Welcome back to season 3 of My Mayor, the Catalyst series that helps you get to know the person behind the policy. We sat down with each candidate and asked them each the same five questions, with a few follow up questions sprinkled in. For Episode 3, we asked:

  • What do you collect? 
  • What’s something you’ve changed your mind about because of a conversation with someone who disagreed with you? 
  • How do you express your creativity? 
  • What’s a small moment in your life that ended up having a much bigger impact than you ever expected? 
  • What’s something that never fails to make you smile?

JOE HAMILTON

We are back for episode three of “My Mayor,” and joining me is candidate Kevin Batdorf. Good to see you, sir.

KEVIN BATDORF

Well, thanks. I appreciate being here.

JOE HAMILTON

All right, so we’ve got five more questions to help the voters get to know you a little better. Question number one — what do you collect?

KEVIN BATDORF

This is kind of funny. I don’t collect anything today. When I was a younger man, I used to say I collected broken hearts, but I don’t do that anymore. I kind of like certain kinds of plants. About 20 years ago, I started taking a piece of plumeria — frangipani — from houses that I would have for sale, and then planting them, and at one point I had 40 different colors. But my yard’s not big enough to have a plantation of plumeria. But if I were to collect something — if I had a choice and a house big enough — I think I’d collect music boxes. I’ve always liked music boxes. We have, in our family, a music box from 1898. A Regina, and it’s beautiful. It’s a metal disc. That’s what the little music boxes are now, but this was a big machine. It’s just beautiful to sit there and listen to it. You can get lost in your thoughts.

JOE HAMILTON

What’s something you’ve changed your mind about because of a conversation with someone who disagreed with you?

KEVIN BATDORF

Oh, boy. When you’re growing up, when you’re learning how people are and how things work, you learn these lessons, and then you have to look back and figure out what was the turning point where I actually learned that. Who made a comment? There’s no real conversation, because the way I think is kind of different than most people. I think most people would like to think the way I do, which is I’m right down the middle. I’m a mediator. I can listen to both sides, and I can argue both sides of any point. So how do I come to conclusions? The facts weigh heavily, and then common sense. But I’ll never forget this one math professor I had in college. He had a really strong Southern drawl, and his English skills — he’s American, but he talked like he had marbles in his mouth, and his grammar was horrible. I mean, horrible. And I’m the kind of guy — I was a grammar whiz in sixth grade. It didn’t take me a long time to figure it out. And he told us this story one time of an English teacher telling him, “You know you can’t teach your students when you talk like that.” So he went to the teacher and said, “Tell me which was right” — trying to get a grammar answer out of her — “Two plus two is five, or two plus two are five?” And he said it with a strong Southern drawl, and of course the English teacher said, “Well, two plus two is five.” He said, “No, you’re wrong. Two plus two is four.” So, you can’t judge people based on how they talk or what they look like. And when I think about how I came to that process, I’ll never forget that story. I’ll never forget it because it’s hilarious. From that point forward, I didn’t care what his grammar was like. It made more sense. So did it change my mind about something? Maybe.

JOE HAMILTON

Sure. Okay. We espouse that thinking style on “The Catalyst,” in our posting guidelines — it’s called the steel man, right? If you can discuss the other side of an issue better than the people on that side of the issue, then that goes a long way toward earning respect. And in a world where people have very deep understandings of specific perspectives, I’d say modern journalism — and probably modern leadership — is being able to parse those perspectives, with respect for each of them. And ultimately, a decision is which of those perspectives leads to the most optimal outcome, notwithstanding the value of the other ones that don’t end up ultimately getting chosen.

KEVIN BATDORF

Exactly. But I can tell you this — my wife hates it. Sometimes she says, “Just take my side.”

JOE HAMILTON

Fair enough.

KEVIN BATDORF

Align with my perspective.

JOE HAMILTON

How do you express your creativity?

KEVIN BATDORF

There’s this game called “Minecraft.” I don’t know if a lot of people know the game. I had heard of the game, but a couple years ago my son said, “Hey, Dad, why don’t you play this with me?” And I’m like, “This is really dumb.” It’s so basic — the programming is so basic. But once you start learning the game, there are so many different ways to play it. And I do express myself in the game by building things that nobody else builds. I have a world right now — and I still do it, by the way. I have a world that has an old English castle that really slows down the internet when I’m playing, because it’s so huge. And I’ve put in 10 stories of storage underneath. If you know the game “Minecraft,” you know what I’m talking about. I’ve been able to use every aspect of the game and understand it, and there are still a couple things I need my 14-year-old’s help with. But yeah, that’s how I express myself, because there are so many different ways to do things in there.

JOE HAMILTON

Yeah. And I’m familiar with “Minecraft” and have built some things with my son as well. One thing that struck me — some of the worlds… I think together we watched a couple YouTube videos of some of these incredible worlds that have been built. They take many, many hours. They are beautiful expressions of thinking and creativity and engineering, all rolled into one. And then they ultimately stay — other than making a video — trapped inside of that world. It’s almost like they’re incredible creations all trapped inside this program. And I always thought, man, if you put this amount of time and creativity into building in the real world — which obviously has limitations, financial, time, and otherwise… How does it feel to express creativity in a way that it’s just you, just that world, kind of stuck there? Very, very few people relatively will see it, other than maybe your son and some people on the server — versus taking all of that and pushing it out into the broader world.

KEVIN BATDORF

So, I think the reason I am so deeply involved with that world is because I can focus on that world, and it kind of stops the outside noise. I’m usually listening to a story on my headset while I’m doing it, so there are two things going on at once. But it allows me to quiet all the millions of things going through my head at any given time. You ever lay in bed at night and your brain won’t shut off because you have thoughts about everything and anything? Well, that’s what “Minecraft” does for me. It shuts off the outside world so that I can focus, and then I become focused again when I’m done playing. So it kind of resets.

JOE HAMILTON

Nice. That makes sense. What’s a small moment in your life that ended up having a much bigger impact than you ever expected?

KEVIN BATDORF

So, there’s two of them. One I’ll just be brief with. When I first started selling real estate, I had this mentor who was a retired Air Force colonel, and I was a go-getter. I just did. I didn’t know everything there was to know about what I was supposed to be doing. And I’ll never forget this time. If you remember the movie “Top Gun,” where they buzzed the tower and their colonels were being chewed out by the admiral, and they’re standing outside the door — well, I was standing outside the door of my mentor’s office, and I could hear this other agent yelling at him. And then she comes out, storming out, gives me a dirty look, and then my mentor calls me into the office, closes the door, and said, “Well, that takes care of that mistake. You’ll never do that again.” And it was a mistake that I had done and shouldn’t have done, and I realized it in that moment. And then he looked at me and said, “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything.” And I thought he was going to chew me out. So that was a big moment for me, because I wanted to do things right, but I also wanted to be the best at whatever I was doing. At that point — and I was in my young 30s at the time — that was a big lesson. But the one that really changed my life was… I grew up in a single-parent household. My mother had some bad relationships that didn’t work out very well, and she started dating this one guy. I would think I was about 13, 14 years old, and I really liked this guy. He was the first guy that was nice to us as kids — and there’s four boys, my mother. And he sold real estate. He let me drive his car when I was 13 or 14 years old — let me get behind the wheel, we drove around the block. He was just cool and nice, and he asked my mother to marry him, and I was so happy that he did that. And then he died. And that changed my life. I knew then that I wanted to sell real estate. No matter what else I did, I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be that guy who was good to strangers. So yeah, that’s the moment that changed my life forever — when I was 13, 14 years old.

JOE HAMILTON

Makes sense. Beautiful story. What’s something that never fails to make you smile?

KEVIN BATDORF

Oh, that’s easy. Anytime my son does anything and succeeds at it, I can’t help but smile. He recently had an opportunity to speak in front of a crowd, and he’s just 14. So, standing there watching him and not cracking — he’s not cracking, he’s not shy, he’s not afraid to do pretty much anything. He’ll tell me, no, he’s not going to go do something. Okay. But anytime he does well, I just smile. You can’t help it. So that’s an easy question.

JOE HAMILTON

Nice. Wonderful.

KEVIN BATDORF

Well—

JOE HAMILTON

Yeah, thank you for sharing. Appreciate the time.

KEVIN BATDORF

Oh, thank you. That’s it?

JOE HAMILTON

Doing great — very efficient. We’ve got one more episode before the primaries, so enjoy the campaign trail until then, and we look forward to catching up again soon. Kevin Batdorf.

KEVIN BATDORF

Well, again, thank you for doing this. Yeah — it’s Kevin Batdorf for mayor. Go to the website. This is a great series. I enjoy doing this, and I enjoy watching the others as well.

JOE HAMILTON

Good. Well, that’s what we do it for.