Comments (0) | |

Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009

Holmes says he'll vote for Shaheen

WARNER ROBINS — City Councilman Clifford Holmes doesn’t feel comfortable publicly endorsing a candidate in a mayoral race where he and the two remaining candidates once talked of working together after the race’s outcome. He still hopes that’s the case.

That said, he plans to vote for Chuck Shaheen on Dec. 1.

Holmes, 66, was the third man in a tight race to succeed outgoing Mayor John Havrilla, who took over running the city after the Sept. 28 death of then-Mayor Donald Walker. Voters will select either Shaheen, 49, or Chuck Chalk, 43, in a runoff Dec. 1 that also will decide the City Council Post 1 race.

Holmes, in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, wouldn’t go into detail as to why he’ll cast a vote for Shaheen, and said he hopes to work with either man after they become mayor in January.

“They’re good guys — until they prove different,” he said by phone from Los Angeles, where he spent the holiday with family. “I really don’t want to make an endorsement, but everybody’s coming to me, asking me who to vote for.

“This is for them.”

Holmes said both candidates asked for his support in the final swing of the race, but didn’t think his backing was important until residents began asking him who he was voting for.

Initially, he said, he didn’t know.

“I’m looking for somebody who can come in and do something for the citizens of Warner Robins,” he said. “Somebody who’s going to have an ear for the citizens, and not just react to what the ear might hear.”

He mentioned rumors that both camps’ decisions were being made “above their heads,” and said the rumors that Walker’s supporters were involved more than monetarily in Chalk’s campaign worried him.

“The next mayor can’t be indebted to anybody,” he said. “Their word has got to mean something.”

To contact writer Marlon A. Walker, call 256-9685.