Video: First Woman Elected As Mayor For Kennedy

KENNEDY, Ala. (WCBI)-  When asked what made her want to run for town mayor, Rose McDaniel said it all started when she spoke too soon and some people took her sense of humor too seriously.

“To tell you the truth it was a joke.” said McDaniel.

Rose McDaniel has lived in Kennedy, Alabama most of her life. Her life in politics started as a council person. She also works at the small Lamar County town’s only convience store.

McDaniel never thought she’d run for mayor, let alone be elected, until the current mayor started talking about his future.

“Somebody asked him one afternoon, ‘you running for reelection.’ he said ‘no’ and just as a joke I popped up and said ‘no, I am.’ well then a couple days after they came back at me and said, ‘you are gonna run aren’t you?’.” said McDaniel.

And so began McDaniel’s road to becoming the first woman to be elected as Mayor of Kennedy.

“I know just about everybody in town from working in the store, so that’s probably what helped with my election.” said McDaniel.

Kennedy’s population is a little over 400 people.

McDaniel knows being Mayor of such a small town will have it’s challenges…

“The most challenging part is some people just don’t understand, you’ve got to watch everything, all your pennies and stuff when you have a town this small, because you don’t have all that income coming in.” said McDaniel.

She is looking forward to building off Mayor Tim Jenkins plan to bring in more businesses.

“Right now, our financial situation is in real good shape and we wanna keep it that way. We have to watch all our P’s and Q’s and dot them I’s and cross them T’s to make sure we keep it like that. Our mayor now, he’s been really good at it. And so he’s gonna continue trying to help us bring in some stuff too.” said McDaniel.

Mayor Tim Jenkins is helping the mayor-elect where he can.

“I’m very proud of Ms. Rose and very proud of the citizens of Kennedy electing our first lady mayor so I think she’ll do great things for the town and continue to help it prosper so, very proud of her.” said McDaniel.

Along with updating their walking track, adding a swing set to their local playground is also on the list for Mayor McDaniel.

“Well as soon as we can do so we will. Because I know that there are a lot of small children around here and I told them that I’m a big kid, I like to swing myself, so we gotta have about 3 swing sets: one for the babies, one for the middle sized and one for us teenagers and older folks cause we all like to swing.” said McDaniel.

Even after being elected, McDaniel still wants everyone to call her by the name they’ve all known for years… Mrs. Rose.

“And ask me if they’re supposed to call me Ms. Mayor and this and that and I said my names always been Rose, that’s what you’re supposed to call me.” said McDaniel.