A TORY candidate hoping to smash Labours red wall has revealed how learning of her fathers tragic death got her into politics.
Dehenna Davison was just 13-years-old when she learned her father Dominic had been killed by a single blow to the head in a pub.
Shes now hoping to become the first every Tory MP in Bishop Auckland, and says the experience got her into politics.
In an exclusive interview with the Sun Online, the 26-year-old explained it made her consider joining the police, only to be warned off it by her mum.
She said: It started a really long time ago, I was 13-years-old and my dad was killed in a pub and it totally changed my life and my families life.
The sheer injustice we felt from that and the trial that followed made me feel like I had to do something so that other young kids didn’t have to go through that same experience because it was tough, it was really tough.
Then at age 16 totally by accidentally discovered politics and realised actually this is the way that I can get involved, really help make those changes to make peoples lives better to really shape my community and shape my country.
The seat in County Durham, voted 60 per cent leave, which Ms Davison claimed left Labour at odds with their own constituents.
She said: In this area, its no lie that people would never have voted Conservative, and Brexit has really changed that.
What Brexit has done is shown people who are the ones on the side of democracy, who are the ones who really want to get this done to make the best of it, make our country and crack on with it, and its the Conservatives.
Every day we are finding literally dozens of former Labour voters drifting over to us and the Conservatives.”
A former mining community, the region is now incredibly run down with closed store fronts all over the high street.
Twenty per cent of town centre business units are vacant, and the local A&E closed down last year.
Labour’s Helen Goodman won the seat in 2005 with the Tories coming in third, but has seen her vote share go down at every election since.
It’s schools are also struggling, with a Counden school losing 880 quid per pupil under the government, while Hamsterley Primary School has lost 2769.70 per pupil.
Now Ms Davison has pledged to save the area, break the red wall, then sweep up the north.
She said: People say this is some kind of iconic campaign because its a traditional Labour seat but it still feels like just a campaign.
“Really its endemic of how Labour have let this area down for so long that as Conservatives were in with a really good chance here.
I am trying to sell this vision of change and prove to them I’m a really hard working grafting lass and if you vote for me thats what you get.
Carrie Symonds has campaigned in the seat, with her dog Dilyn getting on famously with Ms Davison’s pup called Carter.
Ms Davison also explained the campaign was personal to her, as she hoped to inspire other people with her background to get involved in politics.
She said: I came from an area where people did not necessarily go onto greatness, and Ive ended up in position now, where a kid growing up in the wrong end of Sheffield is not supposed to end up in this position.
“I want every kid wherever they are from, whatever upbringing or hardships they’ve had to know they have got those opportunities to get on in life.”
