Editor's note: An information box accompanying this article has been changed to reflect the following correction, which will appear in Wednesday's print edition. Former Liberty County NAACP President Liston Singletary III is a candidate running for mayor of Hinesville. Because of an editor's error, his name was listed incorrectly in an information box accompanying a front-page article on June 24. The Coastal Courier regrets the error. 

Danny Eason, pastor of Crossroads Church and owner of Uncommon Grounds, is the latest to announce his bid to be Hinesville’s next mayor.

“We need leadership with vision and practical ideas to lead the way forward,” he said. “A leader with an ability to dream of the future and who can build a consensus and teamwork in order to organize that dream into completion.

“For that reason,” he said, “I’m announcing my candidacy for mayor of Hinesville.”

Eason was born in Savannah and raised in Gum Branch, but he considers himself a Hinesvillian. He was homeschooled through high school. At 19, he joined the U.S. Air Force and served for two years as an image analyst in Omaha, Nebraska.

After he left the military, he returned home to Hinesville to be with family and the city he loves.

He worked several jobs, “but at the age of 22, I took a position as pastor at Faith Baptist Church here in Hinesville. And I’ve pastored that church. We’ve now become Crossroads Church. Same church with a different name. And so I’ve done that for the past 10 years,” Eason said.

Eason, 32, recently became owner of the downtown staple Uncommon Grounds, a coffee shop that also sells sandwiches and baked goods.
“Most recently, Jenny and Drew (Cole), when they decided to sell Uncommon Grounds, approached me and asked if we would like to buy it. And we went from there,” he said.

Eason has been married to his wife, Jessie, for eight years.

“We have four daughters, so our hands do stay incredibly full with them,” he said.

With all his current responsibilities, Eason believes he is prepared to take on a campaign for mayor because he has prepared his business and church. He said his church is not built on the back of a pastor and that his role is part of larger church team. He has also trained his coffee-shop workers to be general managers.

 “My focus would be the office of mayor. That’s where I would turn my attention to knowing that the church and Uncommon Grounds are in good hands,” Eason said.

He said his five areas of focus as mayor would be economic development, community development, fiscal responsibility, student and youth services, and transparency.

Eason said that after talking with military families, he found that they would leave Hinesville on the weekends to spend their leisure time and money elsewhere. He wants to make sure businesses and other recreational activities are here to keep them around.

“What I’m invested in is understanding that these families, whether they are temporary or whether they are permanent, they call Hinesville home. And we need to work diligently to provide things for them to do here in Hinesville,” he said.

For community development, he wants to implement some of the lessons he has learned as a board member of his homeowners association to Hinesville by creating programs that invest in neighborhoods across the city.

Eason believes that elected officials are servants of the public and should be accountable for the fiscal responsibility of the city.

“My conversations with members of our community reveals a lack of trust, really, in the current city’s expenditures,” he said. “And I believe there needs to be greater community involvement in the financial aspects of our city. Avenues that encourage feedback without fear of reprisal, without fear of having a tarnished reputation because you question how money is spent.”

Eason cites his years of executive-level management as a pastor, HOA member and now as a business owner as his best qualifications to be mayor.

“I think my best qualification is that, though I am young, I have 10 years of executive decision-making, and so that’s probably the strongest thing that I have going for me,” he said.