Breaking free from father’s shadow

There are several things that Stacey Knight plans to copy from her famous father as she steps on to the national political stage.

But one of the things she will not embrace is having anything handed to her because of her father, retired political heavyweight K.D. Knight, King’s Counsel.

That was the main reason she twice turned down requests from inside the People’s National Party (PNP) to take over his old constituency of St Catherine East Central, she told The Sunday Gleaner.

The old St Catherine East Central constituency has been reconfigured and renamed St Catherine North Central. The PNP’s Natalie Neita Garvey is the incumbent member of parliament (MP). The Jamaica Labour Party’s Alando Terrelonge is the MP for the current St Catherine East Central constituency.

Stacey Knight revealed that prior to the 2020 general election and early in the current campaign, Neita Garvey reached out to gauge “if I’m not ready yet” to take over her dad’s former constituency.

Both times the answer was no.

“My desire to serve is not to hang on my father’s coattails or to have a seat handed down [to me] as though a seat is something that people can bequeath,” she said during a Sunday Gleaner interview last Monday.

“I don’t have a connection there, [and] I don’t know the needs of the people there. I am walking in my father’s footsteps, but not in his shadow. What I have not done is to try to benefit solely because I’m his daughter.”

A handful of newcomers

Stacey Knight is among a handful of newcomers from political families who will contest the upcoming general election, which is constitutionally due in weeks.

She is the prospective PNP candidate for St Andrew North Eastern, where she is expected to go up against the Jamaica Labour Party incumbent, political heavyweight Delroy Chuck, who is also minister of justice.

K.D. Knight was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1989, serving multiple terms until his retirement in 2007, after which he served for a few more years in the Senate. During his time in the Jamaican legislature, he served as minister of national security, justice and foreign affairs at various points.

The question about whether Stacey Knight would follow her father into politics and law started from an “early enough age”, she recounted.

“I thought about it when people asked and at that time, the answer was ‘No, I’m not going to do that’.

“It was probably just a little intrinsic rebellion in me that I just don’t naturally follow the expected path,” she explained.

Stacey Knight developed a “real love” for teaching while attending university and helping adults who were enrolled at the Jamaica Movement for the Advancement of Literacy – later renamed the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning and now subsumed into the HEART/NSTA Trust.

She later earned a master’s degree in education and psychology and has lectured at three universities.

“That’s how I came to go into education and psychology. A knowledge and understanding of how people learn, that’s what I wanted to do and I got that from education and psychology,” she said.

Father’s legal and political career

But with a front-row seat to her father’s legal and political career, the pull towards both fields was too strong for her to resist.

Already a senior partner in the law firm co-founded by her father and now seeking to forge her own path in the political arena, Stacey Knight said she will be guided by a lot of the things she observed with her dad.

As an example, she said her father’s decision to serve his country through politics was not motivated by financial gains, noting that his name has never been associated with any political scandals.

She cited one instance when K.D. Knight turned down an offer to reside in one of the many government houses reserved for Cabinet ministers, though it would allow him to earn additional income from the rental of his home.

“He said, ‘Why? Is my house this! I live here and nutten no wrong with it’. So he stayed right there. That’s how I see my father operate. What I took from him is the commitment to excellence, integrity and the anti-corruption stance.”

The JLP has maintained a stranglehold on the constituency of St Andrew North Eastern for nearly 30 years.

And it was after the 2024 local government elections that Stacey Knight’s name got tossed into the ring, she recounted.

“I was speaking with some other Comrades and I said we really need to field a candidate next time that will spark the energy of the base and that the people will see that this is a viable candidate … and they looked at me and said, ‘Wha ‘bout you?’,” she told The Sunday Gleaner.

“When they said that, for the first time, I really felt like the yes was in my belly, and by the time I spoke to my dad that night, I was riled up and ready.”

She is undaunted by the JLP’s dominance in the constituency.

Chuck, the incumbent MP, continued that tradition in the 2020 general election, polling 5,200 votes to crush his PNP challenger by 1,984 votes.

Stacey Knight noted, however, that the more than 7,000 electors who voted in the last election represented 37 per cent of the over 20,743 people eligible to vote in the constituency.

“Of that 20,000, less than a quarter of them voted for the other party. So it’s not that a majority of people want that. A vast minority elected that member of parliament,” she said, making reference to Chuck.

Stacey Knight disclosed that the PNP offered her seats that were more winnable, but insisted that her loyalty is to the constituency where she was raised and the needs of the residents there.

“The easy path is not the right path. The right path is where you work for what you have. I have worked for what I have at every stage of my life.”

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com