New Pennsylvania state Sen. Arthur Haywood III heard a lot about education growing up in Toledo with a mother who was a teacher, then later an activist.
Now it’s a subject he plans to champion as a newly minted state senator representing parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County.
Mr. Haywood, 57, a lawyer, was sworn in last week in Harrisburg.
Among his closest supporters, he said, were his mother, Virginia Haywood-Smith, and sister, Leslie Henriquez, both of Toledo.
“I really appreciate all the support I got from folks in Toledo during the campaign. I got a lot of encouragement from folks on Facebook,” he said, adding that he also raised some money for his campaign in Toledo.
“I really got into more involvement in public affairs as a parent with three children. It was very important to me that my children had a good education. I saw there were more systemic issues that needed to be addressed, including funding of the schools,” he said.
Mr. Haywood said he was inspired to run for office after helping Barack Obama get elected president in 2008. His first office was Cheltenham Township, Pa., commissioner, on a seven-person board where he served five years, including two as the president.
As a trustee, his record included establishing a bus loop; preventing real estate tax increases; adopting an anti-discrimination ordinance; securing funds for a study of flooding by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and speeding up repairs and replacement of sewer lines, according to his biography.
Last year he won the Democratic primary for state Senate District 4 against an incumbent who was indicted for misuse of her state office for campaign purposes. He won the general election in November with 81 percent of the vote.
Supporter Mark Schwartz, executive director of Regional Housing Legal Services where Mr. Haywood was a staff attorney, said the district is lucky to have Mr. Haywood. He said the issues he heard Mr. Haywood emphasize include obtaining a higher percentage of the state budget for education, reducing gun violence, and raising the state minimum wage.
“He’ll make a wonderful state senator, he’ll change the culture of the office, he’s very responsive, he’s very smart. He has all the attributes you’d want in a successful state senator,” Mr. Schwartz said.
He added that Mr. Haywood is practical and will find ways to work with the Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature. Governor-elect Tom Wolf is a Democrat.
His mother, Mrs. Haywood-Smith, is a retired Toledo Public Schools teacher who was active on behalf of black students during the 1990s with the organization Toledoans United for Social Action. She ran unsuccessfully in 1997 for the Toledo Board of Education as an independent.
He attended the former Ryder Elementary School, McTigue Junior High School, and Rogers High School, where he co-captained the basketball team before graduating from high school in 1975.
As a boy he delivered The Blade, and during summers in college he worked for the city of Toledo under the late Wayman Palmer, city director of community development.
Mr. Haywood graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta and received his law degree from the University of Michigan. He studied for a year on a Marshall Scholarship to the London School of Economics.
Ms. Henriquez said her brother was involved in student government and attended Buckeye Boys State in high school. She said he was influenced by an emphasis on education in their West Toledo Secor Gardens home and by their pastor, the late Rev. Albert Reed, who was a community activist.
“It was the times we grew up in. We were growing up in the civil rights movement. There was a lot of talk about furthering your education after high school,” Ms. Henriquez said.
After law school, Mr. Haywood wanted to work for a firm representing indigent clients and he chose to move to Philadelphia in 1985 in part because his older sister had lived there and he liked it. He started with Community Legal Services, working on saving homes from foreclosure, then focused on developing affordable housing at Regional Housing Legal Services. He went into private practice in 1996.
Mr. Haywood married Julie Billingslea in 1989, and they have three children, Arthur, 24, Olivia, 22, and Alexandra, 21. Mr. Haywood says they moved from Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood into Cheltenham for the better schools, and faced some housing discrimination that reinforced his determination to ensure a quality education and fair housing for everyone. Mrs. Haywood now serves on the Cheltenham Township school board.
He said a real estate office put off showing him houses in a mostly white neighborhood in 1994.
A local fair housing office sent in testers and found white house hunters were shown homes immediately while black clients were not. The Haywoods sued and won a settlement.
“We need to focus on how we can best help each other, like educating all the children. That’s a common agenda. We just can’t do that alone,” Mr. Haywood said. “Public education is big for me because that’s really the path of opportunity.”
He’s not thinking about any runs for higher office, he said.
“I didn’t see myself running for this two years ago. Who knows what’ll going to happen in the future, but it’s not like it’s on the agenda,” he said. “If I can be effective in this position I’ll be happy.”
-Tom Troy
First Published January 19, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
