Can Lashunda Scales become Birmingham’s first elected woman mayor?

In the 150-year history of Birmingham, there has never been a woman elected mayor.

Jefferson County Commissioner Lashunda Scales hopes to change that, not because she’s focused on being the first woman elected, but because she believes she’s the best candidate.

“It shouldn’t be if you’re a man or a woman,” Scales said. “It should be if you’re qualified.”

Birmingham had an acting woman mayor for less than a month in 2009, when City Council President Carole Smitherman took over for Mayor Larry Langford after he was convicted of fraud and corruption. So, Scales is vying to be the first woman elected to the office.

Scales wants to be judged by her record, not her gender, she said. “You judge a person by what they’ve already done,” she said.

That includes a long career in entertainment promotion and public relations, as founder of Scales Public Relations and Marketing in 2000. “I have a business background,” she said.

She was first elected to office in 2009 as a member of Birmingham City Council.

Scales, 50, served nine years on the Birmingham City Council and has been president pro-tempore of the Jefferson County Commission more than two years.

The poorest neighborhoods deserve street-paving and roadwork, just like more affluent communities, Scales said.

“I’ve always believed you’ve got to be a good shepherd that smells like sheep,” Scales said. “I’ve never liked the idea that when you go in certain neighborhoods, the roads are in bad shape.”

One of her proudest achievements while on the council was spearheading an effort to rein in predatory lending by payday loan companies charging outrageous interest fees.

“To go against predatory lending here in the City of Birmingham, people thought I was crazy,” Scales said. “But I had a mandate from God, and God allowed me to see that our working families were nothing more than the working poor, and that they were being taken advantage of by a system that made them to believe it was in their best interest to go out and take out a $500 loan. And then the interest was so high that all they could pay on was the interest. So, When God told me to do that, it was like David taking on Goliath. People said, you got to be crazy. That’s a multi-billion-dollar industry.”

Her effort attracted plenty of allies.

“I took this fight to Washington, D.C.,” she said.

President Barack Obama visited Birmingham in 2015, speaking at Lawson State Community College and noting, among other issues, that Alabama was one of the states with the most payday lenders. “How President Obama got here was because of me raising this issue in Washington, D.C.,” she said.

“That was one of the successes of God giving me an assignment,” Scales said. “This is one of the things I can say I’m most proud of.”

She also takes a lot of credit for Kamtek and other companies investing in Birmingham. Kamtek brought more than 2,000 jobs and a $2 billion investment. She helped develop a workforce development training program for Huffman High School students at Jefferson State Community College to prepare them for jobs at Kamtek, she said.

Scales has been endorsed by former NBA player Buck Johnson, who said he believes Scales can stop the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Bringing better education and job opportunities is a key to reducing crime, she said.

Crime reduction and homicide prevention have been major issues for Scales in this campaign as she has held the current administration responsible for high homicide rates in recent years.

“Police reform is very important to me,” Scales said. “First of all, you have to establish a relationship. Relationship comes from communication, making sure officers are getting out of their cars, making direct contact with those they are there to protect and to serve. I would like to explore having officers who are able to live in the community, on the beat, that they patrol. I think that when you have a vested interest in the community, it changes your perspective, and it changes your level of service. I also believe we have to work with every level of law enforcement to deal with the level of violent crime that has inhabited our city.”

She has stated goals of a cleaner city, with less dilapidated housing, along with less crime.

“We do not need to politicize the police department,” Scales said. “I’m holding the chief of police responsible for the crime being reduced in this city. My job is to provide the support, by way of funding, by way of making sure we have the necessary tools and resources for our officers to work with.”

Scales in 2013 pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation for improper use of city resources on a private venture. City pump trucks and workers drained water from the site of a carnival promoted by Scales. Scales said then, and has maintained during this campaign, that the charges against her, most of which were dismissed, were politically motivated. They “tried to destroy me,” she said earlier this month at a forum of the Gatekeepers Association of Alabama.