Photo: Elizabeth Dionne

The first resident to declare their intentions to run for the Belmont Select Board will do so on Wednesday.

“I will be forming a candidate committee and pulling nomination papers for Select Board on Wednesday, Dec. 7,” said Dionne, ready to fill the post currently held by Adam Dash, who said he will not seek re-election for a third three year term.

Julie Wu is Dionne’s campaign chair, and Fiona McCubbin is the campaign’s Treasurer. 

“Yes, I am considering it, but I won’t make any final decisions until after speaking with key people in Belmont,” Dionne told the Belmontonian two weeks ago. “My decision depends heavily on whether or not another qualified candidate steps forward, one whom I could support.”

“Being a member of the select board is a demanding position, especially given the serious fiscal challenges that Belmont faces,” she said. “I am sorry that Adam Dash chose not to run again, although I very much understand his decision. He has served Belmont faithfully and well. He will be missed.”

The Wellesley Road resident is the chair of the Community Preservation Committee and a long-time member of the Warrant Committee. She was also treasurer of Roy Epstein’s 2019 and 2022 successful campaigns for Select Board.

A glimpst into Dionne’s mindset when it comes to local issues can be found in a past article where she describes herself “as an agitator for reform in the public schools, resident-friendly zoning, and revamping the city’s governance structure.”

Dionne’s move into elected politics is following in her father’s footsteps. Dionne’s father, John L. Harmer, served as a California state senator for seven years before resigning to become Gov. Ronald Reagan’s last Lt. Governor for the final four months of Reagan’s second term in 1974-5.

She is in her third term on Town Meeting in Precinct 2

For more on Dionne’s thoughts found in an article she wrote in 2009 and from her League of Women Voters’ Candidates’ Survey for the 2022 election

One of ten children from a prominent Latter Day Saints family from California and later Utah, Dionne matericulated at Wellesley College where she received her B.A., in 1992. After spending two years on a Marshall Scholars grant (her fellow 1992 scholar grantee was Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch) at King’s College, Cambridge University where she earned a Masters in Philosophy, she attended Stanford University Law School where she graduated with a JD in 1998. She continued her involvement with Wellesley as a Visiting Lecturer in Political Science and has been a Harvard Law Olin Fellow.

Dionne has been a general practice attorney for nearly 25 years, but has called herself “a happily retired attorney” stepping away from a career in the law so she could raise her four chidren.

Before moving to Belmont a little more than a decade ago, Dionne was a resident of Hancock Park in Cambridge and a member of the Ward 6 Cambridge Republican City Committee.