De La Isla: The Mayor's Story

STORY BY JEFFREY ANN GOUDIE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK KRUG | From the summer 2018 edition of Topeka Magazine

The day after 42-year-old Michelle De La Isla was elected Topeka’s first Latina as well as first single-mother mayor, she got a surprising call. “We were so engrossed in the race that when the next morning, the New York Times called, and they’re trying to interview me, I’m sitting there going, why is the New York Times interested in this?” she laughs. “A Hispanic woman won the mayor’s race in Topeka, Kan.,” announced the Times in its November 8, 2017, article about national election results that also saw the mayoral victory of a Liberian refugee in Helena, Montana, as well as two women becoming the first Latina delegates in the Virginia legislature. Two days later, satirist Bill Maher pointed to De La Isla’s victory in the opening monologue for his HBO show Real Time. Both of the national news sources placed De La Isla’s victory in the context of an election where Democrats beat Republicans, and a cast of ethnically and culturally diverse candidates took wins in unexpected places. De La Isla says she now understands some of the national fascination with her election and has had “moments and glimpses” that have provided insight into her victory’s symbolic power.

But despite what national pundits have read into the race, De La Isla’s win came in a nonpartisan contest that could be seen as equally—if not more so—the result of a compelling personal story. That’s the takeaway for Leo Espinoza, a college and career counselor at Topeka High School who volunteered in De La Isla’s campaign last year. He thinks what distinguishes De La Isla from a lot of leaders is the “uniqueness of her own past,” and the difficulties she overcame to get where she is.

De La Isla was born at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. When she was a preschooler, her mother fled for safety from her father and relocated in Puerto Rico to live with De La Isla’s grandparents. Raised in Bayamon, outside of San Juan, De La Isla left home at 17, found herself pregnant at 19, and a new mother at 20. A year later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

After recovery and with encouragement from her priest, she explored going to college on the mainland. Wichita State University offered financial support and vocational training, so De La Isla arrived with $2,000 and her young son. She graduated with a degree in biology and began teaching Spanish and biology for Upward Bound, a support program for low income and first-generation college students. She then took a job in the university’s Office of International Education, where she met and married the man who would become the father of her two daughters. When he took a job at a retail outlet, the family moved to Topeka.

In the capital city, councilwoman Karen Hiller, then executive director of Housing and Credit Counseling, Inc., hired the young De La Isla as director of operations, and De La Isla applied the financial literacy skills she was learning in her job to her volunteer work with MANA, the Latina women’s organization. She also used those skills several years later when, with help from the YWCA, she left her abusive marriage.

“I’ve been very public about the fact that there was some domestic battery happening in my life,” she says. “So, I was living a double life because here I was trying to help people with their budgets, and I was drowning in mine. … Trying to keep up with the house and the kids, and here I am teaching women to have hope and to budget because it works in the long run. Which, in the end, I did what I believe in. It did work.”

After five years at Housing and Credit Counseling, De La Isla became executive director of Topeka Habitat for Humanity. With the help of volunteers—De La Isla specifically mentions the energy brought by Don Snethen—the organization opened an office and the ReStore, a shop that sells donated construction materials at a discount to the public.

Even before she started her present job as Diversity and Inclusion Representative for Westar Energy, on Kansas Avenue, she was a big fan of Topeka’s downtown. She says she would bring her kids there to look at the buildings, which she found “charming and quaint,” particularly at dusk. “There’s a time of the day where the sun hits the buildings and the roads get pink,” she says.

Soon, De La Isla became affiliated with people promoting downtown revitalization. They took her under their wing because they had heard of the work she was doing with MANA de Topeka’s Hermanitas mentorship initiatives and were eager to gain perspectives from younger Topekans. De La Isla started attending city council meetings and invited one of her young program participants to testify at a meeting about improving downtown. That student took it upon herself to survey 100 of her classmates at Shawnee Heights High School. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that of those 100, 73 thought the capital was “boring,” and needed “a lot of interesting stuff” to enhance the downtown.

The council voted that night to approve the initial $5 million to start downtown revitalization. De La Isla says that moment was so significant that she decided she wanted to be mayor. Her neighbor Larry Wolgast, however, was making a bid for mayor, so she instead ran for his open city council seat, won it and served for four years before launching her mayoral campaign when Wolgast decided not to seek a second term.

The single mother is juggling the mayor’s responsibilities along with her full-time job at Westar Energy. She notes that the past two mayors were retired, thus having fewer working-hour duties outside city hall. But De La Isla has a calculus that allows her to meet her obligations. Her days start early, with evenings often including events and ribbon-cuttings, and her weekends are “very heavy with the city.”

De La Isla has an infectious enthusiasm for the city. “There’s some magic happening in this community right now,” she says. She has high praise for the city manager, the county partners as well as the city’s plan, Momentum 2022, to address economic inequality and quality-of-life issues in the city.

Kim Morse, a history professor at Washburn who started working with De La Isla through MANA de Topeka and the Hermanitas conferences, says that De La Isla is “completely passionate about Topeka and dedicated to Topeka. But she does it in an extremely thoughtful way—inside-out and bottom-up— and then she makes an educated response.”

Espinoza says De La Isla “loves Topeka and wants people to know Topeka loves them back.”

For her part, De La Isla says she likes to tell people that it was only in Topeka where she fulfilled her dreams and became who she wanted to be. But, she will also add, “I never lose sight that I am still the kid who grew up with all the challenges.”