By KENDRA SITTON | Uptown News

Like many white-collar professionals, City Council District 3 representative Chris Ward has spent the last month quickly adapting to a significantly different way of working. He has had to improvise, including sitting in his toddler’s nursery for a Zoom meeting. While he sometimes goes into the office and press conferences, his staff are working at home for now.

“It’s unprecedented for all of us, regardless of what our line of work is, because we’re all adapting to try to be effective at our jobs in a very, very different environment,” Ward said in a phone interview.

Working from home with his husband also working at home and two kids has been a herculean effort of scheduling. Since both Ward and his husband have multiple meetings per day while still working full time, Ward said being working parents would not be possible without his parents being a part of their extended family unit and providing childcare.

“We just map out every day. We try to make it as normal as possible for the kids and put on a positive face so that they are also having happy days under the circumstances,” Ward said. Ward gives credit to his kindergartener daughter for adapting to this new way of life even while she misses her classmates and going to the neighborhood park. They are working to maintain structure for her so she can expend energy and not fall behind on learning basic math and reading skills.

The remote meetings also provided new opportunities for Ward to spend more time with his kids. In the gaps between meetings, he has been able to play with his kids for 20 minutes because he is not out of the house for eight to 10 hours at a time.

Despite the city being in a state of emergency, Ward is not sure he is working more, just that the focus of that work has shifted. Instead of spending weeknights and weekends at community events — all of those have been canceled — Ward is primarily focused on the city’s response to the pandemic. That is shifting now as some of those meetings are being moved online. He was part of a Q & A livestream hosted by the East Village Association on Wednesday, April 15 and will be a part of another session hosted by San Diego Pride on Monday, April 20.

Some of the shifts in his workflow were anticipated before the pandemic began and even welcomed. After the March 3 primary, Ward was planning on spending less time with his campaign for Assembly District 78. He made it through the primary with 55.62% of the vote, a healthy lead over fellow Democrat Sarah Davis who won 27.69% of the vote.

“January, February required me to put a lot of attention into the campaign, obviously. I was very much looking forward to an election being over so I could better train my attention on those two priorities, my family and my job,” he said.

The current pandemic hasn’t changed Ward’s campaign priorities, only confirmed his belief that addressing climate change, homelessness, and housing affordability are essential. He is especially interested by how air pollution has improved while people are not driving to work.

“As we are rebuilding our economy and our jobs and our levels of employment, how do we do so in a way that maybe takes some positive lessons learned from distancing as we engage in the work environment so that maybe we can reduce trips? These are all good questions that will need to be addressed,” he said.

He has also prioritized housing while working at the city level, including working to pass the eviction moratorium.

“At least there would not be any immediate exercising of eviction, but rather some protections for people until we can figure out how to get our head back above water and how to move forward when this crisis is on the other side. The direct and indirect economic hits that we are going to have to our neighborhoods are not going to be anything short of devastating,” Ward said.

While the City Council, Mayor Faulconer and county officials have tried to partner together to address the crisis as much as possible, some conflicts have arisen. Ward first learned from the media that Mayor Faulconer was immediately furloughing many city workers in order to make up for budget shortfalls. Ward thought the decision was alarming and that labor processes should be respected even while officials are making difficult decisions. The mayor eventually backed off the furlough, and hundreds of nonessential city workers have been converted into doing essential work. Labor renegotiations were already ongoing ahead of contracts being up for many sectors on July 1, and Ward expects unions and other officials to all come back to the table to reevaluate what they will do going forward.

Another priority Ward hopes to address at the state-level once the pandemic is over is how the state can incentivize new job creation and help retrain workers for new careers.

“These are all lessons that I actually had a front seat leading on when I was working with the state legislature back in 2008,” Ward explained.

Before running for City Council, Ward worked extensively with Marty Block. After helping Block in his campaign, Ward was given “the opportunity of the lifetime” to serve as his chief-of-staff in the Assembly. The timing of Block being seated means Ward has first-hand knowledge about how a legislature addresses a recession.

When Block transitioned to the State Senate, Ward took a position in San Diego so he could grow his family. While in San Diego, members of the LGBT community and other community groups approached Ward asking him to consider a run to replace Todd Gloria on the City Council. Ward ended up winning the seat outright in the primary (a voting system that no longer exists).

In addition to his work during the Great Recession, Ward is well suited in another way to address this public health emergency: his medical background. Although he is not a former virologist perfectly prepared for this crisis, Ward does have a Bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University where he studied neuroscience with a pre-medical emphasis. He actually found San Diego while at a medical convention. He was drawn to the industries around UCSD as well as the LGBT community in Hillcrest. He put off medical school and eventually forewent it entirely after he moved to San Diego. Since he moved around often as a child because parents were in the Army, San Diego soon became his permanent home.

“I decided that I just didn’t have the fire in the belly for [medical school], although I still think sciences are very interesting. What I was really excited for was engaging with my neighborhood and my home community and LGBT services and something that was a little bit more social in nature,” Ward explained.

Ward began to spend his time helping candidates get elected, starting with Rep. Susan Davis’ election in 2000. Through that, he met Donna Fry, Todd Gloria and many other local political figures he knows to this day. In the middle of his foray into progressive politics, Ward decided he needed further education. He went on to earn a Master’s in Public Policy and Urban Planning at Harvard’s Kennedy School. From there, he became an environmental planner for a private firm until Block offered him a job in local government. If Ward is elected, he will be back in Sacramento to assist the people in District 78, coming full circle from his first job in politics.

“It’s been an honorable and thankful career so far. I thought really critically about [running for Assembly], especially with two young kids at home and a job that I liked a lot — being so directly close to communities and city services. At the time I made the decision, it really was because when I looked around knowing that this [seat] is central to directing a lot of San Diego regional resources and attention. I was really compelled internally to try to avail the most of my passion to be able to help the most people in San Diego,” Ward explained.

— Kendra Sitton can be reached at [email protected].