Sunday Interview with Walker Garrett: ‘To me, City Council was the next step forward in service’

Walker Garrett is the newest, and by far the youngest, member of the Columbus Council.

A political newcomer, he cruised to victory in two elections held on May 24. One election was to fill out the rest of the late Red McDaniels’ term, and the other was to determine who would serve the next term.

Garrett, an attorney, beat electrical contractor Jonathan Davis. He sat down with reporter Alva James-Johnson and talked about his background, the election and vision for the city.

Here are excerpts from the interview, with the content and order of the questions edited slightly for length and clarity.

Q: Tell us about your childhood here in Columbus.

A: It was great. I grew up in a neighborhood, kind of the same area my entire life. It started off in Mohina Woods. I had a neighborhood group of friends. We rode bikes to each other’s houses. It was a really great way to grow up. I moved right up the street, right across the street from Hardaway (High School), where I live now, and just had kind of the idyllic childhood that you could imagine. We called our group of friends the “Rat Pack.”

I went to Clubview Elementary School starting out, and then I went to St. Anne-Pacelli (Catholic School), and stayed in touch. I had a lot of good friends who were really good to me, and a lot of great influences.

Q: Tell me about your parents. What did they do for a living?

A: My mom was a teacher. Once I was born, she stayed at home to raise me; but she kept on teaching. Believe me, I owe a lot to her staying on me and making sure I did my homework the right way and worked hard. My dad is an investment adviser with Morgan Stanley. He manages stocks for folks.

Q: A lot of young people, when they leave Columbus, they don’t necessarily come back. Why was it that you decided to return and settle here?

A: It was never an option for me to go anywhere else, to be honest. I’ve always been of the mindset that I’m going to make this place as good as I can. The main reason for that is my family has been here since the early days of Columbus. When you have a reputation, and your family’s got a reputation, particularly if it’s a good one, you can’t buy that. It takes years and years and decades to earn that kind of reputation. I grew up here, and I had good parents who raised me right, and I try to do right by people.

Q: Who were your role models at that time?

A: Actually, my parents. My brother was a big influence; folks from church; Jimmy Elder, who’s my pastor at First Baptist; Sunday school teachers. I had a lot of major influences: Lamar Beck, Judge Doug Pullen, who were Sunday school teachers at First Baptist; Bill Turner, who was a Sunday school teacher at St. Luke. I went over there for Sunday school with him, and it had a huge, profound impact on me as far as volunteering in the community because I read his book about servant leadership, and that was a big emphasis in his Sunday school class.

Q: When did you decide that you wanted to be a lawyer?

A: Honestly?... I worked at Columbus Bank and Trust and Synovous every summer. I really enjoyed that. ... That was always the expectation. ... But I also liked the law and I had always done extemporaneous speaking. ... Fortunately, I did make the decision to go to law school because nobody got hired for a few years after I got out of college because we ended up with the economic collapse in 2007. So it was a smart decision.

Q: What made you decide to run for Columbus Council?

A: I’ve been involved in the community since I was a little kid serving — from doing different charities and that kind of thing. To me, City Council was the next step forward in service. ... I just got off the phone with somebody who had an issue with feral cats. ... It’s being a public servant.

... The time was right. I didn’t want to run against Red McDaniel. He had (given) years, decades of service to our community. That wasn’t something I was interested in, but when he passed away the opportunity presented itself. The seat became open. I prayed about it a lot and felt compelled to serve the community. Believe me, the past few weeks, it’s a lot of service. It’s a lot of fun, though.

Q: Red McDaniel, he was quite a legend in the community. Did you know him personally?

A: I did. I didn’t know him real well. He went to my church, though, First Baptist. I usher every Sunday, so I always saw him walking in. I talked to his wife a lot before I ran. One of the things that I’m trying to make sure I take care of ... apparently he always said that one of the goals for City Council is to make sure there are less potholes at the end of your term than there were at the beginning. That’s certainly one of the main things the constituents care about. Roads are something that people see every day. There may be feral cats. There may be crime. There may be economic issues. But potholes are a big issue, particularly in my district. I’ve already had calls about them. We got one repaired so far. That was good.

... (Red McDaniel) was very responsive. That’s something that I knew from seeing and talking to him briefly at church. But also everybody in the community talked about how responsive he was. He was somebody that would get things done. They knew they could pick up the phone and call him and he took care of things, whether it was saving an oak tree that had been there for 150 years, or it was fixing the potholes that were plaguing the community.

Q. Is it intimidating having such big shoes to fill?

A: It’s definitely a challenge, but it means it’s a good benchmark. ... I am going to try and be the most responsive council member I can be. ... My cell phone number is listed on the website.

Q: How do people generally react to your age when they see you?

A: There were some folks in the community that said I was running too soon, that it was jumping into things too early. But I’ve been involved with community service since I’ve been back in Columbus. I did the same thing when I was in college, you know, served and was in leadership roles in my fraternity, and the student government and whatnot. I don’t think age should ever be a hindrance to somebody as long as they’re mature and they’re responsible, and they want to serve, because you want to have the most diversity you can in our leadership. And right now we’ve got a lot more diversity, and that’s a good thing. Age certainly is something that has to be taken into account because we want young professionals to move back to Columbus.

... Red McDaniel was about my age when he got elected. A lot of the best folks that have gone on council, they got elected very young. And I think it’s benefited the community.

Q: There are other young people who have been trying to win elections here in Columbus that have not been as successful. What’s your advice to them?

A: Keep running. Mine was an open seat. I don’t think you can use that as the benchmark, because my opponent was also young, and we were both political newcomers. There’s no telling what would have happened if I had run against an incumbent.

I did work really hard. You’ve got to put in the man hours. You have to go door-to-door. It’s an unfortunate reality that raising money is integral to any campaign these days. Advertising is necessary. You’ve got to build up that network. You don’t want to be discouraged from running, but you also want to make sure you’re ready and that you have the network in place, because you’re going to have to have volunteers. Your employers have to be on board. ...

Q: You mentioned several times community involvement. Can you say specifically some of the things that you did before running for Council in terms of community involvement?

A: I started as a volunteer with the Literacy Alliance reading to pre-K kids ... and then they asked me to be on their board. I just finished my second term as board chairman. I’m really passionate about the organization. That’s the type of thing I think is good to get involved in because I read at Fox (Elementary School), which is in my district, and it’s a Title I school. It’s one of the schools that needs help in particular, and we read to the students that really need the most one-on-one attention. We give that to them, and you see tremendous results.

Something else that really helped me has been Rotary, introducing me to a lot of the movers and shakers in the community, and the people who really care and want to volunteer and give back. That’s actually how I got involved with Literacy Alliance. We do a ton of different volunteer activities.

Rotary and Young Professionals have been a very big deal for me. I was the chairman of the governmental affairs committee for two terms. What was neat about that is I brought in speakers from both political parties, folks who are independent, like professors and things like that, and we did debates on both sides of issues because I want people to focus on the issues, not political parties. ...What that allowed me to do, it diversified my own political opinions, branching out and seeing the positives of both political ideologies and in the middle. It also introduced me to folks from a broad political spectrum, which is very positive. I think that’s going to be a big benefit for me with City Council, having friends and colleagues that I’ve made through the governmental affairs committee, because I think it’s important for us to advocate for the city on the state level too.

Q: You’re a busy guy. How are you going to be able to handle the City Council with all the other things that you’re already doing?

A: Well, the Literacy Alliance, I’ve had to step down because they needed some funding from the Crime Prevention grant. There was a conflict there. So at least I get one thing off my plate. The Trade Center Board, which I served on — I didn’t talk about that, but I really enjoy that. It helped me with the big picture of budgeting and seeing how the city interacts. I can’t be on that now. So, I at least have two boards that I can’t serve on.

... A lot of it is time management, making the most of my time. If you look over here, I’ve got my dumbbells back here. It’s getting to the point where I’m having to be on speaker phone and doing weights and trying to exercise and doing like air squats and all of this while I’m on the phone, because you have to maintain your health. ... You just have to multitask, fit things in when you can. I try not to let myself get overwhelmed.

Q: You were in a unique situation where you actually won two elections in one night. That’s very interesting. What was that like?

A: It made counting the ballots really hard when you’re going up and counting the ticker tape and you’re on there twice, and other people are behind you. I think somebody from the Ledger was actually over there. They were trying to count. I was trying to count two different elections. ... It was scary, though, because I was worried maybe people would get confused and they’ll think I shouldn’t vote for him but once. Fortunately, in every forum, whenever I went door-to-door, and when I did my mailers, I was very clear: “I’m going to be on the ballot twice, check twice,” and I really got that out to the voters.

Q: Then you were sworn in just days after, right?

A: That’s right, and I had a meeting that week. It was a week after the election.

Q: What was it like going into your first City Council meeting that quickly?

A: It was scary. I was nervous. I got a little worried that I had some sort of health condition because my hands started shaking when I was doing the oath. ... It’s one of those things. It doesn’t matter how many times I speak in public or I go before court, it’s always nerve-racking. Just knowing it’s your first meeting, I was so excited. Fortunately, though, I had been going to the budget review meetings, I’d been trying to stay up to date. ... But it’s a lot of information to absorb. Some of the other councilors told me it takes a year or two before you really get your feet wet and you realize everything that’s going on, and there are a lot of different parts. It was definitely exciting, very exciting.

Q: Early on you had to vote on the mayor’s budget, or the cuts to the budget, and the Aquatic Center was a major issue. You voted for the cuts. Is that correct?

A: That’s right. I don’t know if I would say it was a cut so much. There was a proposal to increase fees on after school programs by $2, which doesn’t seem like a lot. But particularly in my district there are poor areas where folks may not have a car to drive to the Aquatic Center, and it may not be an option for them. An after school program, typically, they’re going to be neighborhood-centric, or they’re going to be where you can walk to them.

... The Aquatic Center is very nice. But that was my first major vote, where I voted no, and it was just because I made a promise to my constituents that I would focus on their needs before votes. And to me the biggest impact we’re going to have on crime is if we keep our youth out of trouble and give them a safe place to go. ... We may have to raise the after-school fees to keep up with inflation in the future, but right now I wasn’t going to do it for the Aquatic Center. I just couldn’t in good conscience do that.

Q: Do you think it was a mistake for the city to build the Aquatic Center without having the funds to fully fund it?

A: I definitely think we have to evaluate every major investment the city makes to see how much it’s going to cost to maintain. Hindsight is 20/20, and I don’t think it’s fair for me to make a judgment on that when I wasn’t part of that decision.

Q: What are your views about the current mayor?

A: I think she’s been involved in a lot of great things in this city. We’ve seen downtown move forward a lot. We’re not always going to agree on everything, but she also respects that. ... I’m looking forward to working with her.

Q: What are the big issues that the city faces?

A: ...We’ve got to address violence. That’s something that happens in the home with families, and our schools. It’s not all on our law enforcement, because there is a definite issue we’ve got to address with our youth. That’s where a lot of our crimes are occurring. How we address part of that will involve making sure that we’ve got good jobs here so that folks can afford to live ... without having to work multiple jobs, where they’re not home with their children.

Poverty is always going to be an issue. It’s one of those things that we can only do so much (about), but that’s definitely linked to the crime in this city. We also have to empower our parents — make sure that we give everybody the educational resources to succeed. Things like the Literacy Alliance are helping with that, but we can always do more.

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 8:35 PM with the headline "Sunday Interview with Walker Garrett: ‘To me, City Council was the next step forward in service’."