During the 2018 SA Local Government Elections Cr Jessica Lintvelt ran her first campaign at 28-years-old, winning one of two Steventon Ward seats on the City of Tea Tree Gully.
The Councillor has an extensive background in local government including being a member of her council’s youth advisory from the age of 12, and as her first term concludes we sat down to chat about her experience and advice for anyone considering running.
When did you decide initially to run for local government?
I moved into the area and my husband and bought a home about seven years ago and there was by election in my ward. Unfortunately, the Councillor at the time passed away and I think that's the first time I thought about it seriously. Before that we’d lived in different places but once I had my own place and with my background in local government, it seemed fairly logical for me to run.
However, in the by election the widow of the member who passed ran so I chose not to run because I thought it was appropriate that she’d be able to finish out her husband’s term. It was only about a year or so later that the proper election came around and I took a shot at it, and here I am.
What was the nomination and election process like when the election did come around?
The nomination was easy, you just have to put in a photo and bio, but one of my biggest learnings was in the campaigning process.
I went into it thinking that in a democracy anyone should be able to run, anyone should be able to have an equal go at it, but that’s not true at all. It really isn’t.
I found that we put a fair bit of money into promotion. You have to have some funds to get your name and face out there and to make your campaign successful, particularly if you’re running against incumbents or have some stiff competition, it gets trickier. It’s very difficult if you don’t have the resources available to put together newsletters to letterbox drop or to have corflutes (that were are allowed at the time).
What I would say as well is if you don't have the money to put into resources, you kind of need the time. Time is also money, and if you don't have the money to put into resources, you can, I think, get elected based on time if you’re door knocking and you're out talking to people.
For local, and the state and federal governments as well, to campaign for your job is such a strange process. I already had a job and worked full time so time was an issue for me, we were just lucky enough to have the resources and time to invest in it.
But I think what I’ve realised through the whole process is just how inaccessible it is, unless you're quite creative about the platforms you use, but it depends on your community as well. Demographics are very important. Where I am we've got a much older community, so the way that they receive information material is quite different to perhaps the younger community, who might prefer their information by social media that you can access for free and reach a lot of people at once.
I had this naive view, I suppose that it was available and open to everyone, but actually it's not an even playing field at all.
What is it like being on council as a young person? Were there other young people are on your council?
There’s certainly both sides of it. I think out in the community I get both sides, I would talk to people who’d say good, we need some fresh young blood in Council, we want some younger people. But then equally, [Deputy Mayor] Lucas [Jones] and I held a street corner meeting I’ll never forget where I was talking to an older gentleman and he said, I’m sorry you’re just too young I can’t talk to you, and turned around to talk to Lucas (who is a couple of months younger than me).
I think that perhaps works against me in that sense, but then sometimes works for me. It can sometimes be tricky to be taken seriously, but at the same time there is a bit of a hunger for young blood so it’s interesting.
What I would say though, is I have a strong background in local government, so I didn't walk into it not knowing anything. I work in local government. I joined my local Youth Advisory committee when I was 12, I’ve been doing this for a bit and it wasn’t entirely unknown to me so I think that helped a lot.
I'm not technically a young person anymore, I'm actually 32 now, so I was 28 when elected but under 30, certainly for council is young. Amazingly we had three under 30s on our council, which is definitely unusual.
If you could give one piece of advice to your pre-elected self, what would it be?
You can't avoid the politics. I know this is very funny, 'cause [YACSA] are all about the politics, and that's your bread and butter, but I'm not into politics. I'm not a member of any parties or anything like that, and I actually feel sometimes politics gets in the way of doing good things for the community, unfortunately, because they will hold out on things and not deliver it until it's timely and can get them votes.
I went in with this mindset of I'd be able to just ignore all that and be above it and not have to deal with it, but there's no escaping it in local government.
As a chamber, I think we're very apolitical. We do have Members on both sides in there and I think ultimately what we do is make decisions based on the community. But when it comes to bigger issues we do have to deal with the politics of it.
And the other thing is that it matters who you're working with, the team makes a difference.
What's next for you? Are you running again in this election?
I am, I’ve renominated for my ward. I'm looking forward to hopefully being re-elected, with Lucas as well. We have very different opinions on some things and similar opinions and others but I think that’s good, you don’t want to agree on everything. You want to have diversity in opinion, and so we have some really good discussions sometimes.
This year’s process has been very different because nominations have been made private, so it’s been a stressful time compared to previously when you could see who’s nominating where. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, particularly in some rural council areas, you might end up with some wards being highly contested and some where a candidate will just walk in because nobody knew that it wasn’t being contested. It will be very interesting to see how it works and if there are many supplementary elections required after this process.
