Caitlin Cullen had been Googling “how to run for mayor” the morning we talked to her. The chef and owner of The Tandem restaurant, situated between the Lindsay Heights neighborhood and Milwaukee’s downtown, had been asking a lot of other would-be leaders around town to consider the gig and had been turned down so many times that she felt she had to at least consider it herself. She had been thinking about it for a while, before she got truly serious and took to Google. “I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it,” she said, speaking this truth aloud as much to herself as to us. “I have four years to figure it out,” she said. Adding that “Tom can’t do it forever,” speaking of Mayor Barrett, who’s been in office since 2004. What would it be like for this Detroit-raised chef and tavern owner, known for giving opportunities to black and brown kids, colorful language, straight talk and a mean Georgia fried chicken, among other things, to run our city? God only knows, but we’d like to see that race. Before she made a life of grassroots community work and cooking, Caitlin taught high school English in Detroit and ran a school for a while in the Dominican Republic, too. In the midst of Covid-19, she and Tandem have been giving away food to people who need it, inspiring other restaurants, many of which are in precarious positions themselves, to pitch in, too.