State Sen. Art Haywood is running for re-election in Pennsylvania’s 4th State Senate District against Democratic primary challenger Michael Cogbill.

The 69-year-old politician has not seen a primary challenger since he first ran for state Senate in 2014.

A staple of local politics, Haywood is active in organizing both locally and at the state level, working to flip the state Senate and as an activist who holds protest vigils outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Philadelphia.

Every Monday for the last seven months, Haywood has held a vigil outside the ICE office with a group of residents, mostly from Northwest Philadelphia.

The 4th State Senate District represents most of Northwest Philadelphia and parts of Montgomery County.

“Leadership matters, and I have been able to use my position to create leadership, and as a result, some change,” Haywood told the Local. “My core message for my campaign is ‘dignity for all,’ and the reason we have that is there are so many [ways in which dignity has] been challenged, the identity of brutality, low pay, discrimination.”

“The first way I saw it was that people working 40 hours a week, making $8 an hour, that’s saying to them, they have no worth,” he added. “In particular, we’re just a few miles away from downtown Camden, where the minimum wage is $15. So what does that say to people about what their value is? Working hard and still in poverty? So that’s one of the core reasons we are focused on the dignity agenda.”

Haywood is running on his experience, progressive values, and ability to lead “when,” not if, the Democrats take the state Senate, he says.

“The voters deserve a candidate who is running for something greater than to hold public office,” Haywood said.

Background

Haywood grew up in Toledo, Ohio, raised by his mother. After graduating from high school, he earned several degrees before making his way to Philadelphia in 1985, where his sister lived.

“We had a big emphasis on education and work in my family. Got a scholarship to Morehouse College, and then London School of Economics, and then Michigan Law School,” Haywood said. “I’ve been a lawyer for over 20 some years, and then my wife and I volunteered for the Barack Obama campaign. He won. I said, ‘Something good can happen in politics,’ and decided to run for township commissioner in Cheltenham Township, and won as the first African American township commissioner.”

Haywood met his wife while working as an intern for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

He looked at first to move his family to Cheltenham for better access to education, but was faced with racial discrimination.

“I went to a Realtor in Glenside, went to the office, and the first thing said to me was, ‘The unemployment office is upstairs,’” Haywood said.

After being shown some houses at the Realtor’s office, Haywood said he never heard back from them in his attempts to buy a house.

“We sent some testers out there, people who pretend to be your profile, but are white or black. They sent these white testers out there, and they were shown houses. So it’s like there it is, [the white testers] were shown houses, but we weren’t. So we filed a lawsuit,” Haywood said. “It was in 1994 when we were the victims of discrimination. But then three years later, we moved into Cheltenham. … What’s crazy is this same community where the Realtor tried to kick me out, I became a township commissioner.

“It’s just testimony to the people, even though you may have a Realtor who’s trying to keep you out, it doesn’t mean that the whole community is trying to keep you out … It was an interesting transition.”

In 2014, Haywood ran against Democratic incumbent LeAnna Washington and won his current position.

Policy

Haywood’s primary focus since President Donald Trump took office has been “trying to stop the ICE brutality.”

“We’ve had it for seven months. ... Neighbors are terrorized, afraid to leave their homes, some afraid to go to school, and so the ICE brutality has multi-dimensions. Certainly, the terror is on all Americans who could be threatened by a police force that has no accountability,” Haywood said. “We would need to flip the Senate in order to get legislation to have further restrictions on ICE. It was accomplished in Montgomery County with a Democratic majority. Restrictions on ICE were accomplished in Philadelphia with the Democratic majority. And it would take the Democratic majority to do the same” at the state level.

With Republicans controlling the state Senate, Haywood says he’s used the vigils as a way to bring attention to the issues and raise opposition. He thinks that Democrats can take the Senate this year, with a handful of races around Pennsylvania.

If that happened, Haywood said he would use the opportunity to push for “raising minimum wage to at least $15 an hour as a priority. Number two, we get paid family leave. So the individuals have paid family leave throughout the Commonwealth. The third thing, in terms of my priority, would be that we adopt renewable energy incentives. Our current incentives were in 2004. ... We need to renew them so that electric companies are required to buy more solar and more wind.”

Haywood also supports progressive tax reform, such as the Pennsylvania Policy Center’s Fair Share Tax Plan, which seeks to ease the tax burden on working- and middle-class families and draw a higher tax percentage from passive business, profits, capital gains, dividends, royalties, and estates.

With Cogbill and Haywood sharing many of the same beliefs on policy, Cogbill highlighted his youth as a selling point. In response, Haywood pointed to his experience and leadership.

“We’re going to need someone who’s bold, and there’s not another elected official leading ICE vigils, doing that kind of activism … It’s not really job training, it’s more leadership. And I would say this. We have delivered a lot for this community, and that’s going to be difficult to be quickly or easily replaced,” Haywood said.

On his health, he said, “I feel good, I’m 69, we walked two miles yesterday for Mother’s Day. I go to the gym three times a week. I feel fine.”

The winner of the primary will likely face Republican Todd Johnson in the General election.

This story was updated on May 13 to correct the line about Todd Johnson.