Almost a decade after her first unsuccessful bid for public office, Ashley Shade was sworn in as president of the North Adams City Council at Thursday’s inaugural ceremony in City Hall.
“I ran because I was inspired by people like Danica Roem and Andrea Jenkins, who became the first openly trans people elected to office in 2017 and I thought, if they could run, then why can't I?" said Shade. "So, I saw representation in people like me running for office, and I thought, I can do this. I ended up losing that year, but stayed involved and ran again in 2021 and finally was elected.”
Shade secured her third two-year term in November’s election. She continues to hope that her success in municipal politics serves as an invitation to others who rarely see themselves reflected in the engines of government.
“There's only six openly trans people elected to office in the state of Massachusetts," Shade told WAMC. "There's less than 100 in the entire country. Representation matters, because young people and other people like us need to be able to see that we can be part of the process, that we are just like anybody else, that we deserve a seat at the table. And especially right now in this country where there's so much anti-trans legislation coming out, we not only deserve a seat at the table, we have to be represented in order to stop that legislation and to help people understand what the trans community really is, and dispel a lot of the bad and the misinformation that is out there.”
The trans community — estimated by a recent UCLA study to account for less than 1% of the country’s adult population and around 3.3% of its youth population — has been a regular target of the Trump administration and the MAGA movement that dominates the modern Republican Party.
“Right now, we live at a time when the federal government doesn't believe that I'm a human being, or doesn’t think that I, or people like me, deserve to be treated with equality," said the city council president. "And that's really difficult. It makes things, unfortunately, unstable, and it instills a lot of fear in people.”
That said, Shade remains optimistic about North Adams, which enters 2026 with long underrepresented groups in positions of authority in civic governance.
“Representation matters, and the fact that we have, for the first time, a majority female council, our first ever trans president- While being trans or being a woman isn't a qualification to run for office, it is important to have representation and see different types of people on the council, it's important to have a different perspective, and I'm really excited for the future," she said. "Not only do we have a majority female council, but we still have a female mayor. It's a really exciting time and again, it's something that will inspire young people to want to get more involved. They see different people, they see people like them, and hopefully we get more and more representation from marginalized groups. And that is something that I'm always striving for.”
Shade, once a libertarian who has migrated to the Democratic party, says support for trans people remains lukewarm at best across the national political spectrum.
“Right now, if the Democrats truly want to win, if they want to be the party of the people, they need to stand by civil rights and human rights as their number one priority," said Shade. "And if they're not willing to do that, they're going to lose. And that's what happened a couple of years ago. That's why we have a Trump presidency right now. It was because Kamala Harris and her team didn't boldly come out against the anti-trans ads. If you look at that election, a lot of down ballot races, Democrats did much better, and it's because they were much more emboldened to come out against that kind of rhetoric.”
Ahead of this year’s Congressional midterms, Shade says the winning message for Democrats is about meat-and-potatoes economics – not about waging endless culture wars.
“The average person cares about their utility bills, the average person cares about gas and grocery prices, the average person cares about having a stable job and having health insurance," she said. "So, if we focus on issues that the average voter actually cares about and stop making it about identity politics- I mean, the fact that trans people exist shouldn't be political. We exist, we've always existed, we always will. Me being elected has nothing to do with me being trans because I'm a qualified individual with experience.”
Drawing on those four years of legislative experience that she’s banked on the council, Shade is laying out her goals for the coming term as the body’s newly minted head.
“We have a lot of budget challenges over the next few years, especially with the federal funding and the way that's changing," she said. "We're going to have to look really hard at our budget and work with the administration, the mayor and her team, on finding a budget that's going to fill in those gaps we also have. We haven't updated our city code, our city ordinances and codes since the 70s. It's been a long time, and that's a project that I'm going to be leading this term, and it's something I'm very excited about, because the average person shouldn't need an attorney to understand their local laws. And my goal is to simplify and make it much easier to access all of our ordinances.”
The North Adams City Council holds its first meeting of 2026 on Tuesday, Jan. 13.
