TUSCALOOSA— Tuscaloosa’s mayor, Walt Maddox recently ran for governor against incumbent Kay Ivey. He grew up in Tuscaloosa and has been serving as the Mayor since 2005. I spoke with Mayor Maddox to ask him about his experiences growing up in Tuscaloosa and his involvement in local politics.
Q- Tell me a little bit about your childhood growing up in Tuscaloosa
I grew up in East Tuscaloosa, where my mother was a schoolteacher and my father worked for the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood called Idlewood, went through the public school system and graduated from Central High School. We certainly were not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I never knew it. And I, like most people in my neighborhood, when I turned 16 I went to work, bought my own car and helped save money to help get through college. I feel very blessed and fortunate that my parents instilled in me a very good work ethic, it has certainly served me well.
Q- What is your favorite thing about Tuscaloosa?
There are a lot of things I love about Tuscaloosa—the people inside the city, their generosity and confidence in me. I feel really honored to live here and work here.
Q- How did you come to the decision to major in Political Science?
I liked politics but I wanted to be a college football coach. I never dreamed I’d be Mayor, I never thought I’d run for governor but I always loved politics so it just appealed to me and I’m glad it did. It certainly has been a benefit to me.
Q- When did you first get involved with local politics?
When I ran for City Council in 2001. It was a sewer issue that I dealt with, with the city and I didn’t feel like it was handled well by the city so I decided to run.
Q- Why did you decide to run for mayor?
My masters is in Administration and the Mayor of Tuscaloosa is also the city manager. So the idea of marrying both politics and administration appealed to me. I’ve enjoyed it and I hope to do it for many more years.
Q- What is a typical day like for you as mayor?
The last year and a half has been a little bit different, because of the campaign, but most days I try to get to work sometime between 7:15 to 7:30. If possible we try to make the schedule where I use that first hour to deal with emails and return phone calls. I try to be very prompt. Then after that it becomes a series of meetings. On Mondays and Tuesdays they’re usually more staff-driven and then on Wednesday it’s kind of the debrief from the Tuesday Council committee meetings. And then Thursday and Friday are more of my external meetings with stakeholders or constituents, things of that nature. Every day is usually 8-10 meetings. The thing I love about being mayor is it can go from police department to dealing with housing programs. You get a wide variety of different disciplines from infrastructure to fire rescue. So I enjoy that.
Q- What led you to the decision to run for governor?
Two reasons. I don’t think we’re creating a state where Eli Taylor will want to stay in the long run. And the second is the state has abdicated its responsibility in so many areas and in so many ways that I think we have to begin addressing them. Whether it’s mental health or corrections or infrastructure, and we haven’t. And I think those burdens fall to cities.
Q- While you were campaigning what was a typical day like?
I’d get up at 4am, go exercise, go into work, work as many hours as I could and then it would be either over to the campaign office or near the end, on the campaign bus. Making 30-40 phone calls a day for fundraising, and then going to different events and then either at the other office or working on the bus, dealing with city business as well. It’s going to be nice as we close down the campaign side to be focused solely on the city.
Q- What advice would you offer to college students who are majoring in political science or pursuing a career in politics? What do you wish you’d known when you were in your undergraduate?
One, I would go get a masters right after earning the political science degree because I feel that a political science sets a good foundation, but I would get a masters to add to that. Second thing is that if you really want to get active in politics go volunteer for political campaigns. Great volunteers are such an asset to a campaign and you get an opportunity to see how it all works. I took a lot of pride that we had so many of our young volunteers become interns and then some of those interns actually got hired into the campaign staff and they got to travel across the state and see an Alabama that most people never see.
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