Jen Fleisher is a woman on the move.
The Blue Ridge Health District employee now running for Charlottesville City Council is a vocal proponent of public transit, and she believes health and transportation are intrinsically linked.
“No matter what your mobility needs,” Fleisher told The Daily Progress, “whether you’re an older adult and you’re no longer driving or you are a kid on a school bus, public transit that works creates better environment, happier people [and] better mental health.”
The same applies to pedestrians and cyclists, she said, who regularly use Charlottesville’s sidewalks, trails and bikeways.
“That fosters that healthiness too,” Fleisher said. “Because you’re moving your body to get to where you need to go, and you’re reducing carbon [emissions]. You’re not driving; it’s safer.”
Among the Democrat’s top priorities are housing, education and public safety, but transportation sits at the top of the list. It’s an area of some fixation for Fleisher and one in which she has developed some expertise.
The path to victory won’t be smooth for Fleisher. She faces Charlottesville Mayor Juandiego Wade and Vice Mayor Brian Pinkston, friends and neighbors who were both elected in 2021 and are running a joint campaign together. Three candidates are running, but there are only two at-large seats up for election — one has to lose.
Fleisher, who made Charlottesville her home some 24 years ago, didn’t take the usual route to politics.
Fleisher graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. After graduating, she had a brief stint in photojournalism and then ran a small design firm in Charlottesville for 20 years. During that time, she became a yoga instructor and a doula. It was while working as a doula that her interest in maternal and child health and wellness was piqued. That prompted her to pursue a master’s degree in public health from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, which she obtained in 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Now, Fleisher works as a program officer at the Blue Ridge Health District, part of the Virginia Department of Health.
Her tenure there has taught her that it’s more than regular exercise and doctor visits that keep a person healthy.
“In order to really make an impact on someone’s health, you have to get upstream to those drivers of health,” Fleisher said. “Housing, economic stability, transportation, the environment — all of those shape our health and well-being more so than even how much exercise you’re getting.”
In her current role, Fleisher leads the health district’s Community Health Improvement Plan, or CHIP, which is aimed at addressing the long-term health and wellness needs of individuals across several areas, including health care, internet access, mental health and transportation. Prior to that, she led the health district’s vaccination efforts at the start of the pandemic and later directed mobile vaccination programs in Charlottesville and the surrounding counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson.
Transportation has become a central issue for Fleisher on both the personal and professional level.
Personally, Fleisher is a cyclist, and she is mindful of the close calls that she and others have had on Charlottesville roadways. She believes the city should work toward slowing traffic down and providing wider, safer lanes for pedestrians and cyclists — all planks in the successful campaign platform of sitting Councilor Natalie Oschrin, who was elected in 2023. The city is now pursuing such a “road diet” for the traffic-heavy, crash-prone Fifth Street Southwest.
Professionally, Fleisher became involved in public transportation after she began working on CHIP. She attended meetings, sat on committees and joined walk audits for people in wheelchairs to identify accessibility challenges.
Through that work, Fleisher realized that there are “a lot of populations who are missing out on access to transportation.” She has also participated in bus field trips for older adults, which further opened her eyes.
“There are multiple pieces to the system and the puzzle that needs to be restructured in order to make riding transit accessible,” Fleisher said.
If elected, Fleisher said that she would work to make an impact in those areas. She believes the connections she has built both with public health leaders and government officials over the years give her the right tools to solve what she described as “really urgent, time-sensitive problems.”
She also believes an ordinance passed by Council last fall approving ranked-choice voting for the June primary will play in her favor.
“I’m going to work really hard to reach voters who share my priorities. And if you share my top priorities, you can rank me first,” Fleisher said. “If I don’t align with you first, I can be your second choice, and that choice allows me to connect with you as well.”
Ranked-choice voting is a practice that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Instead of casting a vote for just one candidate, voters get to rank one, two, three, four or more candidates on a single ballot, and if their favorite candidate doesn’t win, their second, third or fourth might.
Charlottesville is just the second locality in Virginia to implement the voting method after the General Assembly in 2020 gave localities the green light to use ranked-choice voting in city council and county board of supervisors elections. Arlington became the first locality to implement the method during its county board primary election in June 2023. The voting model has been adopted statewide in only two states, Alaska and Maine, and its efficacy remains debatable.
Asked who she seeks to replace on Council — since there are three candidates and only two open seats — Fleisher maneuvered around the question.
“It’s not so much about ‘I’m after one of their particular seats,’” Fleisher said. “It’s more, ‘The voters get a choice, and they get to rank us in their order of preference.’ And I definitely want to connect with all the folks who share my top priorities. But I also want to connect with the ones who were not quite aligned at the top but we share some commonalities, and I want to understand that.”
That’s where Fleisher believes she may have an advantage, hoping to sway voters based on their most pressing concerns.
Charlottesville operates under a council-manager form of government. Residents elect five at-large councilors who, in turn, appoint a city manager who has full jurisdiction over all city departments. Councilors are elected every two years and serve staggered terms of four years.
The two longest serving councilors are Michael Payne and Lloyd Snook. Both are in their second terms after first winning their seats in 2019.
The Democratic primary is June 17. Election Day is Nov. 4.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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