In 2020, Kenneth Vincent was able to decide for the first time where he wanted to move, after years of working in the military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He knew Annapolis, and helping the Naval Academy’s water polo team was where he wanted to land.
Now Vincent, who will be 68 on election day, wants to bring his mentorship skills to the City Council and bring new perspectives to the current all-Democrat Annapolis City Council.
“[The] number-one thing I work toward is common sense cooperation,” Vincent said. “I would bring up ideas but realize that other people have ideas as well.”
Vincent, a Republican, is running against incumbent Democrat Ward 2 Alderman Karma O’Neill, an event planner, in the Nov. 4 election.
Vincent grew up in New Jersey and went to college at Lehigh University, he said. After college, Vincent said, he served in the Air Force for four years, worked with the Navy as an engineer and then became an FBI agent. He retired for the first time from the FBI in 2008, spent a few years as a high school teacher in Pennsylvania before returning to the FBI as a special investigator. He finally left for good around 2023.
At the FBI, Vincent said he worked on multiple public corruption cases related to city governments of other jurisdictions. Working these cases, he said, gave him respect for people who work in local government and allowed him to look into the inner workings of city politics.
He said he started to assist the U.S. Naval Academy’s men’s water polo team around 2010, which is when he first started paying attention to Annapolis local politics. Vincent moved from the D.C. beltway area to Annapolis in 2020 — the first time in his life he has been able to choose where he wanted to live. Previously, he said, he was told by the government or the military where his next home would be.
The now-candidate considered running for city office in the 2021 election, he said, but was unable to due to the federal Hatch Act, which bars some federal employees from running for partisan positions. While he is running as a Republican, he said he voted as unaffiliated for most of his voting history.
Vincent, in 2021, became an assistant coach for the Naval Academy’s water polo team, and he said he also occasionally does consulting work related to security. He volunteers at a local food bank, he said.
The candidate’s top policy priorities, he said, are improving public safety, making the city more affordable and helping the city government run more smoothly.
He said he wants to help bring the police department up to full staff and wants to ensure that the community is engaged with its law enforcement. The city police department had 10 vacancies last year.
On affordability, Vincent says he supports a 2% cap on assessment rate increases for property taxes, decreased city spending on unnecessary projects (one example he gave was additions on the City Dock Resiliency Project unrelated to flood control), the elimination of parking fines at any garage in the city, and a reduction in the cost of street parking in downtown.
“It just tells people not to come downtown,” Vincent said about the current parking fees. “That hurts our businesses and hurts our residents that want to support those businesses.”
To make permitting run more efficiently, Vincent is proposing that members of the city staff be designated as permit navigators to help business and property owners perfect their proposals.
When asked about her competitor, O’Neill emphasized that she’s been living in the city, since 1995, and her connections to Annapolis organizations.
Edward Talbot, who has known Vincent for about five years and who lives in the ward, said that the candidate’s leadership experience as a federal agent and with the Naval Academy directly correlates to the leadership skills he would bring to the City Council.
“We see things slow down constantly, for the sake of politics, but you’re not going to get that from Ken,” Talbot said. “If community members bring a problem or a concern to him, he’s going to assess the overall landscape of who the audience is, what the problem is, and then formulate a plan and take action. It’s that simple. That’s how his brain’s going to work.”
The current alderman salary is about $18,500. The current City Council is considering raising alderman salaries to $32,000, starting for the next council. Vincent’s campaign has raised $2,031 as of Sept. 7.
Have a news tip? Contact Katharine Wilson at kwilson@baltsun.com.
Annapolis candidates
The Capital Gazette will be profiling candidates for mayor and City Council in the coming weeks. Go to capitalgazette.com for more candidate profiles and to view a voters’ guide.
