For Desiree Tims, one of the key issues for her is access to quality education throughout all of the 10th district’s communities.
In a 2019 campaign ad, she mused that one of her best memories was graduating from Dunbar High School and one of her worst memories was learning that the same textbooks she was reading in 10th grade were the same textbooks a 5th grader had in private school.
“I remember feeling like I was cheated, like the system was designed to make working-class families like mine fail,” said Tims.
One of the key issues for most candidates and young, college-age voters, is access to a good education, including post-high school education, so that they can move onto fulfilling careers and be a contributing part of their communities.
“One of the things we want to do is make community college tuition-free so that everybody can have that access and have that opportunity to earn a good education and get a good job,” said Tims.
Tims commented that her father was a southern sharecropper who came to southwest Ohio to work in the factories and steel mills that once populated the former Steel Belt city of Dayton. She also said that her father would not have the opportunity to find a job with decent pay today.
“Working-class earners aren’t getting paid the way they were more than a decade ago,” said Tims. “I believe Ohio was left out of the Great Recovery and it’s time for the federal government and the private sector to invest back into Ohio.”
Tims is the Democratic challenger to incumbent 10th District Senator Mike Turner, and she spoke with us before the election to give potential voters who are residents of the 10th District here at Sinclair a better idea of who she is and what she stands for.
Tims grew up in Dayton, attending Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Dayton and later earning her B.A. in communications from Xavier University and a J.D. from Georgetown Law.
She would later attend the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University and worked as an aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Tims also worked in the Obama White House during his first term, later working on Capitol Hill with Brown and Gillibrand, and was elected to serve as President of the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus.
Tims also supports strong unions that were once the backbone of the thriving U.S. economy in the first half of the last century.
She also supports, like most Democratic candidates, fewer tax benefits for the top 1%, as well as universal background checks, assault weapons bans, red flag laws, the Dream Act, and the Equality Act.
“I’m just a hometown girl trying to change my community,” said Tims.
We reached out to incumbent senator Mike Turner but he wasn’t available for an interview.
Richard Foltz, Associate Editor