St. Monica’s Recreation Center in Lincoln Heights is quiet. It’s early on Friday afternoon and school hasn’t let out yet, but in just an hour or so, local kids will be filling the halls, starting games of ping-pong, and climbing on the enormous indoor playground that makes us want to put down our cameras and notebooks and just play. But Yvette Simpson, city councilwoman and candidate for mayor, is here to tell us her story. She opens a soda – a “pick-me-up,” she says, after a long day of meetings running over. I tell her we’re excited to get to know Yvette – the woman, not just the candidate – and she laughs. “You mean you’re interested in me?”

As we step out of our cars in the front circle of Aiken High School, a young woman on the opposite side is belting out the national anthem. Her peers are astonishingly quiet. We pause, and across the way, Tamaya Dennard, candidate for city council and innovation specialist at Design Impact, does the same, leaning against her car to listen. The anthem draws to a close and, just as we’re about to clap, the girl’s friends break up the silence, laughing and yelling along with her, “the home of the brave.” “Aw, guys!” she yells.

We meet Tamaya – red folding chair in tow – and her communications director, Tara Keesling, at the front of the school. “Man, she was killing it,” she says.