Halla Lasabagh Maher stands in her backyard in Thousand Oaks on a late summer day while tables surround her filled with friends and supporters when a man from the gathered crowd in sunglasses approaches her and starts chatting away as if he was an old friend. Maher, ever the cordial host, thanks the stranger for coming as she tries to remember where she may have met this supporter before- one among hundreds. But Maher's trained memory from her days as a USC Masters degree candidate serves her now that she has transformed into a candidate for Thousand Oaks City Council.

"Of course, we met at the California state and local candidate forum in Moorpark a couple months back. So nice to see you again," Maher counters, shaking the man's hand.

Such is the life of Halla Maher as she joins legions of other citizens and activists across America who have become first-time political candidates in this momentous election year.

Maher later details to her gathered backyard audience her motivations on why she is transitioning from a mother of home-schooled young boys to a law-and-order city council candidate who seeks local elective office after having served as a Senior Disaster Analyst providing clinical mental health services for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

"Homelessness in Thousand Oaks and other cities is a problem perpetuated by governments which have shifted funding to bandaid temporary solutions. We need to reject the Housing First/ Project Homekey failed approach and focus on mental Illness and drug addiction," she implores her supporters.

Later Maher surprises her audience by informing them how there are two legal drug addict injection sites in Thousand Oaks, an upper middle-class suburb of 140,000 at the border of Northwestern Los Angeles County and Ventura County. Thousand Oaks used to be a reliably conservative place but in recent years residents arriving from nearby liberal Los Angeles have made this town a swing district of sorts.

The Thousand Oaks city council meetings have mirrored this divide that is playing out in the rest of America that is experiencing political realignments in the wake of the Covid pandemic, skyrocketing inflation, border crisis issues and surging crime in cities.

And although the California state constitution has made local offices officially non-partisan for the last 100 years, the partisan liberal-conservative fault lines run through bucolic Thousand Oaks with its extensive green belts of wilderness that haven't changed much since the Chumash Indian Tribe dwelt along the local creeks running through town from the nearby Santa Monica Mountain range.

I would promote self-reliance or more targeted or individualized plans of care, we already have over 250 long-term homeless people in town which has seen a marked increased since 2019 through today. You can target homeless on a tier system- and distinguish the mentally ill from those homeless people who are temporary or domestic violence victims," Halla continues.

Maher's perspective is informed by her role as a mother to two boys, married for 12 years to Martin Maher, a Battalion Chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department who suddenly found herself scrambling to adjust to the recent pandemic shutdowns like many other citizens in California. It was when Halla chose to homeschool her children while working full-time remotely at home that she began to feel the importance of becoming more involved in hyper-local quality-of-life issues in Thousand Oaks.

It has been a long road for Maher whose evolution as a mother-citizen-activist-candidate started when her parents immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old from Iraq. Long before many Americans knew the name of Saddam Hussein or even where to find Iraq on the world map, Maher's family was shared the fate of other Christian families living under persecution in a majority Islamic country that also suppressed the sizeable Shia muslim population living under the Hussein family rule. As Maher tells it decades later, her parents understood that they would need to leave everything behind in order to build a better future for their children. And it was the arrival in the United States that brought an awareness of the ideals of uniquely American values of the rule of law and of individual freedoms that would immediately make their mark on an eight year old girl from war-torn Iraq.

" You could say that I learned at a very young age never to take freedom for granted," Maher relates.

Eventually Maher's family settled in San Diego county and later Halla would move up north to downtown Los Angeles as she completed her Master’s degree in Social Work at USC.

It was soon after graduation when staffers from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health headquarters noticed Maher and offered her employment in what later became multiple specialized roles within the organization including Disaster and Emergency Liaison in which she was responsible for building relationships and collaborating with surrounding cities, counties, the State of California and the Federal Government.

And now Maher awaits the looming voter decision on November as are many other first-time candidates for local, state and national office. Maher finds the experience enlightening and an occasion of hope as she meets many people in her community who were once total strangers and now counting them as friends here in her backyard as her husband and children look on nearby. She smiles to her audience and finds her life journey leading to yet another unexpected path.