-Meet Senator Malone

Meet Senator Shawn Michael Malone

By: Amaziah A. G.

Senator Shawn Michael Malone’s first career choice was not politics; he wanted to be a stock broker because he always thought America had an exciting stock market.

“I loved economics; never ever thought I would be a senator today,” he stated. But fate intervened. “I declined the position of a stock broker because my grandmother passed away in 2001.” After he received his Bachelors of Arts degree in political science at Hampton University in Virginia, “My mother told me to come home and that money wasn’t everything because the V.I. needed help.

“I began working with the first lady [under the Farrelly administration]. I worked for Donna Christiansen and was elected for the Board of Elections and later senator. And I don’t regret my career change.”

A St. Thomas native, he is the fifth child of six children born to Roy Milton Malone and Pauline Monell-Francis Williams. As a youth he was involved in a number of activities and community service programs. Most of his community service was done in the church. Malone graduated from Saints Peter & Paul in 1986. He liked just about every subject in high school and was a high honors student in math, chemistry, Spanish, and English; he especially loved biology, spelling, and reading. He was a part of the concert band and loved music.

Music is still important to him. He boasted, “I am pretty much known for making Quelbe the official music of the V.I. This one is special because it was a formal bill signing ceremony that celebrated this accomplishment. I was able to awaken the people of the V.I. I was so impressed with the reaction to the bill becoming law. It made people proud to be Virgin Islanders.” He said this was the highest point of his career.

He then moved onto a more negative issue: the territory has the second highest homicide rate per capita in the world. Sen. Malone seemed very disappointed as he said, “That is embarrassing, to be rated number two in the world. It is amazing that the V.I. was the first jurisdiction to have Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday. We were ahead of the nation.”

After putting that to rest, he then touched on the environment and the health of the people living around the landfill in the Bovoni area. He said one thing the government is aiming to do is to clean up the environment and improve the air quality and living conditions of residents in the surrounding area. He chuckled as he said, “This should be all cleaned up by the time I become governor.”

He is currently considering running for the gubernatorial position one day. Many supporters have also been encouraging him to seek the position of the delegate to Congress. He then jumped onto a related topic and said, “I don’t support what just happened to the U.S. delegates.” He was addressing the fact that the Republicans [in the House of Representatives] stripped U.S. Delegates in the territories of their voting privileges. And he seemed positive that they did it because most of them were Democrats.

Malone seemed very disappointed in the elected officials in the territory. Without mentioning any names, he said that V.I. elected officials take things personally when someone disagrees. He was very disappointed in the way things were being done, but seemed confident and optimistic about the future or the Virgin Islands. Maybe this was because he sees himself in a higher position making things happen.

He then offered some words of wisdom for future teens aspiring to be politicians. “People who are interested in politics should be people who are genuinely interested in lives and affairs of others, not in status, power, greed.

“Politics is meant to help people --or as many people who want to be helped--improve their quality of life. And so it is a major commitment that one can make because it requires you to put a whole lot of people before you. You have to have a genuine love for other people, compassion and sacrifice. That’s what the V.I. .needs.”