Sunday(ish) Read: A short lived political career

How a campaign for mayor landed me in a war

Fred Wellman

May 22, 2023

No

I am often asked if I plan to run for elected office?

No.

I hope you enjoyed this Sunday(ish) Read.

Wait, there’s more

As always there is more to the story. I did run for office once, and it went completely awry in the most on-brand of ways possible: we had a war.

The story begins in the bucolic suburb of Peachtree City, Georgia, southwest of Atlanta in the winter of 2001. I had left the Regular Army in May of 2000 to start a civilian career and at the same time transitioned to the U.S. Army Reserves at Fort McPherson as an augmentee staff officer to the Forces Command headquarters.

Peachtree City is a fascinating little town. It’s famous for its over 80 miles of golf cart paths that wind around the city so that most people own them as alternative vehicles. At the time it was in the top ten most affluent towns in the United States and had been growing steadily since its founding as a planned community in the early 70’s. It took off when Delta Airlines closed their pilot base in Los Angeles and moved it to Atlanta, with many of them relocating to the growing town with easy access to the airport.

We had moved there from Hawaii in 1998 and found a place we could call home. My then wife took a job with Delta as a Flight Attendant, and I found myself hungry for life beyond the uniform after 10 years of peacetime and a run of poor assignments. I settled into a job as a project management consultant but still hungered to be part of something bigger than the day-to-day mundane commuter life.

My interest in city politics began with a boarded-up McDonalds and trailers behind my daughter’s new high school. The McDonalds on a main artery closed and simply sat vacant for months looking like a blight. There was nothing the city could do as there were no blight regulations on the books. In our schools, a long string of bickering and infighting between the school board and city council meant they would order a new school and the city government would continue authorizing new construction. Five years later when the doors finally opened, the school was already too small.

I took to the local newspaper’s opinion page to express my frustration at the shortsightedness of it all and inability of the local government councils to figure out ways to put the citizens first and stop their stupid fighting. I was sick of seeing them pursue their own agendas and not place the real needs of average citizens first.

Oddly, that still sounds familiar.

A chance arises

Shortly before the 2001 municipal election one city council member decided to resign his position early, leaving the remaining council members to select someone to fulfill the remainder of his term. A number of people who had read my posts in the newspaper encouraged me to run. It was a long shot from the moon as the people selecting me would be the people I had been pretty much browbeating for two months.

Once again, those fateful words popped up: How hard can it be?

A special city council meeting was called and 15 of us showed up to make our case. I was the 5^th or 6^th speaker and the looks on their faces were priceless. Sort of a mix of “you’ve got to be f’ing kidding” to “oh, I’ve been dying to see this guy faceplant.” I had just a few minutes to make my case.

I did.

I said I was sure they knew who I was and that they were dumbfounded to see me. Then I walked through the journey that got me to that podium. Service in uniform for 14 years. Combat. Kids in their schools. Barely making ends meet to live in such an affluent city. Their bickering and infighting undermining any good they could accomplish. The quiet desperation of those who weren’t millionaires in our city.

I got a steady round of applause from the audience. The council voted and I made it to the final five candidates.

In that round they could question us. It was a wide swath of questions. The big issue in our town was incoming big box retail. I was asked what I would have done about the highly controversial Walmart that was being built on the edge of our affluent town? I told them that the Georgia Constitution made it clear Walmart could build there. The average person in our town wasn’t actually rich and would welcome cheap underwear. Finally, I was an actual fiscal conservative and that meant I could not accept spending millions of taxpayer money to fight the largest retailer in America only to lose. I don’t like performative politics.

They voted using a ranked choice slate with four points to the top candidate and down the list. I lost the selection by a single point to the former city comptroller as they headed into the budget season. I was disappointed but not shocked. But my shock came back when I was greeted by a gauntlet of new supporters. The current mayor, whom I had been beating so publicly cornered me outside city hall and told me he wanted me to run to replace him at the end of his term.

I did not see that coming.

Let’s run for mayor

I met with him the next week and he walked me through why he thought I should run. The position is non-partisan in Georgia but there were clear fault lines. A local activist who centered his entire existence around defending his property value, regularly being published in the local paper, and speaking at city council meetings was the likely front runner, had already announced a run, and would have a lot of grassroots support.

The five living mayors and business community were nervous. While I was also a bomb thrower in my own right, it was based on what was good for everyone in the city, focused on building coalitions, and moving us into a new phase of growth. On top of that my background as a veteran and Delta Airlines family member would offer a counter to his very opaque personal and professional life in a city where half the citizens were one or the other, if not both.

No photo description available. — The last remaining campaign t-shirt. Design is my passion!

I decided to give it a shot. After all, how hard can it be? I launched my campaign in the most small-town way. I went and visited the editor of the local paper in his office and discussed the issues we faced and what someone like me would do to fix it. He asked, “why don’t you run for mayor?”

“I am. That’s why I am here. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

He was dumbfounded. “Can I print that?” I laughed and told him he better, otherwise I just wasted the whole morning kissing his ass. We took a picture, and it was the front page of the weekly newspaper the next day.

We came out of the gate strong, but I had no idea what I was doing. I was fortunate to get support from a new friend on the city council and a couple of experienced political hands in town. Our first big event was the huge July 4^th parade in town. Thousands turn out for it. So, we loaded the kids in wagons, our golf cart, and minivan with 60 pounds of candy and custom frisbees that I tossed all along the way in 95-degree heat. It was a joyous day.

My opponent had his group walk in white shirts and ties. I am not kidding. Then he went negative immediately. They labeled me “wishy-washy-Wellman” because of my insistence on a positive message and desire to build coalitions. It was really funny. Sure, an Army Ranger and combat veteran is definitely a guy who doesn’t like a fight.

I saw a pattern. They would write a negative OpEd and then skip a week so I could reply and acknowledge them. I would get it. My campaign manager would have my wife hide the paper from me then I would dutifully write something that completely ignored them and laid out my plans. It made them insane. I had done my homework and seen they had done this to previous candidates. I wasn’t taking the bait.

We built steadily through the summer and were getting ready with all the signatures for ballot qualification. The week dawned when I would take them down on Thursday and be an official candidate on the ballot.

On Tuesday the world stopped turning. September 11^th was a sunny day in Georgia. I dropped my youngest kids off at pre-school was heading home when I turned on the radio and heard the DJ’s yelling as they watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

Everything had changed

I was a member of the FORSCOM Augmentation Unit. A Reserve outfit made up of mostly officers who would fill in gaps at the headquarters that controlled the training, manning, and equipping of all U.S. based Army units. It was manned at 85% strength, and we handled the rest when needed. Weekend drills were mostly doing Army administrative training and having dinners. I was not enjoying it and planned to fully resign my commission in the coming months.

But on September 11^th I remained in the Army. With the mayoral campaign and my work, I was yet to do my two-week annual drill as I had planned to push it to the very end of September after ballot qualifying. Anyone in the Reserves knows when there is an emergency mobilization the first people they call are the ones that haven’t done their AT yet. I knew I was on the list, but I was fine with it.

I had sat there watching it all unfold and my then wife, Crystal, asked me if I thought there would be a war now? I said yes. She replied that if I wanted to go fight it, she and the kids would support me. So, I called my Executive Officer and told him I was available if they needed me. I was mobilized the next day and never took off the uniform again for another 8 years, including three tours in Iraq and a completely new direction and career.

Attending a 9/11 Memorial ceremony with my then wife and kids a week after 9/11

Thus ended my fledgling political career. An incredible guy, Gary Rower, jumped into the race that week but with only a month and a half until the election he never had a chance to build a campaign to take on our opponent who won handily and promptly enacted a campaign of stupidity like putting a moratorium on new business licenses to “review all of the regulations.” That decision tanked growth for years. He would end up losing four years later in a landslide.

Many years later my name popped up in my Google Alerts in the comments of the paper. Someone who said he was my opponents’ campaign manager mentioned he always wondered what would have happened if I had stayed in the race? “Wellman probably doesn’t even know he was up 70-30 when he dropped out.”

No. Wellman did not know that.

But my new direction was the right one. I served my country. I went to Harvard for graduate school. I saw epic historic events unfold. Everything worked out, and I have no desire to look back with regret.

There you have it

When I returned to Missouri a lot of folks straight up asked me if I was doing the now-routine process of coming back to your hometown after the military just to run for Congress. I always laugh. No, I came back for a very tall, beautiful, smart, and successful woman that just happened to live where I grew up.

But I am here to help, so let’s get to work. Almost two years later I continue to do what I can to change the direction of Missouri because I live here and nothing else. You should do the same in your hometown.

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