didn’t take root until that crisis. And then, when we, moving fast forwarding financial literacy has become a big part of Help Me Help You. It’s become a mandatory class for Help Me Help You. And we have Bank of America, who has been a partner and the treasurer of the city of Richmond, who have come in and taught the bankruptcy class, the financial literacy classes. But in doing so, bankruptcy came up in the class and when it came up, everybody was quiet. Everybody was so silent when, you know, they were just talking about finances. And I raised my hand, and I said, hey, you guys, I filed bankruptcy too. Yeah. And it opened the whole floor for questions. People were able to begin to maneuver because it’s no longer as if it was a horrible thing that only they had done. It was a thing has happened. It doesn’t define who you are, and this is the road you can take to pull yourself up. And so, it was an experience. It was an experience that was rough, but it’s not the experience today.

 

Q: Yeah. Yeah. And so, it sounds like as a kind of point of connection and things like that. What have you learned from your experience that informs your view of financial management finances more broadly, right? Because a big part of the mayor’s role is the budget, right? Managing the budget, introducing the budget. Council obviously has a voice in it, but it really is the mayor’s kind of a thing. So, what is you learn from your experiences that you described particularly for folks who might say like oh a bankruptcy. That means you don’t know anything about money, or you know that would look at that experience and be skeptical about it, right? So how does that inform your approach that you would bring to the mayor’s office?

 

A: Today, my finances are in a wonderful shape. Number one, and number two, I had the opportunity to serve on city council. At the time it was a 2 million budget and then 2015, I became president. So, I no longer just, um, became a part of a budget, but I was the deliberator of that budget. And in that moment in time, we were able to fund schools. We were able to invest in our riverfront. We were able to build affordable housing. We were able to bring grocery stores to food deserts. So, the experience was the experience, but I’ve got a new experience. The new experience is I’ve led a council. I’ve led as president and the people of Richmond have reaped the benefits of my positive know how in this experience.

 

Q: Yeah, yeah. And I appreciate that, like kind of, the spirit of that, but is there like anything more specific about what you’ve learned either, you know, through these experiences, you know, not just the personal finance, right? You’re obviously saying like, no, well, now also from the city council end of things like that. What is it that you say you would bring to this sort of like budget? Did you learn something like a big takeaway lesson from that role at City Council there?

 

A: Learning in City Council was that we have a myriad of things that you have to look at and prioritize and so again, when we’re talking about a city of 230,000 plus people and priorities, because there are priorities that hit you when you walking in the door. So, let’s be clear, when you walk in the door of January, the mayor will start with everything I mentioned, or a good mayor will start with the things that I mentioned, but you’re preparing to propose a budget to council in the top of March. Okay. And so, I believe that I am the only candidate that has the experience in local government and in this budget that can walk in without needing the training wheels.

 

Q: So, Michelle, we talked a little bit about Ban the Box, we talked about your work with the formerly incarcerated, those justice involved, as you say. But what about the other end of this, right? Police, community safety. Can you talk about how your background approach would inform your approach as mayor to the issue of community safety?

 

A: Absolutely. First and foremost, there has to be a bridge between community and law enforcement. Over time, we’ve seen things happen, and not just in Richmond, but it’s been a moment in time and so we need a leader that can have a real clear dialogue with our police department. I believe that Richmond has to have police. We cannot continue to be 150, 180 officers down and it worked for us. That just doesn’t work. So, we need a strategic plan to hire and retain officers. So, working with our police chief, continuing to work with, and the city has gone through union, moments in time to ensure that we’re competitive, working with those things, but having a leader that can walk in and say, hey, at the end of the day, community policing is what I want us to be known for. It is not okay. I do not want to hear that someone has been shot while black. That is not what we’re doing. And I believe that no other candidate can be that candid but also, be that loving, and people know that I love the fact that you’re the police and I want you here but let’s be clear, that’s not what we’re doing here.

 

Q: Right. I mean, I think that it would be, you know, what some folks might find surprising about your kind of policy proposal here, right? As a black woman running in the city of Richmond, right, in the context of post Black Lives Matter and saying, all right, what we really need to do is fully fund and staff the police, right? But you’re saying that comes with a particular, I don’t want to say the strings attached, but it needs to be a particular kind of policing, right? So, how do you make that happen? How do you take like law enforcement, which has been kind of nationally known as being resistant to change. How do you change those folks? How do you change the perception of police and the perception that police themselves bring to their work?

 

A: I think that that becomes that comes with your leadership style. I am not a foreigner to our police department. Many of them were there when I was on council. So, we have relation. I have relationship with Chief Edwards, but I am also community. And so, because I’m also community, it’s ensuring that community is accountable for community as well. And being able to stand to our community to say, hey, we’ve also got to be moms, dads, all of the things, the aunties, the uncles, what we’ve had in our communities, we’ve got to be that. And someone has to be strong enough to have that courageous conversation as well.

 

Q: So, I like this idea that you’re saying here, right? You can bridge the gap between the sort of the change and the, like, reform and the institutions and stuff, but you need that connection to the community. Do you have an example that you can explain to us, like, what does that mean? Like, you’re saying, like, I think like a kind of authenticity, like people know who you are. Yes. How does that work? Like, what does it mean for you to be known in the community in this way that can help you make this kind of change?

 

A: We we’ve been calling it rebuilding our village, rebuilding the village. And so today if you look at the endorsement, it’s a lot of pastors. And so, it’s, it’s having the dialogue with our pastors. It’s having the dialogue with our nonprofits. It’s bringing all of us to the table to say, this approach requires you, all of you. It says to the, our older senior citizens, your job is if you see something, say something. It puts a responsibility on the people of Richmond that public safety is not one person’s responsibility. It’s not the police’s responsibility. By the time our young people get to the police, it’s too late. So there has to be a responsibility that says that we are going to all jump in and where we can be a support to our school system. So that our young people are excelling in reading that they’re after graduation becoming plumbers and electricians and whatever have you that they need to be. This is going to take an all-hands-on deck approach. And I believe that today I am the only candidate that can approach it from both angles.

 

Q: And so, a related policy issue that plays on some of these concerns that you’re talking about, right? How do we get the community involved, gun violence prevention, right? Richmond has had a problem with gun violence, you know, one gun death is too many. But is there a particular plan or approach that you support that you think is the best way to try to reduce gun violence?

 

A: I don’t think it’s a plan. And I think that that’s where we have to also have someone strong enough to say it’s not a plan. It is and we have a partnership of plans. The gun violence intervention, I just was with the RISC group, and I believe that the plan can work.

 

Q: RISC group? What RISC group?

 

A: So, RISC is a group of churches that come together and…

 

Q: Yeah. R.I.S.C., right? That’s the group?

 

A: Yes, yes, yes, and right now their advocacy is around affordable housing and gun violence. And so, the gun violence initiative that they have been putting forth, I believe, is a positive, that it can work for the City of Richmond. And so, planning to also let it be a part of what I’ve seen Chief Edwards, and his team do with, they’ve been at some hot spots. And so, for the City of Richmond, I’d like to begin to have a conversation about lighting because I think lighting some things up can make a change in what we’re seeing in our crime. And so, it’s not a plan. It’s how do we bring these plans together? And then that, the, becomes the, the plan, but it’s more than just a one. I think it’s going to take, again, a holistic approach.

 

Q: So, we’ve been talking about law enforcement, another, you know, important set of institutions like a policy approach education, right? So RPS needs some kinds of reform. Doing well in some areas, but certainly need some improvement. How would you as mayor partner with the public schools to help move them forward towards their goals?

 

A: I had an opportunity again on council to partner. What we’re seeing continue was where it started with me as president bringing council, the administration, the school board together so that we could talk about budgetary, and facility needs because it’s going to take all of us in order for it to really get the outcomes that we’re looking for. So as mayor, it’s continuing in that way because I understand Richmond’s charter and again, what we know is that sometimes people don’t know how the policies work. Policy says that a mayor is actually supposed to propose a budget. Council is then there to determine whether they’re going to give more or take less to that budget. But once it gets to schools, they are the sole persons that would deal with the budget.

 

Q: They manage their own.

 

A: Yes, and so with that, knowing that walking in the door, having been president and pulling us together, it’s now seeing how I can best support. It’s saying, hey, I would like to support in this way, would this way be helpful to you? And I don’t want to use the word selling it but selling it in such a way that the support is warranted and so we get better outcomes. I think we have to walk in not trying to build your resume on schools. I think it has to be strictly about wanting to see children be educated. Wanting to see better, best outcomes for the kids.

And working towards that as the goal. And working towards school board to help support how we get there.

 

Q: One other big issue that everyone running for mayor agrees about right? Housing again, a major issue. You talked a little bit about it earlier. You’ve staked out probably the most hands-on approach compared to the other candidates, including like giving residents who might be at risk of being displaced, right, kicked out of their house, giving them first choice in affordable developments. You’ve talked about a housing strike team, right, with the heads of all the city departments kind of coming together. Those are maybe heavy lifts, right, to actually make that stuff happen. Why that approach? Like, why do you think that’s the best way to kind of address our housing crisis?

 

A: For a couple of reasons. Again, when we talked about my processes coming in the door, it’s having those leadership briefings. And so, in having those leadership briefings, I need to have a discussion about outcomes. And this administration and this council has said we’re in a housing crisis. And so, if we’re in a housing crisis and we’re not helping those who are in a possibility of losing their homes, then to me, the housing crisis is only growing. And so that’s why it’s about priority. How do we begin to look at this thing and say, okay, what has happened here? Is it a downsize because somebody has lost a family member? What’s going on? But how can we begin to make sure that our supply is meeting the demand? And so, that’s why working with our local developers, so that we can indeed have more supply and, and the strike team is needed because it gets hung up in departments. Things get hung up in permitting. It gets hung up in these, in these different departments and I don’t need it hung up. We need it to get out so that supply can really be there so that evictions are not the next move.

 

Q: So, the strike team is not so much bringing people together for a particular house or home putting on camo and breaking it like, you know, it’s not a strike team like that. It’s more about overcoming these institutional barriers, right? The barriers between different departments that might cause some of the problems that City Hall is experiencing. Does that sound right?

 

A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Q: Now, what do you think people get wrong about you as a candidate for mayor?

 

A: (Mosby laughs)

 

Q: What’s the thing they get, like the image that you think might be for people who aren’t supporting you, what is it they’re getting wrong about Michelle Mosby?

 

A: I think that they just… based on look don’t think I could handle it.

 

Q: And I’m guessing that you think they’re wrong.

 

A: Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Q: So, let’s ask a different question. What is something, like, that’s not so political that either nobody knows about you or you haven’t had a chance to talk about on the campaign trail? Something that you’d like people to know about you. That isn’t something that normally comes up in like a housing discussion.

 

Michelle: I’m fun I can’t wait to have fun with the people of Richmond as mayor. I am fun. I like fun stuff. I mean, I just really do. I want a Richmond that works for all of us, but I want the first district to enjoy their mayor, the second district to enjoy their mayor, the third all through the ninth to enjoy their mayor.

 

Q: What kind of fun? Like what do you mean like?

A: I just like fun. I like. doing the two step. I like eating breakfast any time of the day. I just generally like fun. I like to laugh. And so, I really want city services and City Hall to work right so that the people of Richmond can also just enjoy their mayor.

 

Q: So aside from the fun, right, there are five candidates in this race. Yeah. So, what specifically makes you the best prepared for the challenges that Richmond is going to face over the next four years?

 

A: The experience that I’ve had as president of Richmond City Council and every experience leading up to that. I am a small business owner in the city of Richmond of 23 years. I am a nonprofit executive director of 15 plus years. I am a realtor and an associate broker who have sold real estate throughout the Richmond metropolitan area for over 18 plus years. I have served on Richmond City Council from 2012 to 2016 and there is no other time that you can mention where someone became president in their first four years, and we got a lot of great things done. I do not have to walk into this office on training wheels. I can walk in. And I have a relationship with the council members that are there and the school board members and those that I believe that would make a shift. I am the only candidate that, that has the local experience that it needs to take Richmond into her next chapter safely.

 

RICH: Michelle Mosby is running for mayor of Richmond. Thanks so much,

 

Michelle: Thank you. I appreciate you.

 

RICH: If you’d like to hear more about the important issues facing RVA, I hope you’ll subscribe to our podcast at our website, rvasissues.vpm.org.

 

RICH: Next week, our special election coverage continues. Join us for my interview with Danny Avula. You can find our interviews with all five mayoral candidates on YouTube, VPM.org, or wherever you find your podcasts. I’m Rich Meagher. Thanks for watching.

​