Meet a military spouse who’s running for office

Navy spouse Kalish Morrow, left, is running as a Libertarian candidate for city council in Hanford, California. (Kalish Morrow)

Kalish Morrow used to own a boutique in downtown Hanford, California, where she lives with her Navy husband based at Naval Air Station Lemoore. And as she became more active in the local business community, speaking before the city council and organizing protests for buildings slated to be torn down, she felt like certain regulations and local government officials were unfriendly to businesses.

So Morrow, who also is an interior designer and homeschool mother of two, wanted to change that and decided to run for a spot on the city council. Though she was unsuccessful in her first attempt in 2016, she’s spent the last four years preparing for a second go.

Now, with just a few weeks before Election Day, Morrow is canvasing neighborhoods, knocking on doors, meeting with constituents and local organizations and reaching out to people on social media with one message: Vote for Morrow in 2020.

“We’ve kicked it into high gear,” said Morrow, who is Libertarian. “Even though this is a local election and in a relatively small town — we have about 58,000 citizens — we’re treating it like any statewide election, basically. The incumbent that I’m running against has a lot of name recognition. She’s been in the community for a long time, so I knew that I was going to have to be aggressive with this campaign to hopefully unseat her.”

Morrow, who was a guest on The Spouse Angle podcast’s 48th episode, “Getting Political as a Military Spouse,” was a skydiver and parachute rigger in Southern California before becoming a military spouse and moving to Hanford several years ago.

“I just kind of felt lost and had to find myself again,” she said.

She’s found that through advocacy.

“Now my husband is off active duty — he’s still going Reserves right now — but he’s like, ‘This is your turn. You supported me in my career. Now, I can kind of take a little bit of a back seat so you can go and do your thing. So, I’m super appreciative of that,” she said. “Just one thing led to another and here we are. I definitely want to make a huge impact in our community with giving people back their voice.”