Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Welcome to Everywhere Radio. I’m your host, Whitney Kimball Coe. And today I’m excited to talk to Dawn Luedtke. Dawn is a community advocate, a former Assistant Attorney General, a certified law enforcement trainer, and an expert on healthy schools and public safety. She’s also serving her first term on the Montgomery County Council in Maryland. Dawn was elected in 2022 to represent the newly created District 7, an area that is part of the Upcounty just north of Washington, DC. The Upcounty includes large of agricultural land and a number of rural residents who in the past have felt underrepresented on the council. Dawn describes her district as a little bit of everything. In her new role as the district’s first representative, she has said that her top priority is unifying her constituents to work towards shared goals and more broadly address issues that have been overlooked in previous council sessions. 

In addition to her role as council member, Dawn is a longtime theater performer and advocate. Currently, she serves on the Opera Baltimore Board of Directors and the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Graduate Club Board of Directors. I also read somewhere that Dawn performed the role of Martha Jefferson in the Sherman Edwards musical, 1776, which happens to be one of my all-time favorite musicals. So I’m hoping we get to gush a little bit about that for a minute, Dawn. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

For sure, for sure. Actually, yeah, that’s super fun fact. So I was 16 years old when I played Martha Jefferson in that production. It was actually the first live theater production that was being performed in my hometown at a theater that a theater company had purchased, but had at one time, it was built by my great-grandfather. So it actually was really especially significant for me to be able to be a member of that cast. And I was the only person child, I guess you should say I was at the time because I was only 16, so I actually wore my great-grandmother’s wedding ring as my wedding band for the production. So yeah, I have a lot of fond memories of that. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Oh, that’s so cool. So good. Oh, this is really great. Well, tell me, Dawn, where you’re from and a little bit of your background. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Sure. So I was actually raised in Williamstown, New Jersey, which is in South Jersey. And for those from New Jersey, New Jersey’s very particular about its north versus south, and it’s kind of comical the differences in alignment with either New York City or Philadelphia. And so the town I grew up in was kind of between Philadelphia and Atlantic City in affectionately part of the world known as the Pine Barrens. So occasionally, my husband jokes that I’m personal friends with the Jersey Devil and other assorted lore from that part of the state. But that’s where I grew up. And it was a mixture. I mean, a lot of the farmland that was there is no longer there. So sort of the western side of my town and further towards the Delaware River became more developed. Whereas, the eastern side, like Hammonton New Jersey is the blueberry mecca of New Jersey and has quite a history there. But a lot of the family farms aren’t there anymore that were there when I was growing up. But plenty still do remain. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And how does your growing up experience in New Jersey, how does it map onto where you are now in the district, in the Upcounty that you’re in? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah, so it was interesting going from living in this small town in New Jersey that’s very similar to Damascus, Maryland, which is where one of the towns in my current district except Damascus, has rolling hills and Williamstown, New Jersey is as flat as it comes because it’s mostly lower than sea level there. And then I went to college in Philadelphia. So I had a mix of both worlds growing up, and my mom was from Harrington, Delaware, home of the Delaware State Fair. 

So I spent part of every summer down there growing up because I would go with my cousins to the fair. And my cousin Todd, his father was a dairy farmer. So Todd was always there showing cows at the fair, and he would sleep there at the fair. He had a cot. He had a cot in the barn with cows, and that’s where Todd was in the summer. And so it was different to see the back and forth and the differences between truly rural, suburban with family farms on the outskirts of the suburban areas, and then urban areas like Philadelphia. And I’ve lived in five different cities throughout my life from 18 up. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And Montgomery County is very similar, right? It’s adjacent to Washington DC, and it encompasses a number of stops on the metro, right? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yes. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

So it’s not strictly a rural place. You say it’s got a lot of diversity in terms of geography and people. Can you tell a little bit more? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

It has, yeah. And I think when I like to personally think that my district in the council is the most diverse, meaning not just racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically, but geographically, because I have one metro stop in my district at the very southern part of it. But then I also have a huge amount of our ag reserve in the county. And our Ag reserve is split over two councilmanic districts. But that’s a truly unique part of our county’s history. And I’m very excited that way back when in 1980, someone had the brilliant idea to do this because it was the first of its kind in the nation and to set aside and preserve agricultural land for agricultural use over time and make it economical to do so. 

To explain that a little bit, there are transferrable development rights. So that family farms that have the transferrable development rights, they create them and then they can sell them to developers to offset what they can or cannot build in more densely populated areas of the county. So it prevents development in the Ag reserve, so it prevents that kind of sprawl that maybe I was subjected to in South Jersey and where it becomes housing development, housing development, strip mall, strip mall, not exactly the best thought out planning there, frankly, in the area where I grew up, and maintains I think it’s just under a hundred thousand acres of land that are preserved. It’s about one third of the county’s land mass is preserved within our agricultural reserve. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And I mean, what drew you to caring so much about these issues of land preservation and/or community planning and strategic planning in big places? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

So I guess I kind of have an interest in all kinds of planning and in all kinds of development. And at the root of it all, it comes from just enjoying people. I mean, I would say next to the word extrovert in the dictionary is probably a picture of me. But I like to be a problem solver, and I think I have a unique skillset in being able to take into account many different things and disparate things and reconcile them together. And it’s interesting to see the commonality in different issues or things as opposed to distinctions. 

So you can recognize the nuance, but you also can see at the core common shared values, which I think are true across our county, regardless of whether it’s in the more urbanized areas or whether it’s way out in the long gravel road in the Ag Reserve at its core, everyone wants to feel safe and secure. Everyone wants to feel welcome in their community, spirit of fellowship. And being able to grow your business if you’re a small business owner and know that you have a positive place to be is at the foundation of everyone’s goals regardless of where you live or where you came from or how you started out your life. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And the district you are in, district seven is newly created, and in part it’s in response to folks probably out that dirt road feeling like their voices had not been heard or represented on the council at some time. So I wonder what do you see your role as this first representative district seven? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah, so my district was created from parts of two prior existing councilmanic districts. So they added two seats to the council for the 2022 election. And as a result of that, these areas that are the more rural areas that comprised District seven were removed from being attached to more urbanized areas. So this isn’t why people should get into serving in public office, I think, and to me as a taxpayer, I find it offensive, but there were folks who had said, “Well, I don’t need their votes to win.” And that’s not how I view the job. I view it as a job. And to me, if you do the job well, you’ll get to come back. And you should be doing the job well across the spectrum of where you’re serving, not just focusing on where the most people are within the district. 

And frankly, to me, those kinds of statements or approaching public service from that way is completely antithetical to what you should be doing as a public servant. So I’m glad that they drew the districts the way that they did because to me, they make far better sense now. And my district, though, I would say is probably the most interesting because it does have a little tiny pocket of semi urbanized area, a couple of suburbs, and then a lot of rural area. And so to me, it looks like how I’ve lived my life throughout my life, right? Because I’ve been in all of these areas and lived in all of those areas throughout my life. So I think that helps. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I wonder about what it’s like to be an elected official right now at any level in this political climate that we’re in and also in this moment of economic hardship and coming out of a pandemic. And you have this kind of new role as a councilperson in a newer district. And I just wonder what are the pain points? What are the growing edges that you’re feeling right now? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

I think because I came to this role from being an appointed public official, and although a lot of my colleagues at the Attorney General’s office would not necessarily have had as much time spent across the state as I did, I have to travel or serve folks across the state in a different kind of capacity than many of the other AAGs or have more public facing time because of community outreach and education projects I worked on. So it wasn’t totally a new feeling coming into this role because I’d had a lot of practice with that, particularly around sensitive topics like mental and behavioral health or law enforcement and law enforcement reform, school safety and active assailant, mass violence incidents, domestic terrorism, hate crimes. So those are the kinds of things I’ve worked on in the past and that I carry with me now. And those are hard topics. 

They’re really tough topics, and they’re things that create a lot of anxiety, worry, and fear in our citizens. And so I think that being able to communicate well with others and be able to hear them, there’s a difference between listening and hearing. And I think I do a pretty good job of actually hearing them, not just, oh, they said something, but digesting it. It doesn’t always mean I’m going to agree with what they’re saying, but it means that I have to be able to take that in and see what that means for that person or that group of people in that area, because that’s relevant to how do you help with the problem. So I don’t feel like it was totally new to me coming into this role, but the public’s agitated, the public’s worried, and I get where they’re coming from. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

So I think you’re right. I think the public is agitated. I think there are a lot of fears and concerns out there. And I wonder what some of those are in your district at the moment and if they have something to do with geography, location, or zip code or even culture. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Across those lines. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

So for example, at the beginning of the pandemic the UP county hub was created, which was a food distribution site, and they had, I think like 25 families maybe that they were helping support in the early part of the pandemic, and now it’s 1400 families. So their work has grown tremendously over the past three years and needing and seeing throughout that process the need for responding to food insufficiency with cultural competence, because we do have a lot of residents here who were not born in the United States. And so the staples that I might be looking for are not what they’re looking for because that’s not part of their diet or part of their culture. And I really appreciate that the folks who got the Upcounty Hub started have honed in on that and tried to adapt and adjust to make sure that they’re providing culturally appropriate foods for those who are in need. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Are there any other issues or projects that you’re working on right now that you feel like are truly in line with addressing what you’re hearing from your diverse residents? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yes. One of the biggest crises we’re facing is in our mental and behavioral health space and in making sure that we have enough folks to respond to those types of things. And of course, the ultimate goal would be that people don’t get to the crisis point, that we’ve got an earlier intervention. But for example, in our more rural areas, it’s a lot easier to not come in touch with someone who’s going to say, are you okay? And to sort of apply those tools of mental health First Aid and find a good way in to facilitate someone who may need a service, let alone getting them to one. So we’ve done some things across time that reduce barriers at the state level by joining an interstate compact that allows for tele-behavioral health services. So you can do it like we’re chatting right now over video conferencing, but there’s just a mismatch between the level of need that we have and the amount of providers available. 

And then we have the insurance gap in the middle. And a lot of clinicians don’t take insurance. And if someone’s suffering from a mental health crisis or from significant, might not be a crisis level, but they have significant impact on their daily life, managing how to process your insurance claim or how to submit yourself to billing, it becomes a challenge. They’re already challenged, and then you’re layering on these other administrative barriers to care. So we’re trying to figure out a better way to manage that, adding social workers to our schools to help with managing, at least within our pediatric population. The schools are a microcosm of the community, but again, if you’re someone who then gets referred out for additional services, if you don’t have broadband or you don’t have an appropriate access to be able to do telehealth or telehealth isn’t clinically appropriate, there aren’t providers in those more rural areas across the county. And that’s incredibly challenging. 

Speaker 3: 

We’ll be right back after this from the Daily Yonder. 

Anya Slepyan: 

Hi, I’m Anya Slepyan with the Daily Yonder. Check out the Yonder Report, a weekly podcast, rounding out the latest rural news produced by the Daily Yonder and Public News Service. You can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Speaker 3: 

And now back to Everywhere radio. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Well, I want to change tracks just a little bit and ask you to describe to me what a typical day is for you. You wear a lot of different hats and your county is fairly large, and I’m trying to picture what that looks like for you. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Well, a typical day for me right now is fairly wild, I have to say. So I have four children, three biological and one stepchild bonus child. So the oldest two, my daughter and my stepson are freshman in high school. And then I have a daughter in eighth grade and a son in fifth grade. So presently we have three bus pickups in three bus drop-offs a day and people coming and going for all the many activities that they’re all in. So we juggle all of that in between. My husband actually works for the governor, so my husband is the chief legislative officer for our governor, and it’s legislative session, so it’s a little bit hectic. So we do have a lot of who’s on first, what’s on second kind of moments around our family, but we are agile and flexible. And so on a typical day, I’m usually meeting with several different stakeholders or community groups that have requested meetings with me in the evenings. 

I often go to have discussions with constituents in their area. Last night I was out in Damascus, which is in a very, very rural part of our county, and dealing with the parents there who are concerned because the school is desperately in need of rebuild. And it was built in 1950. It has not had a substantial renovation since, I believe the late seventies, since ’78, I think maybe. And there’s worry that it won’t end up in the capital improvement projects list and stay on its current target and that it’ll be bumped. And they’ve been waiting for this for a long time. But as you alluded to earlier, the Upcounty really felt like it didn’t have an advocate for a very long time. 

And so it’s my job to fight as hard as I can to make sure that they’re heard. And particularly a school like that, which has a long-standing tradition of like the Friday night football up there is a huge deal. And the school is the epicenter of the town and town activities and life. And so that school represents so much more to that community than just the day in day out education function of it. It really is a community hub, and I think it’s critically important that project stay on track. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I also wonder what do you think the ingredients are to live and work and be in a community that is flourishing, that is doing well, that feels healthy and it has access to all kinds of things? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah, I think at the core of that is people understanding one another. And so especially in the work I did with the hate bias and hate crimes piece and talking to kids about that in particular, because I do, and I still do go out and do those programs whenever I can fit them in, the notion of other-ing someone. It might not be something that’s a protected class, but often you come to a discussion or to a thing with a preconceived notion, and folks in urban areas have those thoughts about folks in rural areas and vice versa. And yet really if you hit pause and find yourself starting to feel that way and say, well, let me find out what are you really about and how does that work? Let me ask questions. So finding a way to come openly to one another within a community. 

And to me that’s the core. Not having people who live anonymously and transiently, but people who really feel invested in their local area, whatever it may be, that they feel like they have a space and that they belong there and that they’re doing something there or collaborating with a neighbor or someone else there that gives purpose. Because that’s the core of happiness to me, is getting up every day and feeling like you have a place in this world and you have something that you’re contributing. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Is there a place in Montgomery County that’s especially special to you that you find yourself returning to or a place that gives you joy and energy? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of cool outdoor space and actually right by where I live. So I live in the Patuxent River Watershed, and I live kind of in a forested area, so probably one of my favorite places to be is my own backyard because I have a little bit of everything here. We have, what are those birds? Well, we have a lot of woodpeckers. So yeah, I had one that I was taking care of for a while. He was a juvenile red-bellied woodpecker. And I have a friend who is the daughter of two veterinarians. And so she rehabilitates baby birds that maybe their nest got blown over or what have you. And she had a woodpecker and he was very attached to humans, and he wasn’t really ready to depart yet, but she was leaving for vacation, so he was re-homed to my backyard. And he’d come down every day and he’d want a snack, and he’d get on my shoulder, get on my head, and I’d have to scoop him off and then give him his snack and then away he’d go. 

We have a pair of mated Cooper’s Hawks that live at my neighbor’s house, and they come and they have their babies every year. So that’s a fun time here. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Well, I always ask our guests, what are you reading, watching, or listening to that is making you laugh or challenging you or something you’d want to share with a larger audience? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah. So we’re really lucky, and I used to be on the board of the theater, but I had to step down when I was accepting elected office. Olney Theatre Center is very close to my house, and that is one of our two state theaters. It was originally a summer stock company and summer theater, but it has that official designation and it actually has three stages. So a black box, the original 1938 historic theater, and then a main stage. And then out in the back there’s an outdoor stage. So recently within the past month, they opened Kinky Boots, which is one of my favorite Broadway shows. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

That’s a great show. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

It’s a great show. And then a play called A Nice Indian Boy that I just went to see last weekend, and that’s a play about an Indian family and their son who’s gay. And he brings home his boyfriend and the parents sort of reconciling tradition and traditional roles because in that particular family, the father was the cook, and that’s what he really wanted to do and be and that was where he had a lot of passion, but his own father had not accepted that in him. And it’s also a incredibly funny show. It’s very heartwarming, but it’s also really, really funny. And I really enjoyed that. And then, Friday night, I get to go up and see Opera Baltimore’s fully staged production of La Traviata. So I’m very excited about that. And then Saturday night is the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club’s 160th Anniversary Gala. So I still serve on their board for their graduate club, but I was the first woman ever elected to their board as an undergrad. 

Technically it’s 161st year of existence. They were delayed pandemic wise from the celebration, and it was really cool back in college to be the first woman elected to their board. It was at one point in time an all male group. I was their choreographer, so I didn’t sing with them, although I sing, but I was their choreographer. And now they are completely co-ed and merged, and they do some all male, some all female, and then combined SATV performing, which is really, really cool. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Oh, that’s so rich, all of that, to have that woven into your life. And I wonder how do you map your love of musicals and theater and performance with the work you do in the world? Is there an obvious connection there, or how do you connect those things? 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Well, I was a trial lawyer before I went to work for the AGs office. And theater and performing and advocacy are kind of tied hand in hand or politics because you have to do a lot of public speaking. So there’s always that little bit of it. Although I think to my colleagues, part of the fun now is if there’s a conference or something and there’s a karaoke thing they can egg me on to please participate and may they pick the song. So there’s a little bit of that, but I think that mostly art and in many forms is in a very important part of our overall makeup and having, whether it’s a small place that has a coffee hour or has somebody who’s a singer-songwriter who comes and plays on the weekends, or whether it’s a full opera either/or it doesn’t matter. Those outlets are incredibly important, not just for the performer, but for those who are absorbing it. 

I think it makes us all richer for having the exposure to that, and that’s another reason why the pandemic was so challenging, because we really didn’t get to have that collective experience except outdoors for a very long time and hard to manage art in that kind of space or with those kinds of challenges for a bit of time so I’m glad. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I remember during the pandemic subscribing to Patreon and absorbing live performance through that, but it’s not the same as live performance or doing it with absorbing it with others around you. And the first time I came back to an in-person performance, I remember just weeping because I really had missed the collective experience of performing. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Yeah. They actually, for A Nice Indian Boy, when you go into the Black Box theater for it, the character who plays the father is already on stage and his back’s to the audience, and he’s cooking. And you’re smelling the cooking, and so you’re smelling this fantastic Indian food. So we had just had dinner before we went, and I took my former high school intern with me and I was like, “Henry, I’m really hungry now. I know we just ate right before we left the house, but now all I can think about is I need to go get Indian food tomorrow.” Yeah. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Well, Dawn, it’s been wonderful talking to you. I’m so glad to have met you and excited about all the things you’re up to. Thank you for being on Everywhere Radio. 

Dawn Luedtke: 

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Absolutely. If you enjoyed Everywhere Radio, we’d love for you to consider subscribing to the General Rural Assembly Newsletter where we promote new offerings from the assembly and amplify the good work of our many partners across the country. We also have an advocacy newsletter that comes to inboxes on Mondays to help you start each week with a quick take on the top issues that we’re tracking across the nation, everything from broadband policy to reproductive justice, just head over to rural assembly.org to sign up. 

If you’re a true fan of Everywhere Radio, please let us know by rating us wherever you get your podcast. And if this isn’t your cup of tea, no biggie, it’s fine. We’d like to thank our media partner, the Daily Yonder. Everywhere Radio is a production of The Rural Assembly. Our senior producer is Joel Cohen, and our associate producers are Xandr Brown and Teresa Collins. And Anya Slepyan is our assistant producer, and we’re grateful for the love and support of the whole team at the Center for Rural Strategies. Love you, mean it. You can be anywhere. We’ll be everywhere.