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 unveil the interviews with two of Hyattsville’s five Ward Five candidates, namely Sophie Gorman Oriani and Kurt Brintzenhofe.
Unfortunately, Ward Five candidates Daniel Amador and Patricia Page did not respond to requests for interviews before Monday morning, when the first of Route 1 Reporter’s candidate interviews published. The fifth candidate, Rommel Sandino, was unavailable before these interviews published due to a death in the family. Route 1 Reporter endeavors to speak with each before the election.
Route 1 Reporter’s interview with Gorman Oriani is below.
In these interviews, each candidate was asked 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 Sophie Gorman-Oriani, one of five candidates running in Ward Five. In all, Hyattsville has 20 candidates running for five ward seats and the mayor’s office. This interview and others are intended to be a broad introduction to their campaigns and their approach to local government policy and policy making. Let’s begin, Sophie, how are you doing this morning?
Gorman Oriani:
I’m great. How are you doing?
New Speaker:
I’m doing all right. First question here. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do and how did you come to live in Hyattsville?
Gorman Oriani:
So I actually moved to Hyattsville when I was in college. My family moved here and I was living at home. So I came along for the ride. Um, and after that, after I graduated college and got married, my husband and I lived in Gaithersburg for a year, but we really found that we missed, well, I missed the Hyattsville community and he thought it sounded like a great place to live from my description of it. So we moved back here a year after getting married and we’ve been living here ever since. We’ve lived in ward five our whole time in Hyattsville. We rented at first and then we bought as soon as we had the opportunity to. I work as a preschool teacher. I teach in the Montessori toddler room at St. Jerome and I also write as an associate editor for the Hyattsville Life and Times.
Theis:
Okay. Then second question. Why are you running for Hyattsville city council,
Gorman Oriani:
Hyattsville city council for a number of reasons? One of them is that I really love living in ward five. I think Ward Five is kind of an overlooked treasure that Hyattsville has to offer. I think a lot of times the focus, especially from the outside world is on Wards One and Two, which, not that there’s anything wrong with Wards One or Two, but I think people overlook some of the other awards. And I think it’s really important to have people on city council who are really passionate about those words specifically, rather than liking Hyattsville as a whole and happening to live in those words. I’m also running because there’s a chance that there may be no women on city council. And that would, to me be a real shame, if the Hyattsville City Council had no women on. It’s important to me that my children see a city that they see that they live in a city where everyone is represented including women. Um, and so that was part of what motivated me to run this time around.
Theis:
Cause this is your second time running for Hyattsville city council. You get a brief addendum to this question. What has changed between your first run and your last run in terms of motivations or needs you see in the community?
Gorman Oriani:
I think in many ways, this, there hasn’t been a whole lot that has changed, except that, some of the things that were sort of more in the distant future two years ago are now a little bit more pressing. Like there’s a lot more issues. It seems to me of development in West Hyattsville that has been coming up more and more often, like what kind of community do we – I mean – what kind of community services and things like that do we want to bring in there? Are they actually good for residents of ward five and residents of the city as a whole things like that is the main shift, more traffic concerns. I mean, the pandemic has obviously changed things, but I don’t know that that’s super Ward Five specific, except insofar as of course the pandemic has revealed equity issues. Almost. I mean really on a national and even global level.
Theis:
Yes. And ward five has data highest majority of minority if I recall. Okay then third question: What is the most pressing issue facing Hyattsville right now and what policies would you pursue to address it?
Gorman Oriani:
I mean, I think right now the most pressing issue facing Hyattsville has got to be this pandemic that we’re all living in. And I think many of the things that Hyattsville is already doing are really, really, actually very excellent ways to address this. I mean, the food distributions; It’s amazing that they had managed to get a testing site set up and then which is also going to be an explanation site. So I think in terms of pandemic response, it’s more about continuing the excellent work that they’re already doing rather than shifting course there. I think as we see more vaccine rollout and there will be – there’s a real space for the city to be working towards equitable vaccine distribution. Prince George’s County as a whole is lagging behind other counties in the state of Maryland. So I think insofar as Hyattsville can help to put pressure on state leaders to give Prince George’s County more vaccines, doing things like our local high-school vaccine clinic, I mean, vaccination site to help get those shots to people who can’t necessarily, you know, spend six hours refreshing a web page and then drive 90 minutes.
Gorman Oriani:
I mean, I have a friend who lives in Hyattsville who signed up for vaccine in Ocean City, and a lot of people just don’t have the resources to take, you know, an entire day off work to drive out to ocean city, get a shot, come back and then do it again three weeks later. I think as much as possible, making it easy for people who don’t necessarily have a whole lot of resources or time off work, childcare for their children and things like that as much as possible to make it easy for those people to access the resources that are available is going to be really important going forward, especially as we start getting more and more back to normal.
Theis:
Okay. Fourth question what’s a unique skill or you would bring to this job if elected.
Gorman Oriani:
You know, I think one of the things that’s really unique about me is that I have had a lot of experience living in a lot of different places. I am – I’ve lived in Canada and I’ve also lived in Europe. I’ve lived you know, in a really tiny towns. I’ve lived in cities. And I think so that gives me a real openness to the idea that there’s not only one right way to do things. There are different ways to make things work. And it’s really a matter of finding what is the best thing for the community that you’re living in, rather than taking the community and forcing it into some sort of pre-determined notion of what the right way to do this. I’m also a woman and I’m a mom. I have three children. And I think that gives me a perspective, which is different from many of the people who are on or running for city council as well.
Theis:
Okay. Fifth question, as I noted in the introduction, there are five candidates running for city council in ward five, which means there is a big mathematical chance that the winner could receive less than half of the votes cast. If you were to win this election, how, if at all, would it change your approach to policymaking if most of the voters in your ward did not vote for you?
Gorman Oriani:
Well, I think that the really important thing for a council member to do is to listen to the constituents. So if, you know, I mean, I think you’re right, that whoever is elected in ward five probably will get less than half of the vote. And I think for whoever that is, it’s really important that they then go out and they go to everybody in the community, not just to the people who voted for them and they say, you know, okay, so what didn’t you like? What don’t you agree with? Because it may be that in fact you – the majority of people in the ward disagree with you. And I think in situations like that, if your job is to represent your constituents, that you have a real responsibility to go find out what it is that they actually want. And then actually take their concerns to city council rather than yours.
Theis:
Okay. Last question this morning: Many of the hot button issues in our national political discourse are at our heart local issues. And I’m talking about such things as policing, education policy, or debates over renaming landmarks and parks. How do you identify politically in a national context – such as democratic, Republican, progressive conservative, or any other term under the sun – and how do those values inform the policies you would pursue here in Hyattsville?
Gorman Oriani:
I’ve considered myself an independent. I don’t actually really identify with any particular political party because I haven’t yet found one that I agree with on enough things. I think it’s really important that as you say, given that these things are really local issues to try to address them at a local level whenever possible. But I think then there’s also obviously situations in which you need to address things at a higher level. I mean, it’s not like the city of Hyattsville can run around fixing the problem of, you know, the state of health insurance in this country. It’s not like that can be addressed on the city level. So it seems to me that the important thing to do is for the city to work hard to fix the issues that it can fix on a city level. Things like you know, the food distribution is a good example of a way that the city can help on a local level. But then also advocate towards people at a higher level to address things that the city can’t address. And I think that’s one of the things that, you know, the City Council does is to write letters to the relative – I mean –relevant people to advocate for policies to help Hyattsville and Hyattsville.
Gorman Oriani:
Does that answer the question? I think I might, may have missed a part of the question.
Theis:
No, I think, I think you spoke to it quite well. Well, Sophie, at this point I don’t have any further questions. I would like to thank you for taking the time to speak with me and, and the people watching along here on Route 1 Reporter, to those watching along at home, thank you very much. And on May 11th, get out there and vote. If you live in Hyattsville, that is. Have a good day, everyone.