Three candidates are running for two seats in the Democratic primary (June 2) for Maplewood Township Committee: Bike Bus founder Martin Ceperley; current Mayor Vic De Luca, running for his 10th term on the Township Committee; and Planning Board and Hilton Neighborhood Association member John T. Sullivan. Read Village Green’s election guidelines here. Read our election coverage here.
Martin and I have been fellow Seth Boyden parents together since our kids started Kindergarten on a computer in 2020, and now our graduating 5th graders are best friends. Kelly, Martin’s wife, was one of the first people I ever met in Maplewood – at Palmer’s Coffee, with their newborn baby Nora on her lap, where she told me about her racial justice work and an organization she helped found called SOMA Action. That conversation, and the invitation she extended to me to be a part of it, changed my life, allowing me to find community in my new home, introducing me to some of the most soulful friendships I’ll ever have, and enriching my days with the joy of solidarity, which carried me through the hardest years of my life personally, and the darkest period in modern American history. So this is a disclaimer – I am incredibly biased. My decision to manage Martin’s campaign wasn’t just because I knew he could bring freshness and realness and creativity and compassion to the Township Committee, but because I love him and his family, and all they have given me and mine.
Over the course of my 20+ years in politics I have worked on a number of campaigns, and even been a candidate once myself. And if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that’s the way you do anything is the way you do everything. The way you campaign is the way you’ll lead. The process is the destination. While of course we want to win, if the way we do it doesn’t feel representative of the values we are trying to promote in elected office, or of the new world we want to build, we haven’t won at all.
Jessica James and Martin Ceperley
Since our initial conversation in my living room about Martin considering a run for Township Committee, just days before the petition was due, I have seen him bravely answer a call that most people would run from. Running against a 27-year member of Maplewood’s Township Committee and the Second Vice Chair of the Maplewood Democratic Committee, opening yourself and your family up to personal attacks, and committing to hundreds and hundreds of hours of work is not something many regular folks would opt in for. And if they do, as I have seen in other campaigns, the pressure and the exhaustion can wear you down, alienating you from your deeper motivation and the values that brought you there in the first place.
But the opposite has happened with Martin. He has used every day and every new challenge as a way to further clarify why the Township Committee matters, and what unique passion and tenacity he alone can bring to a leadership position within it. He has deepened his commitment to the values that he and Kelly live by, rather than compromising them for efficiency or in the hopes of “winning” a vote. He has led the campaign team, which is growing by the day with parents and community members volunteering their time to build this movement together, with joy and playfulness and positivity and equanimity and integrity and gratitude. I have seen my friend evolve and grow and take risks and laugh even in the most chaotic moments, and throughout it all I’ve been staggered with pride for him and all of us, and filled with the hope that we can bring that energy into our Township Committee, paving the way for other people in Maplewood and beyond to answer their own calls, and take their own risks, and build their own new worlds.
During a time in our country and world where hopelessness and fascism and injustice can feel inevitable, being a part of this campaign has reminded me that they are anything but. New worlds can still be built; new paths can still be forged. Not only can they – they must. And it requires the courage of individual people to do it. So while I hope that Maplewood will elect Martin Ceperley to the Township Committee on June 2nd, no election results can ever fully capture what’s already been won.
