On Monday, May 18, Salt Lake City businesswoman Babs De Lay filed her intent to run for mayoral candidate Luke Garrott’s soon-to-be open City Council seat. But don’t break out your checkbooks just yet—De Lay will be shouldering her campaign’s financial burden alone, she said.

“I think in this day and age, you can pay for your own signs,” De Lay said Tuesday. “If you’re going to write a check to my campaign, I want you to write that check to the Rape Recovery Center. I want you to write that check to the Red Cross, or the YWCA.”

De Lay will be limiting her expenses to “the bare bones” of a campaign as she competes against candidates Derek Kitchen and Nathan Salazar for the honor of representing Salt Lake City’s 4th District, which runs from South Temple to 900 South between I-15 and 1300 East. Like Kitchen, the namesake of Utah’s landmark Kitchen v. Herbert suit, and Salazar, who chairs Lake County’s Democratic Hispanic Caucus, De Lay is a passionate activist, advocating ceaselessly for women, LGBTQ people and survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Unlike Kitchen and Salazar, who are both under 30, De Lay has decades of experience, be it in business, activism or public service. The owner and principal broker of Utah Urban Homes and Real Estates, De Lay has served as head of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, the Women’s Council of Realtors and the Downtown Merchants Association of the Downtown Alliance. She also served eight years as a Salt Lake City Planning and Zoning Commissioner, which deals with similar issues to those addressed by City Council.

“None of the other candidates have any of this stuff,” she said. “We don’t have four years to train [them] about sexual assault and sex trafficking and the crime problem and the homelessness issue and all of the other of pink elephants that no one really knows about. Let’s get in there and start finding solutions.”

De Lay will officially file for candidacy on June 1.

Editor's Note: Babs De Lay is a contributor to City Weekly.