Katie Dean on Changing the Outputs (and Running For Congress)
This year, Katie Dean will run in the Democratic primary election for Congressional Representative of North Carolina’s 14th district. As an engineer, Dean always worked by the motto: “If you want to change your outputs, you’re gonna have to change your inputs.” Now, she is using that mindset to fuel her campaign.
Originally from a farm in North Georgia, Dean grew up reading, playing sports, and doing competitive horseback riding. Having promised her parents that she would go to college, Dean was awarded the Hopes Scholarship to attend Georgia State University. At 21, she left college when the opportunity to become a full-time martial arts instructor presented itself. A black belt in Soo Bahk Do, Dean learned a valuable life lesson from the experience. “I learned very quickly that it’s hard to be a small business owner that relies on peoples’ disposable income when the economy crashes,” Dean says. After two years at the dojo, it folded, and Dean moved to North Carolina to work as a raft guide on the Chattooga River, where she met her husband Zach.
During the early part of their relationship, the couple worked multiple jobs to stay afloat. “We just did whatever people would pay for;” Dean explains, adding, “we pretty much lived at the poverty line.” Dean worked as a restaurant hostess and server, an assistant electrician, babysitter, and a part-time sander. She recalls that their rent was sometimes late, and one winter they couldn’t afford to refill the fuel tank that heated their home. After the couple got engaged, they had what Dean refers to as “a serious kitchen table discussion” about their future. They came to the conclusion that, in order to improve their lifestyle, they would need to go back to school.
The couple moved to Athens, GA and Dean earned her B.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Georgia. She graduated with a job lined up at Carter and Sloope engineering firm, doing infrastructure design for rural municipalities. She stayed with the company for two years, but found herself wanting to shift her focus toward environmental research. So, Dean accepted a position with Altamont Environmental in Asheville, NC studying the water quality in WNC landfills. She also helped her husband open his business, Altamont Auto Specialist. As the business grew, it needed increasingly more of Dean’s time, so she left her current job and split her time between the auto business and a part-time gig assisting a geologist.
During this period, the couple had no health insurance. “Health insurance costs more than our mortgage payment per month,” she justifies. “So, we did what many working-class small business owners do - we went without it.” As fate would have it, Dean broke her collarbone in a mountain biking accident and had to have surgery to correct it. The surgery cost around $20,000, and required a second surgical procedure (costing another $15,000) to remove the bolts after ten weeks. Dean asked her doctor (a former military medic) if it would be possible to do the surgery as an out-patient procedure, so that she wouldn’t have to pay the exorbitant price to be fully anaesthetized. He agreed and ordered the tools to do the process as an office visit. Dean recalls the removal of the bolts taking only about seven minutes, but was extremely painful. “If I had to make the same decision again, I would,” she acknowledges.
Once Dean had fully recovered, she took on a full-time role at The Riveter recreation center in Fletcher, NC where she was quickly moved to management. She remained there for a year and a half before making the decision to run for Congress. “A lot of candidates say that they have a singular moment that they can point to,” Dean says of why she chose to run. “I think I just have a growing level of frustration that’s culminated. I was always told that the system was too big and corrupt, too complex and too broken to actually make a difference. It’s resulted in a lot of apathy amongst our general population.”
If she wins, Dean will be the first woman to ever hold this seat and the first non-millionaire to hold it in 25 years. “It’s not just a matter of being tough,” Dean states. “But I’m also smart, pragmatic and level-headed.” She vows to use her diverse background experience of small business ownership, professional knowledge of infrastructure and the environment, and brush with life on the poverty line to buck the status quo of the past thirty years of politics. Dean is running as an authentic, working-class candidate with a focus on pragmatic economic policies, access to affordable healthcare and education, and a sense of urgency for energy and the environment. “You’re going to have a hard time finding a candidate who has a higher sense of urgency to address the climate crisis,” she explains, referring not only to her background but also her age. “I have a unique profile and a lot to offer, given the mood of the moment for where our country currently sits.”
“The heart and soul of our campaign is to address a broken and faltering economy that does not work for the majority of us,” Dean says, explaining that her platform is about serving and being accessible to all of the citizens of her district. “The working and middle-class Americans carry the torch of our economy. We do it well, and we do it proudly.” She says that the legislative policies that are currently being written are there to benefit only a select group of people, and that this method of governing is not sustainable, and not working. “It leaves us footing the bill and holding the bag,” Deans protests.
“This is definitely the most exciting and wide-open job application I have ever applied for,” Dean smiles. She loves the multi-faceted work of running a grassroots campaign, and likens it to starting a small business. While thrilled at the prospect of becoming a U.S. Representative, Dean admits that she has no desire to remain in office indefinitely, but does hope to continue to do advocacy work. “I think that career politicians have a lot of answering to do for the state of the times,” she says. “I just want to make a positive difference in the world.”
For more information on Katie Dean, go to: www.electkatiedean.com
Written by Meg Hale Brunton