Mosie Boyd
Fort Smith attorney Mosie Boyd isn’t the first Arkansas to run for president, but she became the latest when she announced her run on Aug. 14.
Boyd, a native Californian, first moved to Arkansas for law school in Little Rock in 2005. She made the move west to Van Buren in 2008, before starting her own law firm – True Grit – in 2010 on Fort Smith’s Garrison Avenue.
This isn’t Boyd’s first run for office. In 2018, she ran for Sebastian County judge and lost to the incumbent – David Hudson – in a race that wasn’t particularly close as Hudson won with not-quite 70 percent of the vote.
Boyd has been active in Democratic Party politics for most of her life, and her experience isn’t limited to runs for office.
“I’ve served as Chair of Sebastian County Democrats and Secretary of the Democratic Party of Arkansas,” Boyd said by email as she recounted her experience from the campaign trail in Iowa. “My cousin says I started talking about running for president when I was eight-years-old,” Boyd says.
She attended Brown for her undergraduate degree followed by a master’s degree from Georgetown in 1998.In between, “I worked for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein – on her 1992 campaign and then in her Senate Office.” She was among the many who attended Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
Boyd then taught English in China and later worked at The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that was followed by serving on the staff of U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.)
“While living in Washington, D.C., I participated in numerous specialized political trainings,” Boyd says. “Then I moved back to California and worked on the Bill Lockyer for Attorney General campaign as a communications assistant. We won and his team helped me get a job with Gov. Gray Davis – where I started in the mail room and working my way up to Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff and then to an analyst position where I had an opportunity to help review proposed legislation.”
After moving to Arkansas, Boyd kept her involvement with party politics and says she worked on Mike Beebe’s successful campaign for governor in 2005, and followed that with working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
“I finished law school in 2.5 years (instead of the standard three), so I would be ready to help,” Boyd says of her work for Clinton.
“During the 2016 presidential cycle, I knocked on over 500 doors for Hillary in Iowa as a Women’s Summit volunteer working with Executive Women for Her,” Boyd says. “I put cables [also known as snow chains] on my car tires so I could finish my packets in the snow and even used my host family’s bicycle after I maxed out my in-kind travel contribution limit to the campaign.”
She also went to New Hampshire, with the Arkansas Travelers – a group of volunteers who first campaigned for Bill Clinton in the 1990s – for Hillary, and then went on to Ohio on her own.
Back in Fort Smith, Boyd founded the River Valley Economic Development Council, which shares office space with Boyd’s law firm. She also hosted the Madam President Forum in Iowa earlier this year.
She’s been back and forth to Iowa since.
“I’ve been receiving very positive feedback from Iowa caucus voters,” Boyd says. “Many local residents hosted campaign yard signs for me on high traffic streets around the Iowa State Fair and said they will caucus for me – and they hope I win.”
Boyd adds, “While I’m having fun running for president, I am also a very serious and dedicated candidate who cares deeply about the well-being of our nation and Americans at this critical time in our nation’s history.”
Boyd is one of nearly two dozen running for Democratic nomination in 2020.
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