Leirion Gaylor Baird had been mayor less than 10 months when a new virus turned the world upside down, which meant her administration would spend much of the next three years leading the city through a global pandemic.
She’s proud of how Lincoln and Lancaster County kept mortality rates among the lowest in the state and nation, how her administration used an influx of millions in federal aid to help small businesses and renters stay afloat and housed, to create worker training programs.
She weathered a recall attempt, along with several City Council members, over a mask mandate and other health directives, and Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in Lincoln after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
People would say to her, “You didn’t sign up for this,†but she respectfully disagrees. You have a set of priorities when you run for office, she said, things you want to accomplish, of course.
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“But you’re also running to be one of the city’s top public servants and to be there for your community no matter what,†she said. “I couldn’t have predicted (a pandemic), but it is what I signed up for. I signed up to be here for Lincoln no matter what.â€
And she’d like to keep being there.
“We’ve got so much to do,†she said, and a historic influx of federal stimulus money to help move the city forward.
Plans for a park in the South Haymarket, for a downtown music district, a convention center and youth baseball fields are all in the works, some of which will be bolstered by federal stimulus funds.
She wants to see through the workforce training programs her administration began with those monies, to continue the historic $211 million investment in city streets touted by her campaign — and helped by a quarter-cent sales tax earmarked for street repairs — to work on affordable housing efforts, and to secure a second water source for the city.
“There are sunnier days ahead and I want to be there to work from City Hall and partner with those who have helped us emerge stronger,†she said.
Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, faces Republican Suzanne Geist, a well-funded opponent whose supporters — most notably a conservative political action committee called Together Nebraska funded primarily by Sen. Pete Ricketts and the Peed family — have painted a much darker picture of a city whose crime is skyrocketing.
The Lincoln Police Union endorsed Geist; the Lincoln firefighter’s union and Tom Casady, the former Lincoln police chief and public safety director, endorsed Gaylor Baird.
The mayor says she’s supported public safety by adding money for additional positions at both the police and fire departments, changing policies to make it easier for people to apply for the Police Department and making changes to the pension program to make it more appealing to officers who transfer from other departments.
“We want to keep everyone safe,†she said. “That’s why we continue to grow with our personnel, have the latest training and equipment, but also … we have stayed true to our community policing model.â€
That connection to the community means LPD solves crimes at a high rate, she said, and other investments her administration has made help address the root causes of crime. Those include investments in mental and behavioral health with Lancaster County, universal home visitation for new babies and supporting community learning centers through an interlocal agreement with schools.
The daughter of two school teachers who grew up in Portland, Oregon, Gaylor Baird said while she didn’t want to be a teacher, she appreciated that they were in professions that helped people.
“I always had the sense that jobs could be more than a paycheck, that it could be about making people’s lives better.â€
She earned an undergraduate degree in history from Yale and her master’s in comparative social research from Oxford University, where her thesis was on parental leave policies — a policy she recently introduced in Lincoln. Passed by the City Council earlier this month, it makes Lincoln the first city in the state to offer paid parental leave.
Gaylor Baird, 51, worked in the private sector in management consulting in New York and Chicago before becoming a budget analyst for the city of San Francisco. Her family moved to Lincoln in 2002, when her husband Scott Baird, part-owner of a software company, got a job here.
The couple has three children, the youngest of whom is a freshman at Lincoln Southeast. Their older two are in college, one at the University of Oregon, the other at Middlebury College in Vermont.
She was involved in volunteering after moving to Lincoln, and former Mayor Chris Beutler appointed her to the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission in 2007. Six years later she ran a successful bid for one of the three at-large City Council seats and won reelection in 2017.
As mayor she passed both a Climate Action Plan and the Affordable Housing Coordinated Action Plan, with a goal of adding 5,000 new or rehabilitated affordable homes in Lincoln by 2030.
Her administration started a rental rehabilitation program for older homes in some of Lincoln’s core neighborhoods, has included affordable housing units or a contribution toward affordable housing in tax-increment financing agreements with developers and helped create a nonprofit financial institution to coordinate funding for affordable housing projects.
She said her administration has also worked to address higher- and medium-density projects often called “missing middle†housing and points to a record number of residential building permits in the last two years.
“As much as we’ve accomplished as a community and in extraordinary times, there’s still more to do and I’m committed to working with everyone in our community to make this an even better place to call home.â€
Age: 51
2023 Voter's Guide: Lincoln Mayor
Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, faces former state Sen. Suzanne Geist, a Republican, in her run for a second term.