Charles "Champ" Walker hopes to have a job in Washington soon, but the congressional candidate reacted angrily Tuesday to questions about his previous government work.
During a year as a job-development coordinator for a state agency, Mr. Walker, the Democratic nominee in the 12th District race, apparently found employment for only two people, according to progress reports he filed. The reports indicate that he met with 10 to 12 large employers a month, gave speeches and interviews, and offered training to six or seven people.
Mr. Walker's $60,000-a-year job with the Department of Technical and Adult Education was funded by several agencies and was designed to help find better-paying jobs for parents struggling with child-support payments, according to documents obtained from the state through a Freedom of Information request.
His salary was $7,000 more than the average for the 30 people in the department listed as coordinators, according to a Morris News Service analysis of a state audit.
He was given a laptop computer, a cell phone, a credit card and a private office in a building occupied by the Columbia County Department of Family and Children Services, according to his personnel file from the Department of Technical and Adult Education.
Workers in the building say he was seldom in the office to answer phone calls or respond to mail that stacked up. The position required him to travel as far as Swainsboro, Ga., though state records attribute no travel costs to him during fiscal year 2001.
When asked about his success at the post, Mr. Walker said he didn't recall how many people he had found jobs for and referred a reporter to agency files.
Harry Goodman, the Fatherhood Program coordinator at Augusta Technical College, said Mr. Walker was working with the program at several schools, including Augusta Technical College and technical colleges in Sandersville and Swainsboro.
"I can't think of anybody that he got hired through our program," he said."It may be in another region or another school. He never placed anybody in jobs here in Augusta Tech."
Mr. Walker's supervisor in Atlanta, Frank Bates, the director of the special work force services unit in the Department of Technical and Adult Education, did not return a telephone message left at his office Tuesday.
During his time at the job, Mr. Walker was attending theology school and was involved with several other business ventures, including a company called CresTech, which won a piece of a multimillion-dollar contract with the Department of Corrections to supply telephone service to inmates.
Initially, when asked about how he could handle a full-time state job and the other ventures, Mr. Walker refused comment.
"The Chronicle is not on my side," he said. "They dig ditches looking for trash. And people distrust them. And thank you for your time, sir. Idiot."
But, instead of hanging up the phone, he said he had relied on his partners to keep the enterprises going. At the same time, he said, he wrote a curriculum on positive thinking for teenagers.
He said his experience growing up in his father's temporary-job business, Georgia Personnel, prepared him for the state job.
Mr. Walker held his state job from December 2000 to December 2001, when he resigned to pursue some long-held personal goals, according to his resignation letter.
Mr. Walker has made no reference to his stint as a state worker during his campaign, instead focusing on the businesses he has started. He said he hasn't hidden his state job, but recent mailers and biographies produced by his campaign make no mention of it.
Reach Sylvia Cooper at (706) 823-3228 or Walter C. Jones at (404) 589-8424.
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