‘Unconventional’ Congressional candidate says she’s the right one for the people

Harris, 50, a Verona resident and Democrat, was embedded in politics from a very young age, having witnessed her father work for a Senator in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she spent her childhood sitting in the chambers watching policy being debated and laws being enacted.

Now, the mother of two teenage daughters feels emboldened to be a part of political change under Donald Trump’s presidency and is fighting for the 11th District Congressional seat of retiring 23-year Republican veteran Rodney Frelinghuysen. Harris is one of five Democrats and five Republicans seeking the 11th District seat in the Tuesday, June 5 primaries.

“I think after this election cycle we just had… many of us are concerned citizens in this country and I felt that especially as a woman of color, as a concerned citizen, as someone who has seen the impact of policy on families and children… that it was just time to for those who could step up, to do more,” Harris explained. “I realized that if I didn’t do more than I was already doing, we couldn’t expect a different outcome.”

Harris was frank about the obstacles she faces: She isn’t her party’s leading choice, she’s a woman of color and she isn’t a career politician. But she said she believes those differences are what the constituents of the 11th District need right now.

Mikie Sherill, a Montclair resident, who landed the endorsement of the Democratic Party, is her main competition. In addition to Harris and Sherrill, Democrats vying for a spot on the Tuesday, June 5 primary ballot include Mitchell Cobert of Morristown; Alison Heslin of Sparta; and Mark Washburne of Mendham.

Republican hopefuls include Patrick Allocco of Morris Township; Peter DeNeufville of Mendham Township; Antony Ghee of Totowa; Martin Hewitt of Morristown; and Assemblyman Jay Webber of Morris Plains.

Harris markets herself as putting New Jersey’s families first and she said if there is only one issue she could tackle as a Congresswoman, it would be, without a doubt, healthcare. She plans to revamp and keep the affordable care act, believing healthcare is the No. 1 issue that affects so much of American life.

“I know that if we take care of healthcare we can take care a lot of things,” she said. “I think we are on a path to universal healthcare.”

Harris received a bachelor’s of arts and masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh and previously worked for the Prudential Asset Management Group and she would later go on to work in international finance in the Hong Kong offices of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Harris has also mentored students in her capacity as an adjunct lecturer at Montclair State University and New York University. She has served in leadership positions for education organizations that assist low-income and minority students. This includes the United Negro College Fund and the New Jersey Advocates for Education, where she raised more than $1 million to fund merit and need based collegiate scholarships for students residing in cities within Essex County. She has also served on the advisory board of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Essex, Hudson, and Union County in NJ.

Currently, Harris runs a social work practice where she advocates for children and families going through crisis and life transitions.

The former international banker-turned advocate is well aware how opioid addiction has become such a crisis in the state of New Jersey and she isn’t ignoring how the state needs to handle mental illness better. Both of these problems affect constituents of the 11th District and are also what Harris hopes to accomplish under the premise of improving healthcare.

She said she would look to find funding from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct research on the over-supply of pain management pills, which is a leading factor in opioid addiction.

Harris, who once lived in North Caldwell, recently joined the students at West Essex High School as they conducted a walk-out staged to support the victims of the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting.

As a member of the community, and hopefully the future representative of the district, she said she felt it was impossible to ask people to do something that she wasn’t willing to do herself.

“For students to have the courage and bravery to walk out and protest to have a moment of mourning and then to organize this event with their teachers and be a part of my community… they needed to know they were going to be supported by leadership in their district,” she told.

“It was very important for me to stand there with those students and tell them: ‘I don’t own a gun. I don’t belong to the NRA. I never will own a gun’ and this is a public safety and a public health crisis.”

After witnessing the presentation put together by the students of West Essex, some who knew Parkland students directly, Harris said she realized how interconnected gun violence is in this country.

“What happened in Parkland can happen anywhere in this country,” she said. “It can happen in North Caldwell, it can happen in Sparta and so whatever we think we’re doing in New Jersey, we have to make sure that we are setting the model, but also demanding that other states keep to that model.”

Harris noted that New Jersey has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but it’s important to be sure that what happens at the congressional level does not make the state’s current policies “for naught.”

Her stance on gun control also leads back to her focus on healthcare, explaining that mental health should be more of a priority in schools.

“A lot of these issues that drive young kids and young adults into these outcomes manifest in elementary school, in middle school, and if there were people working with them along the way, you’d have people supporting those students identifying those who need aggressive or additional intervention so you could hopefully reduce these outcomes,” she said.

While healthcare would be the main issue Harris would go to task on if she had to choose just one, a close second is education.

“It is probably the one thing that can help a family move on path from precariousness or poverty to prosperity and I still strongly believe in that,” She said. “But when you have an education system that is creating an inordinate of crushing debt, that is not a sustainable outcome for our country.”

Harris said something else she is thinking about is how to make college affordable and examining other paths of education post-high school to help an New Jersey families.

All of these issues have received a lot of thought from Harris, who is expecting that the 11th District is looking to see some changes in how things are done after being represented by the same man since 1995.

“The whole landscape of Congress is changing,” Harris said. “We need to make sure we have the right leaders at the table [for] when that dynamic flips.”

The prospective candidate’s team has been working hard to get her name out there. Harris says she’s seen a great response to her phone calls and lawn signs that are scattered across the district.

“It’s not a conventional race,” she said. “My goal has always been to put people before politics… It has been an inspiring journey… the process has forgotten the people and I’m trying to flip that script and make sure it’s the other way around.”

The 11th Congressional District includes Madison, Florham Park, the Chathams, the Boontons, the Rockaways, Denville, Mountain Lakes, Montville, Randolph, Morristown, Morris Township, Morris Plains, the Mendhams, Harding Township, Hanover, East Hanover, the Caldwells, Essex Fells, Roseland, Fairfield, Cedar Grove and Verona as well as parts of Passaic and Sussex counties. Montclair, in Essex County, is split between the 11th District, represented by Republican Frelinghuysen, and the 10th District, represented by Democrat Donald Payne Jr. of Newark.