Khrystian King Makes Run For Mayor Of Worcester As 'City Is Changing'

WORCESTER, MA — Sitting inside a community center named after his parents in an affordable housing complex along Chandler Street, At-Large Councilor Khrystian King is bristling at the sight of a reporter's camera.

King, wearing a royal blue "Khrystian King For Mayor" T-shirt, felt too dressed down to have his picture taken. Minutes later, he's standing outside on the corner of Piedmont Street smiling for the camera.

Despite his attire dilemma, King has been preparing to be a mayoral contender since at least 2017, when rumors that he might run first appeared. He entered the 2023 mayoral race — in a quirk of Worcester elections, at-large council candidates are automatically entered into the mayoral race unless they withdraw — partly due to what he sees as increasing electoral success since he became a councilor in 2015. He came in sixth out of six places in the 2015 at-large race, fourth place in 2017, then third in 2019 and 2021.

On the issues, King says he's watching Worcester grow with major new developments downtown including luxury apartments and Polar Park — whose construction King voted for in 2018 — at the possible expense of leaving many residents behind.

He also has differences with Mayor Joseph Petty. King says the mayor has wasted time moving forward with important issues, like the multi-year effort to find a sex and health curriculum for the schools, and acquiring body cameras for police. The bodycams took about eight years, King said, and were absent when an officer shot and killed Phet Gouvonvong Jr. in April 2021.

"We can't afford business as usual," he says.

King first ran in 2013 for the state House seat now held by Dan Donahue. King, a social worker with the state Department of Children and Families, said he ran over issues like funding for the foster system and juvenile criminal justice reform. He finished third in the five-way Democratic primary.

King's parents both came to the U.S. from Bermuda. His father, Leon, owned the Tatassit Beach & Island Lodge in Shrewsbury, and his mother, was a social worker and hospice nurse. They donated the land at 126 Chandler St. where Worcester Common Ground recently finished building an affordable housing complex, and the King Community Center named after King's parents.

King decided to run for city council after attending his first meetings in 2015 when councilors were debating controversial resolutions in the wake of the killings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. He remembers being surprised at comments made that were "on the line" about Black people killed by police.

"There was no one reflective of the Black community," he recalls about the council back then.

When King won a seat that year as the first Black man elected to the council since the 1930s, he joined a body that has many of the same members it does today, including Petty.

After George Floyd's murder in 2020, King, as part of the group Black Families Together, led a large rally behind City Hall. It ended up being a watershed moment for police-community relations in Worcester.

After the rally ended, a small group of protesters continued marching down Main Street, leading to a violent confrontation with police that ended in more than a dozen arrests. Almost everyone arrested on that night had their charges dropped, and some are suing the city alleging police attacked and arrested bystanders, many of whom were Clark University students. The events of 2020 led to renewed talks about body cameras, and a reexamination of racism in a department that’s now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Months after the June protest, former city manager Ed Augustus proposed reforms, including the bodycams that King said he began advocating for back in 2015. When Worcester police officer Manny Familia drowned in 2021, King was one of three councilors along with Sarai Rivera and Sean Rose who were asked by Augustus at the request of Familia's family not to attend the officer's funeral. All three councilors said they respected the family’s wishes, but some in the city saw it as a rebuke of the councilors in favor of police reform.

The council saw a shift in tone after the 2021 election with the reelection of King and new councilors Etel Haxhiaj and Thu Nguyen. Political watchers — including Petty — saw a progressive turn in 2021 and the potential for more political power behind efforts like police reform and affordable housing. In 2021, the council passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance, making affordable housing a requirement for new developments, even if the version that passed was more conservative than what progressives on the council wanted.

That progressive turn could continue in 2023. King is part of a slate along with Nguyen, Haxhiaj and six other candidates touting progressive policies like affordable housing and focusing on initiatives in the new Green Worcester Plan. King is the most senior member of the group in terms of years on the council.

The slate, which also includes mayoral candidate Guillermo Creamer, is being backed by many local unions and the Worcester Working Families PAC, the antipode of the Progress Worcester PAC, which is being funded by some of the city's largest business groups, including the chamber of commerce. Progress Worcester has endorsed Petty and several other councilors. Former councilor Juan Gomez, whom King beat in 2015 by 76 votes, donated $250 to Progress Worcester.

Perhaps the most public split between Petty and King was the 2022 national search for a new city manager after Augustus stepped down.

The council voted in spring 2022 to let King lead the search through his chairmanship of the Municipal and Legislative Operations subcommittee. After about nine meetings over the spring and summer of 2022, Petty surprised many in the city when he announced on the Talk of the Commonwealth radio show he wanted to end the process and offer Batista the job. A majority of councilors soon joined him in calling for an end to the search.

Petty said the process was moving too slowly, was too costly and that Batista was the perfect candidate. King said he was on track to have an array of candidates by December 2022. Petty's run for Harriette Chandler's seat, which ended in a primary loss on Sept. 6, 2022, may have played a role. Petty's radio announcement on the search came exactly one week after his primary loss.

"The mayor decided he was done with municipal government," King said of those events in 2022. “He had one foot out the door, he still has one foot out the door.”

King says Batista would've almost certainly been the top candidate. But going through the search process would've been important for transparency, and to identify other potential candidates for whenever Batista decides to move on. As King said during council meetings, Batista never had to submit a resume to be considered for the job.

The council voted 8-3 to hire Batista on Nov. 15, 2022, with King, Haxhiaj and Nguyen the no-votes.

There are many tangible things King wants to tackle if he's elected mayor — more affordable housing, a youth green jobs program, diversifying the city and school workforces, tax relief for seniors, expanding the new police co-response program — but he says Worcester needs change at the top after six terms of Petty. The mayor in Worcester is both the chairman of the city council and the school committee, sets the tone for meetings and picks leaders for council committees. King says he'll bring a "critical analysis" to every issue before the council that he feels is missing now.

"The political pulse of this city is changing, and I think I'm part of that change," he said.

This part of a series of Worcester 2023 mayoral candidate profiles. Neither Colorio nor Coleman responded to interview requests. Read Guillermo Creamer's profile here, and Petty's profile here.