Our Hometown
Nashua | The First Female Mayor of Nashua
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Donnalee Lozeau was the First Female Mayor of Nashua.
Donnalee Lozeau was the First Female Mayor of Nashua, but not before a lot of folks persuaded her to get in to politics.
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Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS
Our Hometown
Nashua | The First Female Mayor of Nashua
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Donnalee Lozeau was the First Female Mayor of Nashua, but not before a lot of folks persuaded her to get in to politics.
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You know, my parents were always very involved in politics.
Stuffing the envelopes, licking the stamps back when you could lick stamps.
The parades, they were always the behind the scenes support staff for whoever was running.
So I had the amazing opportunity to meet all kinds of different folks running for office.
And I like to support and help my parents.
And I was involved to a certain degree, and I was downtown one day.
And I guess the center of my world a lot of times.
And we were working with Republican City Committee and Donna Sytek, who was at that time the chairman of the Republican State Committee, said to me, you know, you seem so involved.
You know, are you running for office?
And I said, oh, no.
And she said, Why aren't you running for office?
And I said, Oh, I do not like politicians.
And she said, How can you you don't like.. You're always involved.
I see you helping your parents all the time.
How can you not like politicians?
I said, because too many of them tell you what you want to hear and not what you need to know.
And she said to me, Well, you know, real change happens from the inside.
And I said, you know, just thanks, you know, kind of thing.
And then the local chairman called me not long after and said, you know, there's an open seat in your ward for state representative.
You should run.
So at 24 years old, I ran.
And my whole philosophy was, I'll put all my time in, but you're going to hear from me what I think you need to know and not what you want to hear and let the chips fall where they fall.
So I ran and sure enough, I was fortunate to be elected.
I served 16 years as a state representative.
I ended my time at the State House as the deputy speaker to Donna Sytek who had invited me to consider running.
And I then I took what I call a sabbatical.
And I that was 2000.
And so I enjoyed eight years of working at the agency where I work today.
And I started hearing from folks about running for mayor.
And, you know, the current mayor was Bernie Streeter.
He wasn't going to run again.
And I have to say, I was not really excited because local politics, I think, are very personal.
And what I liked about the state House is we argue all day over policy and then we'd argue over who was picking up the check for drinks after work.
You know, and it made a difference in the work we did.
And I was just too concerned that locally, you know, you wouldn't have that.
But my husband was an alderman for a term and he would come home and say, you know, you really should do it.
You really should do it.
And so, you know, I started having coffees around the city and just meeting with people and trying to figure out, can I really accomplish what people want to see for the city?
And when I was convinced that and really excited that maybe I could really make a difference, I ran and Nashua does not have partisan races for local office, which is, again, I think, a wonderful thing.
And we're a city that doesn't have a city manager.
So there's only two cities in the state that have strong mayors is the term for that.
And so I thought, boy, you know, you can get in there and maybe get things done, and in Nashua were fortunate to have a four year term so you can really get things done.
I was accustomed to two years at a time.
And so I won.
And I was fortunate to win and became the 55th mayor in the 155th year.
So that's easy to remember.
And I love the job.
And I did it for two terms.
I was fortunate in my second term to run unopposed, which again, I was very worried, how can I run and still do the work?
Because there was a lot of work to be done.
I mean, 2008 was the Great Recession.
I mean, here I am all excited.
I'm going in.
I'm going to be the mayor.
It's so awesome.
And then I get there and it's like, Oh, there's no money.
We're having this recession.
I'm like, wow, You know, it was really it was really eye opening.
OK now it's a whole different plan.
Now what are you going to do?
And so we really did some great things because, of course, your dollars go further in a recession.
So we we were able to do some really wonderful things.
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