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Introducing Jeremy Kidd: Meet the City Council candidate from Utah State University By
Leon D'souza
Jeremy Kidd is resourceful, innovative and inspired. A self-starter with an appetite for public policy, Kidd comes across as an energetic campaigner with a keen grasp of the issues. He communicates his vision with a passion, holding his audience captive with his glittering eye. Kidd is running for City Council seat number 5 in Tuesday's elections. And he's spending nothing on his campaign! "With the events of the last three weeks, it seemed awfully selfish for me to spend all that money to get myself elected when it could go to much better uses elsewhere," he said. Kidd is contributing all money raised by his campaign to the relief effort. Last Friday, Kidd spoke to the Hard News Café about his campaign strategy, the issues, the solutions, working with Jim Hansen, life in D.C, and a host of other topics. Find out what makes this guy tick. HNC: People want to know about Jeremy Kidd. Tell us about yourself. Well, I was born in Logan, and lived in Logan until I was three. My Dad was a math teacher at Logan High, but decided he couldn't raise a family on a teacher's salary, so we bounced around from place to place growing up, with my Dad getting any number of different jobs. About the only thing they had in common was that they were supervisory positions. We made it back to Cache Valley when I was in middle school, and then moved away for high school. I graduated from Hurricane High School, in Hurricane, Utah, and came back to Logan for my undergraduate work. I was originally an engineering major, but realized I was not cut out to be an engineering major, so I switched to Political Science and Economics after my mission. I graduated from Utah State in 1998, and began trying to fit into productive society. I worked at Fidelity Investments for six months, but hated talking on the phone for my job, so I quit, came back to Logan, and started getting ready to do a master's program. It ended up that I didn't get back to my graduate work until last year. I looked around at different Universities, and had some great offers. In the end, though, I chose Utah State because of the opportunities for teaching and research that I would have here. I could be any number of other places, but I don't regret my decision at all. I love it here. HNC: Have you had any previous political experience? I was working on a manufacturing line here in the valley, looking into graduate school, when I got a call from Rep. Jim Hansen's office. I had interned for him before, in the summer of 1997, and he offered me a job as his Legislative Assistant over Domestic social issues, like education, health care, and so on. I worked there for six months, and really enjoyed the experience, but it wasn't really good for me. Don't get me wrong. I loved being able to meet with different groups, and find ways to solve their problems. I got to work a lot with law enforcement, and we even got some funding for the Logan City Police Department, among other things. In the end, though, the partisanship that exists in Washington, D.C. was too much for me, and I decided I needed to get back to school. I have always wanted to be a university professor, not a politician, and realized that I needed to focus on what I really wanted to do with my live, which is teach. HNC: City Council work has a lot to do with politics, albeit at a local level. What prompted your decision to run? Well, like I said, politics is not something I want to do as a career, but I went to a number of City Council meetings, and one of the first things that I noticed is that the members of the Council seemed intent on ignoring the university. Specifically, when they were discussing parking issues, and the new regulations they put in place last year, no one mentioned the possibility of getting together with the university to find a solution. It amazed me. Slowly, I came to realize that there are any number of divisions in Logan, and the one between the City and the university was merely the largest. No one seemed interested in ending those divisions, and it seemed obvious that someone needed to get elected to the Council who was dedicated to ending those divisions. HNC: What, in your opinion, are the issues facing Logan today? The first is obviously the growth that Logan is going to face in the near future. With USU expected to grow to 36,000 students in the next 10-15 years, Logan is going to have some tremendous growth. Coping with that sort of growth is going to be difficult, no matter what, but it will be even more difficult if those in control are unwilling to work with the University to face those problems. Jobs are obviously needed in Logan. Not the type of jobs where you flip burgers or sell clothing, although those jobs are important to any town. However, for the growth we are going to see, we need jobs that can allow people to have a career, to raise a family, to buy a home, and so on. Logan has such a wealth of great people at the university, and many of them would love to stay in Logan, but there simply are not the jobs available that would allow them to stay. We need high paying financial and high-tech jobs. There are more than enough educated people in Logan to bring in businesses like that, but we need to aggressively pursue them. As I said before, Logan is also in desperate need of a new attitude, one of cooperation, rather than confrontation. For too long, the same types of people have been in charge of our city. They are good people, but they all come to the job with the same idea of what is going to work. In my opinion and experience, it is usually the ability to find new and unique solutions that really makes progress. One example is that students are simply dismissed by so many in this community, and yet students have so much to offer, if the City and university can sit down and find ways to get students involved. HNC: So how do you plan to address each of these issues? Have you got any great policy proposals up your sleeve? With growth, we need to address zoning issues, to allow for expansion of the downtown area, so that we can cut down on urban sprawl. One solution is to rezone downtown to allow for multiple uses of buildings, such as renting out the upstairs of existing buildings as residential properties. Such a solution could allow us to maintain the viability of downtown, while cutting down on the need for expansion to the west of town. Another issue, which we must address, is making sure that we maintain green spaces, such as the parks, which we already have, while we experience growth. New industries can be brought to Logan by selling our highly educated population to potential investors. High-tech and financial services companies, especially, love to locate to University towns, because of the vast, untapped educated labor force. As a town and a county, we have so much going for us in that regard, with one of the best research universities in the country. Finding new solutions to problems will be more difficult, because of the unwillingness of many in the community to accept change. Bringing together groups that have not worked well together in the past is a big priority for me. After school programs, where bilingual university students help bring small children from a variety of different cultures together to play, at an early age, is but one idea that I would love to try. HNC: How can the student community become more involved with the Council and its efforts? Students need to feel part of the community, but that is difficult when the community refuses, for the most part, to accept them. Students need to be better informed about issues involving them, such as zoning for residential neighborhoods, and any issue related to parking or landlord-tenant agreements. Once they know that such an issue is being considered, we should be packing the City Council meetings, so that they are forced to consider our ideas and concerns. That has not happened in the past, which is why ordinances detrimental to students continue to pass in this city. If I were elected, I would hope that the Statesman would allow me a weekly column, where I could let students know what is going on at the city level, and how they can let the community know that they are willing to play a part in the development of Logan. HNC: Compare yourself with your competition. What gives you the edge? My edge comes from both my experience and my willingness to look at problems from a new perspective. I have experience at the State and National level, and many of Logan's problems are going to require experience working with State and National agencies. In addition, as Logan grows, and its fame grows with the population, Logan needs to advance its image on a national level, and my experience in Washington, D.C. makes me the best candidate to fulfill that need. In addition, my experiences have given me the ability to look at ideas from any number of perspectives, and to find better ways of dealing with problems. I don't know that any of my opponents have had the experience in problem solving that I have had, working with Utah residents, as they attempt to deal with the intricacies of the federal government. HNC: How much are you spending on your campaign? How are you going about spreading the word? Well, I am actually spending nothing on my campaign. I had gotten set, just like my opponents, to spend thousands of dollars on this campaign. However, with the events of the last three weeks, it seemed awfully selfish for me to spend all that money to get myself elected when it could go to much better uses elsewhere. I decided to direct all my campaign contributors to give their money to the relief effort, whether it be the Red Cross, or any other group, and I am going to donate all of my own money that I was going to spend, to a scholarship fund that is being set up in memory of Brady Howell, a USU alum, who was killed at the Pentagon. I worked with his wife, Liz, and she and Brady were very good friends. In his memory, it seemed like the right thing to do. My campaign has been primarily done through newspaper articles like this one, as well as any number of my friends knocking doors for me. I greatly appreciate all of their help. They have been referring people to my website, www.travisdale.net/jeremykidd2001, which a friend of mine set up for me on his server, free of charge. I realize that it makes it even more difficult for me to win this race, but doing the right thing should always take precedence over politics. I had challenged my opponents to follow suit, but they have apparently declined to do so. HNC: Something you would like everyone to know . . . I would like to express my hope that students and faculty alike will be willing to make their voices heard on Tuesday. The USU community has been silent in this Valley for too long. They hear our dollars helping the economy, but at the same time, they ignore our needs and concerns. They will continue to ignore us, so long as we neglect our duty to vote. I guess it is like the quote you love, Leon, from Mahatma Gandhi, that: "A small group of determined spirits, with an unquenchable thirst for their mission, can alter the course of history." We are more than a small group, but we can certainly change the course of the history of this valley, if we will take our position in this community seriously, and vote.
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