Belleville.com – Alan Scher Zagier
Centralia, Mo. – Politicians looking to launch high-profile careers awash in the cable news klieg lights and the Sunday network gabfests should avoid this town’s Board of Aldermen.
Around here, the agenda is more likely to involve street closings, stop signs or a stern warning to go easy on the City Hall copier. The nuts and bolts of small-town government are hardly the stuff of headlines – which is exactly what Jessica Orsini prefers.
Advocates for transgender equality hail the public, albeit low-key, leadership role played by Orsini, who for the first three decades of her life was known as Jeff Orsini, an Air Force veteran and self-described computer nerd partial to role-playing war games.
As one of just two openly transgender politicians to win elected office in this country – the other, Michelle Bruce, is a City Council member in Riverdale, Ga. – Orsini is a trailblazer, said Mara Keisling, executive director of the Washington-based National Center for Transgender Equality.
Orsini, 38, is more modest. After relocating 25 miles north to Centralia from the college town of Columbia in search of affordable housing and a small-town experience similar to her upstate New York birthplace, Orsini sought elected office only after no one else bothered. With no declared candidates, the town’s mayor was forced to appoint an alderman in 2003.
“We’ve got 3,500 people, and we can’t scrape together six people to step forward as aldermen? Something is wrong,” Orsini said. “How can you actually expect anything to get done? I decided someone had to step forward, so it might as well be me.”