EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Misti Allison has always been involved in her town, but not in local politics. The February train derailment changed that.
“My husband and I were always very involved in the community before the train derailment,” Allison said. “But really, this is really unprecedented times.”
She’s become an advocate for her town, testifying at a U.S. Senate hearing on the derailment. Now she’s entered the Mayor’s race. This is the first time incumbent Mayor Trent Conaway will have an opponent. He ran unopposed in the last election.
“I really just believe in contested elections,” Allison said. “I think that that’s really the beauty of democracy is being able to have a choice.”
Allison believes she can bring her tech-savvy approach to the table and improve communication with residents. She has weekly “Mondays with Misti” videos on Facebook. She said these give quick updates on the derailment and any unrelated updates around the little town.
“You can still be trying to rebuild and to make sure that the cleanup is happening with the train derailment, but then you can still want all of the businesses in town to be successful,” Allison said. “You can still want the schools to be strong. You can still want different legislation to move forward.”
Incumbent Mayor Trent Conaway said he won’t change much of his approach, despite the fact he is actually running against someone this election. Spectrum News asked him about Allison’s belief that the city’s communication needs improvement.
“It’s been OK,” Conaway said. “It definitely could be better. We’re working with that through the village. We’ve hired a PR firm. We’re trying to get more videos out and do things like that.”
The derailment entangled him in an environmental mess, which required difficult decisions. State and local officials decided to vent and burn toxic chemicals from the rail cars. That caused a large cloud of smoke to form, and water and air became contaminated. A massive cleanup effort is still underway. A spokesperson for the U.S. EPA said they were there during the meeting but were never consulted about the decision.
Conaway said his fire chief was the incident commander at the site that made the call. He stands by it.
“That’s what the Ohio revised code says,” he said. “No matter what, our local fire chief, no matter where this would have happened. That’s who makes the call, is the local fire chief.”
Conaway has become a local liaison between his town and Norfolk Southern, which is the rail company responsible for the derailment. Conaway said he’s built relationships with local officials who can help him hold Norfolk Southern to account.
“If there’s something we don’t like, we can’t get an answer to, we can always go to the bully pulpit,” Conaway said. “We can go to our higher-ranking government officials, and we can take care of that. I would worry, you know, somebody new doesn’t neccessarily have the relationships that I have coming in.”
But Allison said her background in health care and her vocal advocacy have gotten her invited to the tables where key decisions are made. She said getting elected as mayor gets her a permanent seat there as long as she’s in office.
“For this four-year term that’s coming up, this is really a pivotal time in East Palestine’s history, and I really wanna be a part of it,” Allison said.