Inside a cabinet in the Lujan family dining room, a tattered, yellowed piece of paper tells a story.

The slender sheet is brittle because it's more than 100 years old -- a ballot from the 1911 election for a judgeship in Santa Fe before New Mexico was a state. One of the contenders is the great-great-grandfather of Elizabeth "Dolly" Lujan, a candidate for City Council in this year's city election.

That family history, she says, is one of the reasons she wants to run for office, too.

The dining room of the Galisteo Street home is her campaign headquarters, serving as office space for both Lujan and her daughter Tara Lujan, who is making a bid in the June primary election for Santa Fe County clerk.

The wooden table there also has served as a base of operations for Dolly Lujan's previous campaign, a failed attempt to win a Santa Fe County Commission seat in 2006. Her son Eric Lujan ran unsuccessfully for City Council with the family's support in another election.

Dolly Lujan is not always at ease in front of a crowd, talking about policy. At a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters last month, she looked toward the ceiling and closed her eyes with concentration on the first question.

"I don't do very well at forums," she told the audience. She added later, "I don't like to talk about myself at all."

While other candidates hurried to squeeze in as many thoughts as they could in the allotted time, Lujan was visibly relieved to see a volunteer flash her a sign to wrap up her response.

Lujan, 62, who speaks in the soft, comforting voice of a career nurse, said in an interview that she sometimes feels weak next to the other candidates in her race, but will keep at her campaign anyway.

She was hesitant to predict the election's outcome. "It is a tossup," she said. "We all have something to contribute to the race."

The daughter of an Irish father and a Hispanic mother, Lujan said she can bring diversity that the City Council needs, and the cross-cultural bridge-building she thinks it sometimes lacks.

She goes out on a limb with ideas about new policies for the local government to consider. For example, she wants city and county governments to merge and buy the privately run Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.

Lujan spent 44 years working at the hospital. She has a lot to say about the transition of the hospital from a nonprofit based in the community to becoming part of a chain owned by a corporation.

She was fired from her job at the hospital in December 2010 and is going through arbitration for what she says were violations of her union rights. She works as a nurse at a clinic and for a private agency. Her skills from her work, she said, will help her serve on the governing body because she knows how to listen and act.

She prides herself on being outspoken when it comes to labor issues. "If something was not right," she said, "I made it right."

Lujan was formerly president of the union representing nurses and other hospital employees, and she traveled to Washington, D.C., to help improve her labor-relations skills.

She is the only candidate in the District 2 race not accepting cash from the city's new public-campaign finance system. Lujan's biggest contribution to date is from the state political committee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

That labor union represents the largest group of Santa Fe city employees, and local AFSCME officials have been critical of incumbent councilors regarding budget decisions, including a work-reduction furlough that took money from their paychecks during a period of lean tax revenues in 2009.

"They need to understand unions and have a respect for them," she said of the City Council. "They are not. I understand that the city manager is not being very fair."

She said she believes the city could save money by helping to settle union agreements at the grievance level before they reach arbitration.

Last year, for example, the city attorney and city manager spent several days in an arbitration case raised by police officers who said they were wrongfully terminated. An arbitrator reversed most of the city administration's decisions in the matter.

As a lifelong resident, Lujan has accumulated many memories of Santa Fe. She remembers when Claude's Bar was on Canyon Road along with a half-dozen family stores. She's heard stories from her family about old-school politics and remembers a man who drove a black Cadillac to pick up voters and take them to the polling places on Election Day.

She doesn't like the pressure of political events like hourslong candidate forums. What she likes about campaigning, she said, is knocking on doors of her neighbors, many whom have told her they would like more police patrols.

"A lot of them, they just want to talk," she said. "They want to talk about the issues, or they want to talk about what is going on. And that is important to me, and that is why I am running."

Elizabeth "Dolly" Lujan

Age: 64

Education: Nursing degree from Northern New Mexico Community College.

Occupation: Nurse.

Experience: Worked at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center for more than 40 years; now works at Southwestern Ear, Nose and Throat and for a nursing agency; served on Santa Fe County Health Board; former president of District No. 1199 Hospital Employees and Nurses Union; finished third of three candidates in 2008 County Commission race.

Personal: Lifelong Santa Fe resident; married to Tobias Lujan; three adult children, seven grandchildren; daughter Tara Lujan is running for Santa Fe County clerk; son Eric Lujan has run unsuccessfully for City Council.

Campaign info: Privately financed campaign with a $1,000 contribution from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and $150 from other nurses; dlujan@msn.com.