In full campaign mode and having just received the endorsement of the Republican Party of East Baton Rouge Parish, mayoral candidate Mike Walker gave a fiery luncheon speech today at Café Americain that hammered home his platform of reducing crime while touching on other key issues.
Besides tackling crime, Walker told the monthly Ronald Reagan Newsmaker Luncheon that he wants to limit mayoral leadership to two terms.
“If you can’t get it done in eight years or have somebody set up to come in behind you, then you can’t get it done,” Walker says.
Mayor Kip Holden, a Democrat, is running for his third and final term.
Walker also promoted himself as a servant to small business, which he says is stymied by governmental red tape.
“All we do is throw small obstacles in your way,” he says.
Raymond Allmon, director of Stand for Children Louisiana, asked Walker how he’d fight crime through improving education.
Walker says as mayor he would immerse himself in improving public education by working to get the community and volunteers involved. He points out he has been filling in as a substitute teacher for two years now and has experience with the problems facing the school system.
“I can tell you, it’s not all the students’ fault and the teachers’ fault—it’s the parents’ fault,” he says.
A beefed-up truancy program under his leadership, Walker says, will target parents who don’t send their children to school and take them to jail for noncompliance.
According to Coroner William “Beau” Clark, Walker says, there have been 70 homicides so far this year. “That’s atrocious; this madness must stop,” he says. “We know there’s eight gangs here. Why don’t we eliminate those eight gangs?”
With that aim in mind, Walker says the first thing he would do is train 75 new police officers. The mayor’s recent budget supplement of $11.1 million directed funding at training 30 new police officers this year.
“We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending-priority problem,” he says.
With 160,000 outstanding misdemeanor warrants in the parish, Walker stresses the need to reopen the misdemeanor jail and use it to fight crime while arresting scofflaws.
“You make money, you clear misdemeanor warrants,” he says. “But the mayor says we don’t have the money.”
Connie Bernard, vice chairman of the Republican Party, asked the candidate how he would ensure that city-parish government doesn’t face insolvency as some other cities across the nation are facing.
Walker says pension plans will have to change because the current model is too expensive. But it wouldn’t affect current workers.
“All the new hires will come in under a new plan,” he says.
Walker says he wants to avoid the “grandfather syndrome,” an affliction that comes when your grandchildren approach you later in life and ask why things are worse in the community when you yourself were involved in government for so long.
“I can sit behind the mayor’s desk and go to work immediately,” Walker says.
