OP-ED: Why Voting Matters for Small Businesses of Color

Zoning rules, minimum wage, lending programs, and contracting set-asides are usually decided in the local elections small business owners are most likely to skip. That has a bigger cost for businesses of color than it does for most.

What's Actually on the Ballot for a Small Business Owner

National elections get the attention, but most of what directly shapes a small business's bottom line gets decided locally: city council votes on zoning and permitting, county budgets that fund (or defund) small business lending programs, school board and port decisions that shape a neighborhood's foot traffic for a decade, and ballot measures on minimum wage or paid leave. A majority of small business owners say they plan to give employees time off to vote, according to a national survey — evidence that owners generally understand elections matter to their business even when turnout doesn't always follow.

Who Gets Heard When Owners Don't Show Up

Elected officials and the staff who write budgets respond to who shows up, consistently, in local elections. When business owners as a group have lower turnout than other constituencies in a given cycle, the programs and protections that would help them are easier to cut and harder to create, regardless of which party or candidate is involved. This isn't a partisan claim. It's simply how representative government responds to participation.

What's Different for Businesses of Color Specifically

Programs that disproportionately help businesses of color — CDFI and community lender funding, minority business contracting set-asides, SBA outreach and goals — are set through budgets and appointees that trace back to election outcomes, often local and often low-turnout. A business community that already starts with less access to capital and less of a cushion has less room to absorb a funding program getting cut or a zoning change going the wrong way, which makes consistent civic participation a bigger lever for this group, not a smaller one.

What a Neighborhood Business Advisor Tells Clients About This

We don't tell clients who to vote for. We do tell them what's on a local ballot that will affect their business directly, because most owners genuinely don't know a port commission or a county budget vote will touch their bottom line until it already has. Treating civic participation as part of running a business, not separate from it, is a small shift that changes how engaged an owner ends up being.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this telling business owners how to vote?

No. It's making the case that showing up matters, regardless of which way an owner votes once they're there.

Where can an owner find out what's actually on a local ballot?

A county elections office voter guide is the most reliable source, and it typically arrives by mail well before a local election with full text of every measure and office on the ballot.

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The Local Mogul is King's Dream Business Consulting's blog, covering the people and small businesses building our local economies.