By Cody Mello-Klein | cmelloklein@alextimes.com

Annetta Catchings has seen the world and solved a myriad of customer service issues in 30 years as a flight attendant for American Airlines. She hopes to apply that experience and bring a “citizen-centric” approach to the issues facing Alexandria as the city’s next mayor.

Catchings’ decision to run for mayor despite a short tenure in the city is the product of long-held political ambitions that she subordinated to the needs of her two sons and her ex-husband’s military career. She moved to Alexandria after becoming an empty-nester in August 2020 and not long after decided to run for mayor as a Republican.

Catchings faces current Democratic Mayor Justin Wilson, who prevailed over former Mayor Allison Silberberg in the June Democratic primary, in the Nov. 2 general election.

In acknowledging Alexandria’s tendency to lean blue, Catchings said she hopes voters can look past her party affiliation and assess her based on her ideas and platform.

“I want [residents] to think, ‘She’s one of us,’” Catchings said. “I want them not to think in terms of how long I’ve lived here or that I’ve never served before in any political fashion. But I want them to know, ‘She’s a mom who raised her kids She supported the military by supporting her ex-husband. She’s volunteered, she’s been a mentor, that she’s one of us.’ Because that’s what we all do. We all volunteer, we all raise our kids, we all have a partner we’re trying to support in life. We’re all out here working, trying to do the right thing and make our community better for the next generation.”

Catchings, who lives in the Carlyle neighborhood, was born in Detroit but moved to Mississippi with her mother and brother at a fairly young age. Catchings was raised by her single mother, and although she would visit her father in Detroit during the summer, she identifies as a proud “Mississippi girl.”

Catchings’ path to becoming a flight attendant and now a mayoral candidate has not been easy.

Although Catchings said she has long wanted to become involved in politics, her first passion was journalism, which she studied at Dillard University in New Orleans, a historically Black university. She ended up on academic probation at Dillard, but worked to improve, attending weekend clinics for two years. Just as Catchings was starting to make headway, her college experience was derailed by an unplanned pregnancy in her junior year at Dillard.

“It was unplanned, and I had my first born and left him with my mom. That was probably one of the hardest things I had to do, but it was a lesson for me,” Catchings said. “It taught me that my decisions have consequences.”

After considering her options, Catchings decided to return to school but said that she found living on public assistance “demoralizing” and the prospect of putting childcare duties on her mother “selfish.” She ended up applying for a flight attendant job at American Airlines her senior year of college and securing one of three positions in an applicant pool of 50.

Soon after starting her job with American, Catchings married her now ex-husband, who was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps at the time. However, Catchings’ 25-year marriage to her husband, the moves necessitated by his service, and making sure her two sons graduated from high school meant that a lot of her plans for herself were put on the back burner. Once she was single and had an empty nest, Catchings, who moved to Vienna, Virginia with her sons in 2016 and then to Alexandria on her own in 2020, decided to move forward with her dormant political aspirations.

“I was just always thinking about, ‘Where would our next base be?’ and then once we divorced, it wasn’t even a choice of where we would move. My son was heavily into tennis, so it was just natural to move wherever his tennis academy was. Once I was now on my own and I could make decisions for myself that would enrich my life, Alexandria was that place,” Catchings said.

After moving to Alexandria in the middle of the pandemic and right before an election year, Catchings said she put out feelers to some of her friends in Congress about a possible political campaign. Catchings emphasized that her experience as a flight attendant has prepared her to tackle Alexandria’s problems.

“My job is really about customer service. It’s about hearing people and resolving their issue to the best of my ability,” Catchings said. “… You do your best to do what’s right, and you’re not going to make everybody happy, but you listen to people, and you try to solve the problem.”

After initially considering a run at Congress, Catchings decided to run for mayor. Although several friends encouraged her to run, Catchings said what truly inspired her campaign for mayor were two resolutions adopted by Alexandria’s City Council.

One, which council unanimously adopted on June 9, 2020, condemned police brutality and systemic racism, affirmed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and stated the intent to create a community police review board. Catchings pushed back on council’s assertion that there is bias and racism in Alexandria’s police department and particularly criticized the attempt to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers.

“Qualified immunity came up many times, and I felt, wow, you take that off the table and you basically are handcuffing the police,” Catchings said. “For me, my son needs the police,” Catchings added.

“The police are not my son’s enemy; [the police] are the only thing standing between his number one killer, the likelihood of violence, of gun violence.”

The second resolution that inspired Catchings’ mayoral campaign was council’s ALL Alexandria resolution, which was adopted on Jan. 23, 2021 and is aimed at developing and implementing policies, processes and procedures with race and social equity at their core. Catchings argued that the focus on equity validates “reverse racism” and that the resolution had “racist undertones.”

“It just bothered me how much the race card was being used to push not just that but other things. So, then it just became a point where I had to run. It wasn’t even a choice,” Catchings said. “I had to run because there’s just so much groupthink at that level, and I just felt like there had to be some diversity of thought to have some real honest conversations.”

Catchings said she is aware that her party affiliation is a barrier for some voters but that she is confident she can reach across the aisle. She argued that many of the ideas at the core of her campaign, such as addressing flooding and stormwater infrastructure, appeal to residents regardless of party.

“Flooding: What can we do to mitigate that? Should we use more [American Rescue Plan Act] funds to designate it to that cause? Of course, people agree with me on that,” Catchings added.

Catchings criticized City Council’s approved use of $3 million in ARPA funds on a guaranteed basic income pilot program instead of on flood mitigation. Catchings submitted a letter to the editor in the Jan. 14, 2021 issue of the Alexandria Times in which she claimed that the slogan “Black Lives Matter” is packed with harmful and negative messaging for Black youth by encouraging them to view themselves as victims even if they’re not.

Outside her interest in social issues, Catchings has expressed a need to make flood mitigation the city’s top priority. She supported a combination of long- and short-term solutions to the issue, including stormwater tanks in the city’s hardest hit neighborhoods, and said she would place a heavier onus on developers.

Education is central to Catchings’ campaign, specifically the concept of expanding school choice for parents and students by establishing charter schools in the public school system. She acknowledged council’s limited ability to also arbitrate this kind of policy, but expressed support for any School Board initiatives in this direction.

“If we know that our public schools are not the best in the region or even in the state, why don’t we create competition in the market?” Catchings said.

At the core of Catchings’ run at the mayoral seat is an emphasis on what she calls a “citizen-centric” approach. This includes her support for implementing a ward-based system of representation for council elections in the city.

For more than a century, Alexandria had a ward-based election system based around neighborhoods electing their own council members instead of the current at-large election system. Recently, a resident-led initiative, called For Wards, has started calling on City Council and mayoral candidates to sign a declaration of support for a new ward system.

Supporters claim that the ward system provides neighborhoods that don’t typically have a voice in city politics with the chance to be represented on council. They also claim it would make councilors more accountable to their constituents, since they would represent the neighborhood they live in.

“I think, above all, I want [residents] to know I’m citizen-centric, that I’m not power hungry, I’m not here as a mouthpiece for anybody, I’m not trying to carry out an agenda. I just want people to have a say in what happens in their community,” Catchings said. “I want them to have a voice in city hall, and I want them to have better access to their City Council members. I just think that that balance of power needs to be restored.”

Meet the 2021 candidates for mayor and City Council.