The race for Ward 7’s City Council seat altered substantially in late January when 4th District Park Board Commissioner Elizabeth Shaffer announced her candidacy. Shaffer is already a well-known figure in the area, and her entrance represents a potentially significant challenge for first-term incumbent Katie Cashman, serving since 2024 for a two year term, who now finds herself in a three-way race with incumbent Commissioner Shaffer and first-time candidate Paula Chesley (also profiled in this issue).
Raw numbers illustrate the challenge Shaffer’s candidacy poses to Cashman. Park Board District 4 substantially overlaps with the boundaries of Ward 7. In the 2021 election for Park Board, Shaffer defeated incumbent Park Board President Jono Cowgill with 61.5% of the vote, receiving 11,900 first-choice votes. Cashman, by contrast, won her 2023 council race with 4,055 final votes, and prevailed over second-place finisher Scott Graham by a mere 177 votes. Cashman now has the advantage of incumbency in the Council seat, but both candidates are well-known in the ward.
So who is Elizabeth Shaffer?
If there’s one word that captures her character, it’s probably this: Endurance. A passionate long distance through-hiker, triathlete, runner and biker, Shaffer is also a mother to four now-adult children, which any parent will tell you is an endurance test of an entirely different sort. Her 2021 park board race was also characterized by stamina: Shaffer met with nearly every neighborhood organization and park-related interest group in the district and held “open time” events in every district park as well, absorbing everything from enthusiastic support to physical threats along the way. Since her election, Shaffer has acquired a reputation as a workhorse, readily available to her constituents but also willing to dive into the minutia of park board policy and budgeting.
Born in Glencoe in 1966, Shaffer spent most of her youth on a 150-acre farm between Buffalo and Monticello, the second of four kids. Fun fact: Her 88 year old father continues to live in her childhood home and still runs a herd of 50 cattle. Shaffer graduated from Monticello High School, then got a B.A. from Wheaton College, in Illinois, in 1987, with a major in communications and a minor in music. While there, she met her husband, Steve, and the two married shortly after her graduation. They spent their first two years in Minneapolis, living in Phillips and the Wedge, before relocating to Chicago when Steve got a business development job with a nonprofit in the city’s Austin neighborhood.
While there, Shaffer obtained a master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois, and began a teaching career, first as a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, then teaching language arts in Oak Park. Steve, meanwhile, moved from non-profits to the private sector, getting his MBA, then working for Grant Thornton and a wide range of tech start-ups.
Shaffer’s first son was born in 1995, and three more kids (two daughters and another son) arrived between 1997 and 2002. The demands of parenthood brought an end to Shaffer’s professional teaching career but teaching continued to be a common thread. In 2002, the family briefly relocated to Shenzhen, China, and Shaffer, by necessity, began home-schooling her children. The family relocated to Minnesota later that year, and she continued teaching her kids until high school.
Shaffer’s family moved to Lowry Hill in 2012. Her entry into public civic life started small but grew rapidly, when she began volunteering at Thomas Lowry Park, then a relatively neglected park space near her home. Shaffer initially saw it as a simple way to connect with neighbors and give back to the community, but in short order she was elected president of Friends of Thomas Lowry Park. That role took on added significance in 2019 when the Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association approached FTLP about directing some must-spend Neighborhood Revitalization Program funds to restore the park’s historic Seven Pools water feature. Shaffer took the lead in raising an additional nearly $350,000 for the project, mapping out a year-long fundraising plan, setting deadlines, and working with neighbors to leverage their contacts to raise the needed funds.
Shaffer’s success with the Seven Pools project prompted neighbors to recruit her to run for park board in 2021. Mounting a grass-roots campaign, she overwhelmingly defeated her incumbent opponent and says her steady presence in the district parks led to her receiving regular constituent service calls before she was even elected. Those experiences helped her hit the ground running when she took office, she says.
Looking back, Shaffer can list off dozens of accomplishments during her park board time, but she is particularly proud of her recent effort to create a park board endowment, which she hopes will benefit future generations, as well as increased natural resources funding, funding for badly needed path and trail maintenance, and helping foster a respectful “back to basics” board culture, after a period in which the board had been embroiled in controversy over issues such as park encampments and the defund the police movement.
Why is Shaffer running for City Council?
Shaffer says there’s a similar sentiment now, with constituents expressing frustration about politicization, infighting and wasted energy on the Council. Shaffer says she’s about getting to work and focusing on the essentials. In particular, she wants to foster a supportive business environment that also benefits workers, promote public safety and support the police, ensure the city is fiscally responsible, support environmental well-being and green spaces, and try to promote respectful, constructive dialog on the Council.
Asked about political role models, Shaffer notes that she never really aspired to be an elected official, but says she holds Amy Klobuchar in high regard, and has tremendous respect for the work Andy Luger has done as U.S. Attorney, finding innovative ways to use federal resources to support local law enforcement during one of the most challenging periods in the city’s history. Shaffer also name-checks Dean Phillips, who she says showed real courage by expressing unpopular but prescient views during the recent presidential campaign.
