Edwards put her busy schedule on pause to chat with the Suite’s Cassie Chew. Here’s a glimpse of their conversation.
By Cassie M. Chew
After 15 years, Prince George's County residents have a new representative in Congress. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) began serving the state’s fourth congressional district last month. Edwards' path to the seat began several election cycles ago when she, a community activist who never held public office, began talking to her neighbors about the kind of representation county residents were seeking in Congress.
Based on their responses, Edwards, in 2006, challenged incumbent Albert Wynn for the seat. She lost that first challenge and returned to campaign the next primary with redoubled efforts.
Donna Edwards / press photo
That second time was the charm for Edwards. In February, Edwards, with 60 percent of the vote, secured the Democratic nomination for Maryland's fourth district and began preparing to face Republican candidate Peter James in the general election in November.
At the end of May, Wynn announced that he would resign before the end of the term. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley called a special election. Edwards ran again and with 80 percent of the vote, was elected in mid-June to serve out the remainder of Wynn's term while she campaigns for election to a full term this fall.
Edwards recently sat down with the Suite to help Prince Georgians get to know their new Congresswoman.
PGS: What is your connection to Maryland and Prince George's County?
Edwards: My parents moved to the area when I was a senior in high school. My dad had kidney disease and he was very sick. At the time there were not a lot of places you could go and routinely get dialysis. When we were in New Mexico he would go away once every week to San Antonio because he could get dialysis there. That was just becoming too much. We needed to move some place where he could be treated, so we moved here to the Washington D.C. area.
I graduated from Thomas Stone High School down in Charles County. Then I went away to undergraduate school at Wake Forest University. After that I settled here--first in Silver Spring and then I moved to Prince George's County, down in Fort Washington.
PGS: Your father was in the Air Force, so, you grew up everywhere. What places have you traveled?
Edwards: I was born in North Carolina and didn't really live there any time. My dad, when I was four, had an overseas duty assignment and then we moved to Washington D.C. He was stationed at Andrews [Air Force Base]. Then he did a long stint in Saudi Arabia where he was away for almost two years. When he finished that, we moved away to Ohio and California. We went to the Philippians and Japan and a lot of South East Asian places in between and then came back stateside to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
PGS: You also traveled frequently while growing up, in your former position for the Arca Foundation and in other endeavors. What perspective has all that travel given you?
Edwards: I believe that when you can engage with people across these artificial nation boundaries that it changes your perspective about the world about how it works. Beliefs that you might hold about a different culture or people don't bear reality when you visit a place and get to know people that are different from you.
I did my last semester of my senior year at the University of Salamanca in Spain. I lived in this flat with some other young women who were not Americans. They were Spanish girls and they taught us about Spain in a very different kind of way which was very special. I really valued that and I decided that I would blow off my college graduation because I wanted to stay in Spain. I traveled throughout Europe and spent time in Portugal and the south of Spain and northern Africa and that experience has been so incredibly valuable.
I know everybody can't travel all over the place. I was with a group of young girls this morning and I told them that when I was growing up--these were some middle school students at Marshall Middle School--and I told them when I was growing up I was a reader. I mean you could not take a book out of my hand. In fact, I would have one book in the kitchen. I'd keep another book in my parent's car and I keep another one in my bedroom because I had to have a book every place that I went and that is almost the truth today.
--PGS Staff
|
