Mayoral candidate Kenneth Winters sits in his home on Highview Court. Mr. Winters has said that if he is elected, his salary would be returned to the local government. When Mr. Winters ran for mayor three years ago, he garnered just 177 votes. PATRICK J. KROHN/STAFF

Winters giving race another try

Web posted October 18, 1998

 Winters' planks

By Sylvia Cooper
Staff Writer

Some people might be discouraged if they ran for mayor of Augusta and got only 177 votes, but not Kenneth Winters.

Mr. Winters ran three years ago and received only 0.57 percent of the votes.

He thinks he'll do better this go round because he's getting name recognition, he said.

``My name is getting out,'' he said during an interview last week. ``My voice is being heard. I'm being written up. Channels are covering me.''

And everywhere he goes, people are recognizing him and promising him to ``sincerely think'' about voting for him, he said.

``And that's why I feel like I have a chance to win,'' he said.

The blue jeweled earring Mr. Winters sometimes wears in his right ear was nowhere to be seen Tuesday. He said he wasn't wearing it because it might prejudice some people against him, although he would never judge a man by what he wears in his ears.

MAYORS RACE  THE MAYOR'S RACE Each week until the Nov. 4 election, The Augusta Chronicle will feature a candidate running for Augusta-Richmond County mayor. Check back each Sunday for a new profile. •Ed McIntyre •Larry Sconyers •Elmer Singley •Moses Todd •Kenneth Winters •Bob Young  Q&A The Chronicle asks each candidate specific questions about their abilities and goals. Here are their answers. •Ed McIntyre •Larry Sconyers •Elmer Singley •Moses Todd •Kenneth Winters •Bob Young  ASK THE CANDIDATES Do you have a question you'd like to ask the mayoral candidates? •Click here

To say Mr. Winters is running his campaign on a shoestring is an understatement.

He qualified as a pauper. He hasn't raised a dime of campaign money, has no yard signs, brochures, TV, newspaper or radio ads. He doesn't have a fax machine to send out press releases on his stance on key issues.

He doesn't even have a single campaign worker, much less a staff.

``Oh, I had a couple of people do fliers up for me and not charge me at all,'' he said. ``It was a political donation. They're not supporting me, though. They strictly did it as a favor.''

If he's elected, he will turn his $65,000-a-year mayor's pay back into the government.

``I know what it is to be needy,'' he said. ``I will turn that money back and let it go back to places like University Hospital to go for indigent care.''

Mr. Winters said that he ``jumped around'' a lot in his life, trying to find a job that was suitable to him, and that he could have gone up the corporate ladder in some but just never found his niche.

He managed restaurants and worked for a large grocery store chain in Florida. Then he moved to Miami and ``got involved with religion.

``Down there, I accepted Christ into my life, and because of my life being such a seesaw deal I started turning to God more,'' he said.

He ended up in the Army in the 1970s, at Fort Benning, Ga. where he met his wife, Linda, a nurse.

At Fort Benning, Mr. Winters got into an argument with one of the chaplains and ended up a supply clerk, he said.

``He asked my commanding officer if he would move me, and they did,'' Mr. Winters said. ``They sent me down to chaplain supply.''

Mr. Winters moved to Augusta in 1981 when Mrs. Winters got a job offer at Dwight D. Eisenhower Medical Center at Fort Gordon, he said.

The couple now devote most of their time to their 19-year-old handicapped daughter, Flora.

Mr. Winters said he is sincere in his effort to become mayor.

``I want to run for mayor of Augusta because I'm a man who wants to get involved,'' he said. ``I want to get the voters back into believing in politicians and knowing that that candidate is sincere and can make the change and make it happen, not taking the credit. I don't want the credit.''

He just believes in Augusta and believes it can be the Garden City of Georgia, he said.

``I have lived here for 17 years. I think we're a little bit too much behind Atlanta and Savannah because some of these higher-ranking people -- businesspeople and politicians -- don't want to see Augusta going forward,'' he said.

High on his agenda are indigent care, crime and transit.

``I'm also very concerned about the youth being thrown out of our schools to roam the streets. I don't appreciate it. I don't see the good of it. I see they're adding to the problem,'' he said.

Winters' planks

As part of The Augusta Chronicle's series on mayoral candidate profiles, we will ask each candidate to state their promises to voters. The newspaper expects to check up on the winner's promises after the election.

Here are Mr. Winters' promises:

-- I promise that we're going to have a better dialogue with the commissioners and all the employees of the county. That's the first thing I want to do because I feel like if we don't have a correct dialogue of good communication we can't go forth in Augusta.

-- I'm going to work very, very hard. I'm going to be on the job more than eight hours a day. I'm going to be in touch with the public. We need to change the view of the voters. They hear people talking about they're going to do this and they're going to do that, but then when it came right down to it they don't keep their promises. And I don't want to be that kind of mayor.

I want to hear from the voters. We have 90,000 voters in Augusta, Georgia, and we can't even get a third or a fourth out to the polls. So that kind of tells you what the people of Augusta think about the politics and voting.

-- I plan to make this city the Garden City like it should be. And I'm not just referring to the riverwalk. I would like to see places like Gordon Highway all the way out to Fort Gordon beautify their area. I'd like to see some of the areas (improved) where our county officials and commissioners have fallen down. Like they put a brand-new road and everything, a highway, out on Windsor Springs Road, but if you go out there now, the highway still looks good, but the side of the highway looks terrible. There's not trees. There's no shrubs. There's no plants.

-- Transit is a thorn in my side. We have too many buses sitting up there idle. I'd like to know why. We're not even reaching to the community. And if we can't reach to the community and know that they have dependable transportation to their jobs or shopping, I don't care if we stay a tourist city and an industrial city, we have to go forth with our transportation. Also, in the long view, I'm looking to bring in the first monorail.

-- The water situation was terrible. It was definitely a misuse of the voters of Augusta's taxpaying dollars. I want to assure the Augusta people we are going to use the money for the project that was supposed to be done, and do away with the worry of ``what have we got to look for in the next few years. Are we going to have another water shortage? Are we going to have a time we're going to have to go odd-even on our water?''

Sylvia Cooper covers Richmond County government for The Augusta Chronicle. She can be reached at (706) 823-3228 or newsroom@augustachronicle.com.