A mother of four children in Park City schools, youth soccer coach and administrator at Western Governors University, Jill Fellow is looking to add state senator to the list of hats she wears.
She’s also the Utah Democratic Party secretary and women’s caucus chair, a board member for EATS Park City and Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a volunteer for Planned Parenthood.
She equates her campaign values to those of her professional and family life, as well as social beliefs. She says the people she’d represent across five counties in Senate District 20 need representation for interests specific to their communities.
“The people of Utah have a beautiful passion for family, a beautiful compassion for people, and our government and the laws that we pass don't always align with that value system,” Fellow says. “I think that's sometimes a communication issue - that we're not necessarily listening to each other enough to create the laws and the policies that are really going to help everybody thrive. I want to make sure that that representative is really considering my community and our values. And so if no one else is going to stand up and do that for my neighbors, then I'm going to be that person.”
Fellow lived part-time in the Rabbit Gulch area of Duchesne County for two years and has also spent time in Wasatch County, Daggett County and Uintah County. She says she welcomes the opportunity to represent those counties as well as the Park City area.
Objectives of her campaign include fostering communities that promote social inclusion, financial assistance and basic security for underserved populations. She lists the disabled and LGBTQ communities as examples.
She also says she’d bring more legislative focus to long-term, ethical solutions to drought. She describes the role she’d take as a legislator as balancing environmental impacts with political implications of who buys water and how it’s allocated.
On her Facebook campaign page, she lists advocacy, feminism, journalism and justice as other core values.
Compared to Senator Winterton, she says her approach would differ in some ways, but not all. Most recently, she wouldn’t have voted for HB11, which bans transgender girls’ participation in school sports K-12, or supported its last-minute passsage.
“That kind of vote I would call inappropriate,” she says. “I want more creative governing, and I want a representative who is going to see legislation that is unclear or too blanket, and I want my legislator to fight to add more creativity and nuance to the legislation that they're going to vote on. I do think that Ron Winterton and I both feel strongly about protecting rural Utah and probably feel strongly about open space. I personally love public lands and love to protect our open space.”
She says when advocating for open-space preservation, she’ll be realistic about rights private landowners have. She says she’d support giving the authority to local governments to make these types of decisions.
Fellow says she’s available for contact by social media and other forms of direct contact. If elected, she says she’d find ways to make legislative sessions more transparent and open to public involvement.
Her Facebook page is Jill Fellow for Utah.
