Persistence and drive: Catching up with Sedona Vice Mayor Holli Ploog
8/25/25
A few hours drive away from Phoenix, one will find an absolute icon of Arizona’s natural beauty in the red rock country. At its epicenter is Sedona, a small town of about 10,000 people. Sedona is one of Arizona’s top places for locals and visitors alike, and is valued for its beautiful landscapes and vibrant art community.
It receives millions of visitors every year and is consistently listed as one of Arizona’s top destinations for outdoor enthusiasts.
In 2024, candidates Kathy Kinsella and Holli Ploog each received an endorsement from Arizona List, and both went on to win their re-election campaigns for Sedona City Council. Both have served since 2021. I recently had the unique pleasure of sitting down with Vice Mayor Ploog. During our conversation, we reflected on her professional upbringing, her campaign journey, political learnings, and what she has in store for the future.
Ever since she was a young girl, Holli Ploog thought she would run for office. She grew up in New York and later lived in California and Alaska on separate occasions. During this time, she encountered many obstacles in trying to achieve her personal and professional goals. Yet, through the challenging times, Ploog has consistently stood up for women’s representation in the workforce. For a while, she had wanted to enter the Foreign Service, but she came to learn that women were rarely eligible to take the exam. Ploog shifted her focus and applied to law school. The legal profession was also male-dominated–one in which women were often dissuaded from participating–and yet Ploog persevered. After completing her studies, she found herself in a harsh job market, recounting that in her native New York City, there were more people seeking jobs than jobs available. This generated a widespread scarcity for up-and-coming professionals such as Ploog, but she overcame the difficulties. Today, Ploog holds a B.A. in International Relations and a law degree, and continues to deliver on her commitment to women’s representation. From her point of view, it’s important to get more women elected because, while they may not always be in agreement or of identical opinions, they almost always offer new and innovative contributions to public debate, legislation, and policy-making. In other words, to Ploog, having a different perspective makes for more productive outcomes.
Despite past and present obstacles, Ploog is still dedicated to her work. In 2022 she was selected by her colleagues to be Sedona’s Vice Mayor. In addition, she was re-elected to a second City Council term in 2024. As a leader, Ploog is driven to find ways to better advocate the needs of her community. For instance, she recognizes that there is a discontinuity between the age profiles of Sedona’s City Council members and the voting population. According to the latest U.S. Census data, about 38% of Sedona’s population is 65 years or older. This marks an imbalance with the roughly 72% proportion of the Council that is 65 or older. Vice Mayor Ploog wishes to narrow that gap. To do this, one of her current objectives is to see the median age of the Council reduced. She is also examining how the City Council can more closely represent its constituents in terms of employment status. The same dataset reveals that Sedona’s employment rate is around 49% which, as Vice Mayor Ploog pointed out to me, also stands in contrast to the two members (28% of the Council) that are in the workforce. The Council’s current membership is thus not representative of the City in these regards. Consequently, Vice Mayor Ploog stresses the importance of hearing more voices from the working population and reflecting their viewpoints in policy accordingly. To address this, she is working to encourage a greater presence of working people in the Council. One measure she ran on to make this possible was a change in the Wednesday Council meeting times, so that the Council would meet at 4:30pm instead of 3pm.
– Samuel Conley is a contributing Arizona List intern for Summer 2025.