It’s June 22, 2020. The sun is shining down brilliantly on the people gathered in front of Springfield City Hall. Protesters and counter protesters, their voices are filled with venom, exchange disparaging remarks with each other. Some are dressed in Black Bloc, holding up signs reading “BLM” and “ACAB.” Others wave Trump 2020 banners and American flags. A few pro-Trump protesters are armed with assault rifles – twice as many are armed with pistols.
In the middle of it stands Isiah Wagoner, his body acting as a bulwark between the two opposing crowds. He is hard to miss, standing well over six feet tall and sporting dark shades and a cheetah-patterned onesie. His reason for being there is to de-escalate any potential violence and it’s working, for the most part, but the tension was running through the factious crowd, and a few alterations did break out during the All Lives Matter rally.
This 29-year-old Eugene local believes he’s up to the task of being mayor of his hometown. Thousands of registered voters in the Emerald City agree with him. Wagoner received approximately 6,000 write-in votes for mayor this past November. This is no small feat considering Wagoner publicly announced his write-in campaign for mayor in early August, giving him only three months to gather support before election day.
“I feel really blessed that people would write-in my name as an alternative,” Wagoner said. “We kind of knew we weren’t going to beat Lucy [Vinis], but I’m really happy about the outcome.”
Lucy Vinis, the current mayor of Eugene, ran unopposed for the position this past November after receiving 68% of the vote from Eugene residents in the May primary elections, according to The Register-Guard. But for Wagoner and his campaign manager, local realtor Vince Casey, the goal was never about unseating Vinis. It was more about bringing awareness to Wagoner’s platform and amplifying his voice as a Person of Color in a predominantly White community and state.
“One of the biggest reasons we wanted to create this campaign was to create awareness,” Casey said. “We didn’t really go into this with a write-in candidacy expecting to overtake the mayor, that would have been a shot to the moon, but the mayor and everybody in town knows about Isiah now.”
If Wagoner had made this political shot to the moon, he would have become Eugene’s first Black mayor and the symbolism behind this is important to Wagoner. There are over 19,000 municipal governments in the United States, according to citymayors.com. As of September 2020, only 121 of those municipal governments had a Black mayor. Out of those cites only 25 have a population exceeding 150,000.
In this sense, those 6,000 write-in votes are a big win for Wagoner. A significant number of people in Eugene are starting to notice him and are becoming aware of the issues he cares about. Issues like affordable housing, the unhoused community, drug-use rehabilitation, crisis response, police reform, climate change and fair taxation. These are important issues to Wagoner but holding the title of mayor is also about being a role model for future generations of Black Americans.
“The reason why I work with the youth in Eugene is because as a kid I didn’t have a role model that looked like me,” Wagoner said, referring to his years of experience volunteering with the Eugene YMCA and Boys & Girls Club. “I didn’t see any Black teachers until I got to high school. It was tough to never see anyone that looked like me growing up.”
This is one of the reasons why Thomas Hiura – a local teacher, activist and a Eugene resident since the age of 2 ­­­– offered to help build Wagoner’s campaign website. Hiura plans to run for mayor in 2024, making Wagoner something of a political rival, but Hiura also sees him as a friend and a colleague. Building Wagoner’s website was a way for Hiura to help bring exposure to a colleague’s platform while supporting their own views on diversity.
“I believe in diverse representation in our city government, and I think it’s overdue. I wanted Isiah to have a chance to get his message out and to speak his truth,” Hiura said. “That is a lot of what my campaign was about ─ speaking truth to power. I didn’t see any major conflict working with Isiah, and I feel that collation building is worthwhile.”
Another factor that drew Casey and Hiura’s attentions to Wagoner was his willingness to get out into the streets this past summer and de-escalate violence when the protests started after a Minneapolis Police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, while being detained on May 25, 2020, for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill.
“Isiah’s strongest quality is being out in the streets when it matters,” Hiura said. “That passion to be in the streets and be visible on the issues of race is because he’s from here.” This passion of Wagoner’s also extends to his willingness to listen to others in his community, especially to the parents of the children he has mentored and been a role model to.
“I’m not only working with these kids, but I am also working with their parents. I’m listening to what they want, what they are disappointed in ─ just listening to the public,” Wagoner said. “I’m willing to listen to a panel of people. I’m willing to listen to every single business owner and race of people out there.”
There has been some controversy surrounding this high-profile protester turned potential politician. Wagoner said that Black women were good at “shaking their butts” this past spring. And after Black Unity’s “Speak Up And Dribble” event on July 20, 2020 at Washington Jefferson Park an inimical schism formed between Wagoner and this local activist group he helped found.
A person close with the current leadership of Black Unity, who asked to remain anonymous, said “the majority of the group [Black Unity] are abolitionists – Isiah is a conformist” when asked about the reasoning behind this split.
“The statement Black Lives Matter, I stand behind that, but I’m not a Marxist,” said Wagoner in response to this comment. “I’m a man of peace. I’m not about yelling in police officers’ faces, like that is going to change anything. I think thinking rationally is the best outcome in any situation.”
Wagoner may not be the perfect candidate right now, but he is fully aware that he has some substantial ground to cover. He plans to go back to college and increase his level of involvement in the community over the next four years.
“People want someone that is going to go to bat for them and fight for them, and that is how I look at Eugene,” Wagoner said. “I’m a hustler. I’m willing to hustle for Eugene.