What Would It Look Like If Librarians Ran the Government Instead of These Fools?

For Kathy Zappitello, it was the Dobbs decision. For Mary Kunesh, it was the gutting of licensing requirements for school media specialists. For Ilana Stonebraker, an academic librarian who ran for — and won — a seat on the Tippecanoe County Council in 2018, it was the first election of Donald Trump. “I felt it viscerally,” she told Truthout. “I needed to do something tangible.”

These are just three of the many library workers who have recently run for elected office, seeking to have a more direct say in the policies that govern their work. They say their experience as librarians gives them insights into what communities most need, while the skills that make them good at their jobs — a capacity for deep listening and a discerning eye for the truth — translate well in politics. And they say more librarians should throw their hats in the ring.

Zappitello was in D.C. when the Dobbs decision was announced. “I was standing with thousands of people, feeling crushed, everything swirling,” she told Truthout. “I didn’t know what to do with my energy.” She channeled much of it in her run for Congress in Ohio’s ninth congressional district in 2022. Zappitello challenged Sarah Fowler Arthur, a Republican who had introduced pro-censorship legislation that would have banned the teaching of “divisive concepts,” a euphemism for information about gender, sexuality and race. “I was in the eye of the storm,” she told Truthout. As director of the Conneaut Public Library in Ashtabula County, Zappitello knew that legislation targeted her alongside other librarians and teachers committed to equitable representation in classrooms and on library shelves. Abby Kovacs had been the Democratic nominee in the race but was forced to withdraw after the Ohio Redistricting Commission remapped election districts in the run-up to the 2022 elections. Gerrymandering meant that even though she lived in the district, her postal address — tied to the location of her mailbox — pushed her out of the district by mere feet. Zappitello stepped up to run. “I thought, who else but me can deliver the message that people need to hear?”

That message is about more than just censorship, though that has captured much of the recent spotlight. As frontline public sector workers, librarians have immediate familiarity with the human ramifications of policy decisions. “We see all the problems that need to be solved because they walk through our doors,” Zappitello told Truthout. “We don’t have the luxury of living in a bubble.”

Kunesh ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016 after 25 years in the public school system, which meant watching as state mandates reduced the number of certified school librarians in the state. “I saw the difference that made in the quality of access to information and how to use it accurately,” she said.

The firestorm around censorship in her home state led Rebekah Cummings, a librarian at the University of Utah, to co-found Let Utah Read, an advocacy organization that made her a familiar face at the statehouse. When Democratic State Rep. Brian King tapped her to be his running mate in the 2023 gubernatorial race, “reporters started off talking to me about book bans,” she told Truthout. “But that issue became emblematic of the kind of government overreach that means we’re not talking about fully funding public schools, saving the Great Salt Lake and ensuring people have access to health care.”

Librarians also bring the kind of political skills necessary to win, something that Cummings found out quickly on the campaign trail. “We are trained to listen to people, to hear beyond their words, to help them understand what their interests are, what they care about and how to access the resources they need,” Cummings told Truthout.

Librarians are also committed to accurate, high-quality information. During her run for a seat on Indiana’s Tippecanoe County Council in 2018, Stonebraker recalls being asked how she would navigate the misinformation and lies. “It was an easy question to answer. I’m trained as a librarian,” she said. “Bullshit detecting is my job.”

Winning any election is challenging, even more so in states where districts have been gerrymandered and votes suppressed. While Kunesh won her congressional seat in 2016 and has stayed in office since, others have faced stronger headwinds. Zappitello lost her race to the incumbent Republican. Utah hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in three decades and Cummings’s race was no exception. Stonebraker won her 2018 election, among the first Democrats elected to the position in 24 years. After changing jobs, Stonebraker ran again this year, narrowly losing a seat in Monroe County.

Still, their campaigns allowed them to raise crucial issues and to center library workers as political actors. For Stonebraker, setting that example was central to her run. “If we imagine what it looks like for us to be in power, other people can imagine what it looks like for us to be in power,” she said. “We need to imagine ourselves as the deciders.”