Decision 2024: Meet Larry Walker, candidate for Georgia House District 20, Republican Primary
Early voting began on April 29 and ends on May 17. Election Day will be May 21.
MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Two Republican candidates are qualified for the upcoming Georgia House District 20 election.
Larry Walker and Tori Branum are competing to win the Republican nomination in the upcoming primary election.
41NBC’s Monica Diaz-Meek spoke with each candidate ahead of the May 21 election.
Candidate name: Larry Walker
Running for: Georgia House District 20
Campaign Website: walkerforgeorgia.com
MONICA- First off, thank you for joining us this Monday.
LARRY- Yeah, glad to be here.
MONICA- I’m glad to have you. I’ll start off with these questions. First off, what do you think is the biggest issue or challenge that needs to be addressed? And if elected, how do you plan on solving that?
LARRY- Well, First of all I appreciate you having me on. I’m glad to be here. And it’s an honor to serve District 20, Middle Georgia. We’ve had great success in Georgia. Good leadership out of the governor. Great leadership on the budget. And we have a record surplus. And we got a lot accomplished this past session, including some really good teacher pay raises and pay raises for our state employees. We returned over $5 million to the Georgia taxpayers because of our fiscal responsibility. And then good budgeting and returned over 5 billion in surplus to Georgia. And so I’m very proud of that. I think Georgia’s on the right track. We always have challenges. We have mental health issues that we need to continue to work on. And we put a lot of money in the budget for mental health. But just like nationwide, we’ve got a mental health crisis. And that’s an area I’d like to see us make some improvement on and progress. We’ve got to look at our our civil liability, environment, our tort reform environment. We did pass two real good tort reform bills this past session, but there’s more work to be done and that. As chairman of the insurance committee, work on some of those issues, and my plan is to attend some national meetings during the interim to see what other states have done to try to address this issue.
We are the number one state and nation to do business, but we can’t continue to be that if we have a civil justice system. That is not fair and balanced, because insurance rates are skyrocketing. Like, like a lot of other things are skyrocketing in price due to the bad inflation factor we’re dealing with. So we want to get a handle on that. We could do a better job with our state prison system. We’ve got a Senate committee looking at that over the interim, too. I’ve spent a lot of time working on our occupational licensing issue. We have one of the more burdensome occupational licensing systems in the country and that’s a barrier to work for Georgians that we don’t need to have. We want to make it easy for them to get in the workplace and earn, to earn a fair wage. So I’m going to continue working on that. Lieutenant governor, and the speaker are putting together a task force to look at that. The Secretary of State’s office oversees these occupational licensing boards and they’ve adopted a new system, a computer system that was supposed to make it more easy to use, and faster to get your licenses and renew your licenses. And something is wrong, because I’m getting a lot of calls from constituents that they can’t get their renewal, so we’re going to look into that and solve that problem for for hardworking Georgians.
But those are just some of the things I want to work on. Rural health care continues to be a challenge. I want to look at avenues to strengthen our rural health care. We’ve had great success with economic development and all the corners of the state. The governor and his team have done a remarkable job bringing in industry. And over 75% of the new announcements have been outside of metro Atlanta, and I’m really proud of that. But because of that, we’ve got to look at rural health care in these areas. We’ve got to look at workforce development in these areas. I don’t know where we’re going to find all the workers, and we’ve got to you look at infrastructure to support the transportation of goods and all these areas and also the last thing is workforce housing, especially in rural areas. So lots still to work on and I am proud of the progress. And I think Georgia’s a great place to to live, work and raise a family. But, there’s always challenges ahead of course.
MONICA- Now, how has your background and experience prepared you for this role?
LARRY- Well, I grew up in Georgia and lived here all my life. became involved, most of my life. Adrian, my wife live in Houston County, and I became involved in the community through civic involvement with Rotary Club and the chamber. I later became a chairman of the downtown Development Authority and Perry, and then then got on the development authority for the county. And so the more I got involved in, the more I realized that by working together with people, finding consensus, you could make progress. And I felt like I had a a knack to bring people together and to bring concerns to us. I decided to run for elected office and in 2015 was fortunate enough to get elected and have had nine sessions under my belt. I’m in a position of some authority at the Capitol. I’ve got a really good committee that I’m on a chair. Insurance and labor. I also chair the Subcommittee on Appropriations for Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Higher Education. So those are two very important chairmanships I have. I’m in leadership in the Senate Republican caucus and have strong relationship with both the governor, Lieutenant governor, and speaker. So based on my experience as a business owner, my experience working in the community, and my experience now in the legislature. I know how to get things done and I’ve built relationships and have developed the credibility with my peers to be able to get things done. This past session, I had my most productive and successful session ever. And part of that is because, I’ve been there a little while and I know how to how to get things done and have gotten friends that are helping me, that I’ve worked with and develop those type of relationships. And I hope the voters will let me continue to serve them and it’s a real honor.
MONICA- Alright. Lastly, what would progress look like to you if you were elected this time?
LARRY- Well, we’re seeing a lot of progress. And all throughout my district, we’re seeing success on the economic development front. Lawrence County, we just had a big groundbreaking and industry announcement for Washington, which is going to be over 400 jobs, a huge investment in that community. Here in Perry, we not too long ago had the announcement of Jack Link’s coming to Perry. I worked hard to get the ag center, and Perry is near and dear to my heart. I grew up showing livestock. I’m proud to see those young people in Perry show and their livestock and other things that they’re involved in. And so I’ve been a big supporter of the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter. In this budget that the governor signed last week, we got $22 million in the budget for the Agricenter, for our new sheep and swine building and for some roof repairs and some other, other maintenance items at the fairgrounds. That doesn’t just happen. You have to have the right leadership in place. You have to have a good relationship with the Governor to get that kind of thing. And our delegation, it works well together. And I’m tickled to bring that that the Perry.
So those are the type of things that we can do by working together and with experienced leadership. I’m very excited about the integrated precision ag farm that the University of Georgia is bringing to Perry. It’s going to be across the street from the Agricenter on 250 acres, and it’s going to be the smart farm of the future. Where the latest in technology from Google, Microsoft, John Deere, the chemical companies, the irrigation companies and all is going to be showcased and demonstrated and tested. And the the young people that come to the center can see what the future of Ag looks like and hopefully get interested in a career in agriculture, our number one industry. And then we can also have show our farmers, what is out there for them to use on the farm and train our extension agents there. And so I’m very excited about that. AG is our number one industry, but farming is a difficult economically and a difficult situation. All their input costs have skyrocketed and the commodity prices remain about the same, and they’ve been for for decades. So farmers are struggling to make it financially. And the only way they’re going to be able to compete on an international level and compete with the cheap labor in Mexico and other places is to be efficient and to use technology and to work smarter, not harder. And, that’s what this integrated precision Ag farm or the Grand Farm is going to be about.
MONICA- Alright. Well, thank you, Mr. Walker. I think that’s everything.
LARRY- Thank you for having me. Yes.
Snippets from all candidates’ interviews will air on 41NBC News at 6 p.m., 11 p.m., DayBreak and 41Today. All interviews will also be posted in full on 41NBC.com on the following days:
Monday, May 13: Larry Walker
Tuesday, May 14: Tori Branum
