NEWS
4 | August 27, 2014 | Milton Herald | northfulton.com
Lockwood reveals homespun take on politics Milton’s only mayor keeps politics simple By HATCHER HURD hatcher@northfulton.com MILTON, Ga. – Call him the Teflon Mayor. After eight years as mayor of Milton, Joe Lockwood has remained popular with the voters. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone to say a bad thing about him. He has managed to polish his hometown-boy image and gee-whiz, Huckleberry Finn persona while guiding Milton through its early years of transition from rural clusters of subdivisions into a city that still clings to its rustic charm despite being just under 8 miles from Ga. 400. At the Aug. 11 Rotary Club of Milton weekly luncheon, Lockwood gave the Rotarians his insider’s look at politics in his fair city. “Why did I run for mayor? Well for a long time, people called me the unofficial mayor of Alpharetta because my office was across the street from Alpharetta City Hall. But I ran for mayor of Milton for important reasons,” he said. “For one, I had a lot of people ask me to run, and I was encouraged. But I was still scared to death,” he said. Like just about every other candidate in Milton, he had never run for political office. The week of qualifying he had to be in Colorado, so that meant gathering all the appropriate documents and having his secretary present them while he was gone. “I don’t consider myself a politician,” he said. “I just wanted to do something for the city. I had been turned off by other politicians.” Still, he had to run a campaign. “In politics, there is no Easy Button to push,” he said. He also had a wide circle of friends from living in Milton for many years – in addition to family, there were people from church, school, Little League and business. He took one piece of political advice – that was to take one issue and stick to it. Lockwood decided he would fight to preserve Milton’s
Why did I run for mayor? Well for a long time, people called me the unofficial mayor of Alpharetta because my office was across the street from Alpharetta City Hall. But I ran for mayor of Milton for important reasons.” JOE LOCKWOOD Mayor of Milton
rural character. That is what attracted many of the new residents and kept many of the old residents on their property. He had one standard that served him well also. He said he would weigh all the facts and how it affected his family. “I felt like if it was good for my family, then it would be good for yours,” he told the Rotarians. Now he had a campaign to run, and he stumbled onto a good campaign strategy by accident. His opponent had contacts in many of the subdivisions and had signs in them the first day. “They say to win you have to knock on a lot of doors. But a lot my friends and supporters lived right on main arteries that serve the subdivision entrances. So while people saw [some opponent] signs on their street, once everybody left their subdivisions, they saw all of my signs up and down the main roads,” Lockwood said. Locating those signs where
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HATCHER HURD/STAFF
Mayor Joe Lockwood is congratulated by Rotary Club of Milton President Cindy Ringwall for being the club’s guest speaker. He talked about running for office in Milton.
Lockwood’s Favorite Questions We have lived here 10 years, and now someone wants to build on the property next door. We don’t want to lose that view of pasture land. Can’t you stop it? Well, no. That land is theirs. They may not like it that you built next door to them. But everyone has strong property rights in Georgia, and if they own the land they can build what the zoning and the land use plan calls for. “They” are going to build a school next door to us (or down the road). Why can’t the city stop it? The Board of Education is a constitutional part of Fulton County government that can build a school where they need it. And they can use eminent domain to force the sale of it. And they set their millage rate to pay for the construction, the furniture, the supplies, the teachers and the buses. Cities have no say in that. everybody could see them gave his campaign instant legitimacy and a psychological boost to his supporters. He would win with 60 percent of the vote. Before his first debate, he had to counter the spin that as a general contractor, Lockwood would bulldoze Milton. He said he was just a “regular guy” without a lot of political experience. “Now people were saying I wanted to pave paradise,” he said. “That hits you in the gut.” When it is your hometown where people are saying things, it’s personal. So he took the tack as a small business owner versus a big corporate lawyer. In the end, he was able to build a larger network of people who knew “the real Joe” and who talked up his campaign that won him his seat. After the election, Lockwood showed he was country smart also. After the election, he would seek out the folks who had his opponent’s signs
in their yards. Although he won the election handily, Lockwood was not satisfied. “The say when you win an election with 60 percent, that’s a big win. But when it’s your hometown, that 40 percent is a big number too. You have to learn not to take things personally. But when it’s a baseball coach you knew or a church member, it’s tough,” he said. By reaching out to them, he found out he was not so much disliked as people simply liked the other guy more. But in seeking them out and listening to their concerns, he was establishing personal contacts with them. Come the next election, many of those yards that sported his opponent’s signs now held his signs. Meanwhile, winning the election had moved the mayor
See LOCKWOOD, Page 44