Hyattsville Election ’21: Interview with Kevin Ward, mayoral candidate

Hyattsville’s 2021 election season is here, and with 20 candidates running for five ward seats and the mayor’s office, it may be the biggest election the city has ever seen. All week long, Route 1 Reporter will be introducing you to as many of the candidates as possible in a series of video interviews. Over the past week, Route1Reporter has interviewed 15 of the 20 candidates running. Today, we start to unveil these interviews, focusing on the race for the mayor’s office, which has three candidates competing for votes in incumbent interim Mayor and Ward 1 City Councilor Kevin Ward, Ward 4 City Councilor Joseph Solomon, and city politics newcomer Austin Martinez. One of those three will secure enough votes to serve out the last two years of the term of former Mayor Candace Hollingsworth, who resigned last year. 

Route 1 Reporter’s interview with Ward is below. 

In these interviews, each candidate was asked the same six questions. The questions were not shared with the candidates beforehand. The questions are also fairly broad, providing candidates an opportunity to introduce themselves and describe their approach to local government policymaking. 

Hyattsville’s election season concludes May 11, 2021. 

Theis:

Hello. My name is Michael Theis editor and publisher of Route1Reporter.com. I’m here today with interim Mayor/Ward 1 city councilor Kevin Ward. Kevin is running to fill out the last two years of the term of former mayor, Candice Hollingsworth, who resigned late last year. And this year city elections, Hyattsville has 20 candidates running for five ward seats and the mayor’s office. This interview and others with city council candidates are intended to be a broad introduction to their candidacies and their approach to local government policy and policymaking. Let’s be get a Mayor Ward. How are you doing this morning?

Ward:

I’m doing well. Thank you. How are you?

Theis:

I’m doing all right. I’ll just dive right in first question. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do and how did you come to live in Hyattsville?

Ward:

Sure, absolutely. I’ll start with how I came to live in Hyattsville because people are probably more interested in that than what I do. We moved to Hyattsville in early 2014 after buying a home here and looking for over eight years as our family grew, we’d adopted one son and continued to live in Washington DC. Then we adopted a second son and decided we wanted more space and more of a neighborhood feel. So after having looked in Hyattsville for the better part of the eight years, we’d lived in the area. By that time we decided to move to arts district Hyattsville or someone, some talk about it, the eye development.

Theis:

Okay.

Ward:

And what do I do? Right? That was the next question. I work as a consultant in educational technology and human services technology. So K through 12 technology platforms and equipment, as well as human services, which is foster care adoption and family preservation services. I’ve been doing that since we adopted our second son, I left the private sector and decided to lend my talents, so to speak to that arena because they definitely need technologists and I helped write comprehensive legislation for that arena and designed and implemented the first comprehensive child welfare information system reform in Maryland.

Theis:

Okay. Second question. Why are you running for mayor this year?

Ward:

One of the reasons I’m running for mayor is I really want to keep up the good work and the steam that we had. It was, it was a little heartbreaking, but understandable. Why Mayor Hollingsworth resigned. She is doing some great things and sometimes it’s just hard to juggle things when you need to. And I really felt like I had the time to do it and I felt the time was right. You know, things don’t come along when they’re convenient, they come along when they should. And I really feel like I have more to give to Hyattsville. I feel like I have a tenor of leadership that is comprehensive and inclusive, and I work very hard to make sure that things that are brought to the dais whether they are mine or someone else’s have as much support as possible so that we are bringing to the people, things that are cooked, things that are ready and things that we can talk brass tacks about.

Theis:

Okay. Third question. What is the most pressing issue facing Hyattsville right now? And what policies would you pursue to address it?

Ward:

You know, I, I find that question rather interesting. And the reason I find it interesting is it really depends on where you live and where you are in your life. If you are a senior citizen who is in your home, it may be aging in place. And what supports the city can provide for you in doing that. If you’re young and new to the city, and you’re interested in multimodal transportation, it may be bike lanes and how we control traffic going throughout the city. If you’re a young family or a family of a student in school, it may be how the city can support schools. And if you are someone who has a keen interest, as many of us do right now in public safety, it may be how we continue to move forward with next generation policing and 21st century policing initiative. All those things are really important. I don’t know that there’s one single thing that is comprehensively important to all the citizens of Hyattsville, but, you know, the government is built to walk and chew gum. So we should be able to address all of them in comprehensive ways that really affect the lives of people here in Hyattsville.

Theis:

Okay. A fourth question. What is a unique skill or perspective you would bring to the job of mayor?

Ward:

I don’t know that there’s anything Unique about it necessarily because I’m just as human as everybody else in the city. I don’t believe in necessarily the politics of I can do this, or I will do this. I think we went through that for the last four years with a president who thought that, and we saw how that ended up. What I do believe though, is I bring a concept and a lifelong following of team, being a team player, being a team leader, being a team participant and understanding that there are various places you need to sit when you are trying to make decisions. And sometimes that’s in the leadership seat and sometimes that’s on the player seat and that’s okay. All of those things are okay. And there are 11 of us on the dais who all have the same amount of time and effort that we can bring things to bear. And I really believe that it takes all of us to put those things together and really bring forth the best solutions in the city. So I don’t have any unique, great skills. I mean, I’ve run large organizations, I’ve owned large organizations and worked for large organizations and run large departments within them. And so for me, it’s really about bringing all of those skills that got me to where I am and applying them to the city.

Theis:

Okay. The fifth question, almost all of the city council races this year are competitive. Why should people vote for you?

Ward:

Um, I believe people should vote for me because I believe politics is a performance job. And over the past six years, being on council, I’ve worked ardently to support the residents of Ward One. And in many ways helped people. In other words, when they’ve given me a call or needed a solution to a problem in ward one, those are reasons that I believe that people should look at me as a candidate. Not because I’ve done a ton of things that have made a difference throughout the state or the nation, but because I’m here for Hyattsville and that’s, what’s important to me, you know, we’ve all heard of the adage that all politics is local, and that’s really what people feel first when they talk about the problems that they have and things of that nature. So I am, hyper-focused on making sure any constituent that calls me, gets some sort of resolution, or sometimes I have to call and say, you know, we just haven’t figured that out yet.

Ward:

And that’s okay, but I continue to follow up with them. I get numerous constituent calls every day from people who want a solution or who want something addressed, or in many cases, just want someone to talk to about what they believe is a problem. And there are circumstances where I have to say, you know, that’s the county’s issue or that state highway or that’s this, but that doesn’t mean I’m not advocating for them to either give us some self determination on that issue, drive towards a solution, and then come back to that resident and say, okay, here’s what I found out. Anyone who’s called me knows that I always call back and say, this is what I found out. This is how we can move forward. Those things are important. I’m not one to sort of throw something over the fence and say, hey, staff take care of this. I always ask the staff, what can we do? Because we are a team. What can we do to get this solved for either this resident, this business, or this person who was passing through the city who had an issue?

Theis:

Okay. And my last question this morning many hot button issues in our national political discourse are at their heart local issues, such as policing education, policy, or debates over renaming landmarks and parks. How do you identify politically in a national context, such as democratic, Republican, socialist, libertarian, progressive, or conservative, or any other term under the sun, and how do those values inform the policies you would pursue here in Hyattsville?

Ward:

Sure, absolutely. Thank you for that question, by the way. I am a Democrat and a registered Democrat. I’ve been a registered Democrat for as long as I can remember. And for me, the democratic ideals of equality, one man, or woman or person, one vote, the ideas that any child should be able to succeed, regardless of where they live in the city, what block they live on or what part of the city they live in or whatever income status their parents may be in. I grew up in a situation where my family did not have a lot of money. We lived in public public housing and were transient in a lot of different ways, but it never stopped my mother from partnering with the schools. And in many cases, cases partnering with the city. We lived in to make sure that I was getting the best education.

Ward:

In many ways I think we’ve moved away from that in order to give, for lack of better words, immediate solutions. I believe that hard problems have hard answers to come up with and they aren’t necessarily knee jerk and quick. And I believe in durable solutions, something that lasts for the longterm, whether that’s affordable, housing, education, renaming, a landmark, all of these things need to be done in a way where people are really thinking about it rather than reacting to it, including police reform. You know, there are a lot of different approaches to it, and I think everyone needs a seat at that table with the approach in coming up with the approach, excuse me, not necessarily one that’s accusatory and one that’s you answer to me, but one that’s, how do we work together? So that we’re all a little bit uncomfortable at this table, but we’re all coming to a solution that protects our citizens, families, and ourselves in situations wherein public safety officers need to do their work.

Theis:

Excellent. Well, Mayor Ward, at this point, I don’t have any further questions I’d like to thank you for very much for taking the time to speak with me this morning and to the audience out there at route one reporter, thank you for watching along get out there and vote.

Ward:

All right. Thank you, Michael. You have a great day.

Theis:

You too.