Cumberland County candidate for NC House: A brighter tomorrow for all
The challenges facing Fayetteville and eastern Cumberland County are great but our possibilities are bright. I am running for NC House because I know that when we invest back into our schools, lower health and housing costs for working families, and create better opportunities for workers and entrepreneurs, we can create a brighter tomorrow for everyone.
I have been endorsed by 12 organizations and counting — including the AFL-CIO Labor Council and the Cumberland County Association of Educators — because I am the only candidate for this seat who brings together this energy, experience and vision, but the most important endorsement comes from you, the voter.
More: Voters’ Guide 2022: NC House candidates on Medicaid, global economy and education
The first things most people know about me are that I am a mom and a social worker. I knew I wanted to do social work even before I knew what it was called. To be of service to others is a family value, with my father and brothers serving in the military and both of my parents with careers in law enforcement. I knew I wanted to help individuals and families work through challenges and connect to services. Trained at an HBCU, I spent the first years of my career as a school social worker.
Working with students as their families experienced job losses, health challenges and homelessness taught me how important it is that every public school has full time support staff. When a social worker (or a nurse, counselor, or other professional staff member) is able to focus on the students at one school, they can build important relationships of trust with parents, teachers, students and the community at large. Cumberland County deserves to have this kind of support in our schools.
More: Voters’ Guide 2022: NC House candidates on Medicaid, global economy and education
It doesn’t take long as a school social worker to notice that while the faces change, the problems stay the same. Going back to my profession’s, and my own, core values of service, integrity, human dignity and investing in human relationships, I decided it was time to change tack. I went back to school and became a macro, or big picture, social worker, focusing on how people turn to churches for help. I am now training and raising the next generation, working with social work students at Fayetteville State and being a parks-and-rec and public high school mom, cheering on my son and other Pine Forest Trojans every chance I get.
Seeing the need for more investment in our public schools and an all-of-the-above approach to tackling poverty and building prosperity motivated me to run for office. I was honored to be the Democratic nominee for our district in 2020. Even with the COVID-19 disruptions, I kept doing things that would make a difference whether or not I won: bringing food trucks into my neighborhood so entrepreneurs could turn a profit and neighbors could greet one another, organizing food drives for community members in need, and supporting local arts through SweetTea Shakespeare. While I was on the tough end of election night, the needs haven’t gone away. The Democratic Women of Cumberland County elected me president, the statewide Democratic Women elected me second vice-chair, I became the chair of the advocacy arm of the New North Carolina Project, and I chair SweetTea.
I did not expect to agree with my new NC House representative on every point. I was amazed, however, at some of the extreme pieces of legislation she has sponsored — things that haven’t become law here (yet) but have in places like Texas and Oklahoma, leading to dire consequences for women and our LGBTQ neighbors and their families. Our community doesn’t need extremism, we need sensible solutions.
We need to go back to the traditional model of every public school having a nurse, a social worker, and a counselor of their own so teachers and administrators can spend their day teaching and administrating.
We need to build on the work of last year and fully expand Medicaid to lower healthcare costs for working families. It was the NC House that didn’t have the votes to expand, preventing it from being included in the budget. I believe in bringing our public dollars back here to work for us and so I would be a vote in the NC House for Medicaid expansion.
We need to protect the principle of an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work and make sure we’re not unreasonably getting between small businesses and entrepreneurs and opportunity. Additionally, improving our transit connections, including within our county and regionally, will make it easier for veterans and young adults to make their homes here.
We need to hold corporate polluters responsible, including for GenX, and bring energy costs down through building out local, clean, dependable power generation right here in Cumberland County. I have a double endorsement in this area: last cycle, groups backed by price-gouging polluter Duke Energy ran ads supporting my opponents during the primary and the general election because our district’s past and current representatives are willing to protect their special interests and I am not. This cycle, I was the first non-incumbent in our state endorsed by the NC League of Conservation Voters.
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Finally, we need to step back from hate, anger and fear. I am proud to be endorsed by Equality NC, EMILY’s List, and NC Asian Americans Together because everyone has inherent dignity and value. Time we spend stoking division, like our current representative does with her extreme proposals, is time not spent lowering costs, improving public services, bringing in jobs or creating a stronger community.
When we pull together, we can build a better future for all.
Dr. Kimberly Hardy is a mom, advocate, and Assistant Professor of Social Work at Fayetteville State University. She was the Democratic nominee for House District 43 in 2020. You can read more about her at her website: KimberlyHardyForNC.com
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Cumberland County candidate for NC House: A brighter tomorrow for all
