Isaiah Haddon said he was in an apolitical fog when a conversation with his high school classmate Trevor Zhang, a week after the 2018 Parkland shooting “pulled him out.”
“[Zhang] made me realize that if I don’t stand for something, I don’t stand for anything,” Haddon told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
Two years later, a now 20-year-old Haddon (Democrat) will face off against Beth Narverud (Republican) in the Nov. 3 general election for the Hernando County Commissioner District 1 seat. At the beginning of the month, he had over $11,000 in monetary contributions with more than 70 individual donations arriving on the first day he announced that he was running. Shirley Anderson told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that Haddon is the youngest county commission candidate she’s seen since she took the role of Hernando County Supervisor of Elections in January 2013.
Data from the Hernando County Supervisor of Elections shows Republicans making up roughly 43% of registered voters. Democrats account for 30% while 27% are unaffiliated. Writer Cheri Danson Miller recently wrote that a decade ago, Republican and Democrat representation in the county was nearly equal.
Haddon―a lifelong Hernando County resident who was born in Spring Hill Regional Hospital―planned the June 5 Peace Walk for Black Lives that made headlines because of its significant counter-protester attendance. Particularly that of David Howell, who was tased by officers after refusing to drop a machete. The same protest saw counter protesters wearing Confederate flags, shouting “White Is Right,” and calling some protesters the N-word.
Haddon said he decided to plan the peace walk after attending a protest in Tampa. Following his inclination to start a demonstration, he began work on flyers, one of which caught the eye of his current campaign manager, Allisa Babor. The 25-year-old Hernando County resident said she contacted Haddon to help plan the peace walk before he had plans to run for local office.
The peace walk’s large, diverse turnout had a profound effect on both Haddon and Babor, who told CL she was amazed by the older people who came out in support of peaceful dialogue in Brooksville.
“This is not just our peers, these are hundreds of people that kind of need a leader,” she said. “Hernando needed somebody.”
Up until the protest, Haddon planned on running for state representative in a few years, but the peace walk’s success accelerated Haddon’s jump into politics. After deciding to run for county commission, Haddon’s biggest obstacle was raising enough money to pay the $4,269.78 partisan county commission candidate qualifying fee (the sum represents 6% of a Hernando County Commissioner’s annual salary of $71,163; Haddon has pledged to allocate $20,000 of it to schools, more below). His campaign did so in three days.
Quickly gaining over 500 Facebook followers and thousands of dollars in donations, the mixed-race amateur politician surpassed early predictions from rival candidates that he would fizzle out.
He has not received any death threats and he does not feel in danger in lieu of his running, which may come as a surprise to those aware of the multiple death threats targeted towards the protesters at Haddon’s peace walk.
Haddon sees the looming presence of overt racism in Hernando County as a motivator and a tool to dismantle his opponents. He described a common occurrence when working as a phlebotomist at Lifesouth Community Blood Bank, where the person he is taking blood from asks an intrusive question about his race or if he is Muslim. He once refused to take someone’s blood, switching out with another employee, after they made a racist remark. “It’s really nothing new in town and I am so used to it at this point,” he said.
Haddon’s thick skin, he says, comes from growing up in a single-parent household. He moved throughout Hernando County over 10 times; the main source of income was his mother’s waiting job at Steak ‘n Shake. The economic hardship faced by hard working residents is one of Haddon’s biggest concerns. He is committed to taking $20,000 of his salary and giving it to teachers in the form of a grant so that they may buy supplies and other necessities for their classrooms.
Haddon often thumbs his nose at the current and former commissioners. His website describes them as “self-serving” and “corrupt,” while positioning Haddon as a marker for change. The criticisms of current and former commissioners are not unfounded. Hernando County Commissioner Steve Champion, who was elected in 2016 and recently won the primary election, received scrutiny for his social media use, most notably for blocking Facebook users from his page―which experts and courts have ruled to be a violation of the First Amendment since he is a public official and uses his page to post about local government action. Most recently, Champion reposted praise for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with killing two people at a protest in Kenosha, proclaiming him as “the embodiment of what the second amendment is all about.”
At the end of August, Haddon and his team hosted an in-person meet and greet to accompany the release of his yard signs, stickers and T-shirts. The new merchandise arrived just two months ahead of the general election, which Haddon and Babor say is just the cherry on top.
The goal of Haddon’s campaign, he says, is providing an education to a large group of young people, equipping them with the tools they need to continue to make a change regardless of the outcome of the primary election. “Education is the backbone of our campaign,” Babor said.
For now, Haddon and his diverse team, filled with both amateurs and local leaders, will continue on their quest for a commission seat, which Haddon is humbly optimistic about.
“I am genuinely hopeful,” he said. “I think Hernando is going to change for the better.”
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This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2020.