She worked behind the scenes in City Hall for 33 years. Now, Sharon Vaughn is poised to be Philly’s next Council member.

If you know Philly politics, you probably know about Sharon Vaughn’s bosses. For 33 years, she has worked in Philadelphia City Hall for some of the city’s most legendary politicians, starting in 1989 when she got a job as an aide in the office of Augusta Clark, just the second Black woman to ever sit on Council.

Vaughn worked behind the scenes for years, taking calls from constituents under former Councilmember Marian Tasco, then working as the chief of staff to Derek Green, who last month resigned his seat to run for mayor.

At 58, Vaughn — a grandmother with blue-rimmed glasses known by some in City Hall as “Mama Sharon” — realized she was older than most members of Council. She started to plot her retirement.

But there was one City Council job she hadn’t yet held: member.

“I have been doing this for so long, and I get the job done,” she said. “Why not just take the leap?”

Vaughn is now poised to be Philadelphia’s next City Council member after last month becoming one of two Democratic nominees to appear on the Nov. 8 ballot in a special election to fill a pair of at-large seats. She and Jimmy Harrity will take on two Republicans for the seats left open by Green and Allan Domb, who is weighing a mayoral run. Vaughn and Harrity are favored to win, given Philadelphia’s heavily Democratic electorate.

» READ MORE: Who is running for mayor in 2023?

Vacancies on City Council are generally filled through special elections, when nominees are picked not by voters in a primary but by the political parties. After interviewing a handful of candidates, Democratic ward leaders last month voted unanimously to nominate Vaughn, who was backed by Green and is herself a ward leader in North Philadelphia.

Vaughn made it clear to other ward leaders that she was interested in the nomination once Green resigned. To win backing, she said she had no intention to seek a full term next year, when all 17 Council seats will be up for election. She said this week that she stands by that plan.

» READ MORE: Philly mail ballots will be further delayed because of a Council special election

And so if she wins in November, she’ll have just 15 months to represent the city on Council and to chart her own path — no longer defined by the ambitions of her bosses.

First, she wants the city to know who she is. Raised by a single mother in the Raymond Rosen public housing complex in North Philly, Vaughn got into politics as a Council aide during the administration of Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first Black mayor.

Over three decades, she’s built relationships with Democrats, watching allies become Council members and coworkers become mayors.

Green said that while she worked in his office, people from inside and outside City Hall often came by specifically to speak to Vaughn, assuming she could either solve their problem or knew another person who could.

“She has her own relationships,” Green said. “She’s her own person.”

He and Vaughn are both connected to the Northwest Coalition, the storied political family that Tasco is a leader of — even though Vaughn has lived in the city’s Feltonville section, just north of Kensington, for more than 25 years. (The neighborhood used to be in Tasco’s Council district, but it was redistricted out.)

The home where Vaughn lives with her husband, Kevin, and their five-pound chihuahua, Killa, is in part a tribute to her roots in City Hall. Amid paintings of dragons — she’s got a penchant for the mystic — are photos of her with the city’s political luminaries, including a shot of her smiling next to Mayor Jim Kenney.

Despite her warm demeanor, Vaughn said she’s committed to taking swings at some of Philadelphia’s most intractable problems, including underfunded schools, the opioid epidemic, and violent crime. She said she hopes to prioritize public safety, and wants to see the administration enforce an evening curfew for minors and do more to fill hundreds of vacancies in the Police Department.

» READ MORE: Following Roxborough shooting, Philly City Council members call for a more urgent response to gun violence

And she said Kenney should declare a state of emergency over the city’s gun violence crisis, a call that other lawmakers on Council have been making for the better part of two years.

“What’s the holdup? Why won’t Kenney do it?” she said. “The infinite question.”

At-large Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who has known Vaughn for more than a decade, said her perspective is informed by living in a neighborhood that’s seen a disproportionate level of gun violence.

“She lives it. She’s not in some type of isolated space,” he said. “You’re getting somebody who’s going to make decisions and votes that are grounded in lived experiences.”

Vaughn said those decisions will be based in an optimism that every neighborhood can thrive, and that it’s never too late to make change.

“I believe,” she said, “that we all can be something great.”