Kathy Pelleran-Mahoney

On the last day for candidates to file for partisan office, I stood at the edge of the sidewalk at the entrance to the Montague Post Office with a clipboard, collecting signatures so a candidate could get on the ballot–so voters would have a choice. A man in a ball cap slowed, eyeing my pen.

“What’s his party?” he asked. When I said “Democrat,” he replied, flatly, “I hate Democrats.” I told him I was one. He repeated it. Before I could soften my reaction, I said, “That’s rather ignorant.”

I didn’t think he was unintelligent. But I couldn’t understand the jump from disagreement to disgust. If you believe your vision is better, why not persuade? Why go straight to hate?

I remembered choosing my party in 11th grade at Alpena High School when my teacher, Ned Bastow, assigned us to read the Libertarian, Republican, and Democratic Party platforms, study Nixon, Wallace, and McGovern, and defend a choice in debate. I chose George McGovern–because a public safety net mattered to people I knew, and because his opposition to the Vietnam War felt personal. Three of my uncles were in Vietnam; my dad was a Korean War veteran; my older brother had registered for the draft. In that season of my life, politics wasn’t a sport. It was a stack of letters and a list of names and the shadow of a telegram or the knock on the door.

I also didn’t grow up in an echo chamber. My family spread across parties, and we stayed family. Religion was similarly varied–Lutheran, Catholic, Jewish friends and colleagues–yet the core lesson I carried was simple and stubborn: love your neighbor. Not “love your neighbor if they vote like you and worship like you, are the same color, think like you, or are the same gender orientation.” Just love, and I’ll add tolerate.

That parking-lot exchange stuck with me the entire week like a pebble in my shoe. Hate is a deep feeling, and it rarely starts there. It often begins as fear–of losing ground, being left behind, being fooled again–and then hardens into identity. Once politics becomes identity, disagreement feels like attack. Labels (“Democrats,” “Republicans,” “them”) are useful on a ballot, but in conversation they can become a way to stop listening. It’s easier to hate an idea of a person than the person standing in front of you.

In my public-service career, progress depended on keeping communication open and treating people as human, even when we disagreed. I don’t know what shaped that man’s certainty, but I know what I can choose: to disagree without making it personal, to educate more than insult, and to keep the lines of communication open–at family tables, in parking lots, and everywhere our kids and grandkids are watching us model how adults behave. Having a good sense of humor helps. I’m still a work in progress and know that my directness can be off-putting at times. Forgive me. I’ll keep working on my soft side.

Kathy G. Pelleran-Mahoney, ABD, M.P.A., is a writer and advocate from Alpena, Michigan, and a 2025 inductee into the Alpena High School Alumni Hall of Fame. She lives in Montague, Michigan, and her public service career spans five decades.