AUGUSTA, GA - When Marion Williams and Andy Cheek were elected to the Augusta Commission almost 10 years ago, they seemed as different as, well, black and white.

In November 1999, voters knew Cheek as a white, Savannah River Site research supervisor from south Augusta who was often seen attending neighborhood association meetings and coaching Little League games.

Voters from Augusta’s District 2 knew Williams as a black minister from an inner-city church who was a retired employee of CSX Railroad and served as the first black firefighter for the city’s fire department in 1968.

As a child, Williams once lived in a shotgun house in downtown Augusta. Cheek spent his early years enjoying Augusta’s small-town atmosphere in a neighborhood south of Gordon Highway.

These two strangers should have had nothing in common, but instead, they formed a friendship that shook Augusta politics to its core.

They proudly became known as Augusta’s “twin brothers.”

“I guarantee you, people had never seen two people — black and white — who were totally different get along so well,” Williams told the Metro Spirit in 2002, when asked to describe his relationship with Cheek. “We came along, calling each other brother and meaning it. People really couldn’t understand that.”

After having left the Augusta Commission about a year and a half ago, the twins are trying to make a political comeback.

One is hoping for an entirely new political career in the Carolinas, while the other is debating either running for state senate or returning to his old stomping grounds on the Augusta Commission.

But this time, Cheek and Williams are on completely different paths.

Once a proud Georgia boy, Cheek has decided Augusta’s neighbors across the Savannah River seem to value progress over petty politics.

“I decided to run for Aiken County Council after hearing the same old thing from candidates with no experience that promised voters the moon and the stars,” said Cheek, who is running against five other candidates in Aiken County’s District 5 race on Sept. 15. “I figured, with all of my years of experience of being in the crucible over here in Augusta, I could accomplish even more on the Aiken County Council where people actually listen to each other and work toward a common good.”

Having lived across the river in South Carolina for only about two years, Cheek realizes that he must erase from voters’ minds any suggestions by his opponents that he is a carpetbagger.

“South Carolina has been burned by Georgians. And Aiken County, in particular, has been burned by people from Augusta for a long time,” Cheek said. “That is one thing that I will have to overcome. In fact, one of my opponents is running on the line, ‘I’m from here and, therefore, I care more.’

“What he does not realize is my family has over 100 years of being a part of Aiken County. They lived here in the late 1800s,” Cheek added. “My family cemetery is in Bath, S.C. That is where I’ll be buried.”

Cheek also attended the University of South Carolina in Aiken and has lived in several areas of Aiken County.

“When I moved to North Augusta a few years ago, I needed some serious time to decompress,” Cheek said, explaining that the political battles in Augusta were severely draining. “But I soon found myself heavily involved with the community in North Augusta.

Now, I’ve been there two years. I’ve coached three seasons of soccer and I’ve been PTO president at Mossy Creek Elementary going on my second year. So I felt it was time to run for office and help my community even more.”

Government in Aiken County could not be more different than the faulty leadership in Augusta, Cheek said.

“It’s funny. You can drive down Georgia Avenue in South Carolina and you can see a new municipal center that was conceived, designed and built in about a fifth of the time we spent on Augusta’s judicial center,” Cheek said. “As Augusta continues to look down its nose at its neighbors, calling them bedroom communities, if they could be half as progressive and productive, Augusta would be in good shape.”

Aiken County has a different philosophy of government than Richmond County, Cheek said.

“They do something that is not common over here,” Cheek said, smiling. “Leaders there will come into a meeting with an open mind. They may have an opinion about a certain thing, but they will actually sit down and listen to your opinion. And, in the process of the discussion, they may actually change their mind based on what they’ve heard. It’s called working together. For me, it will be such a breath of fresh air.”

Augusta is about to realize how progressive Aiken County can be now that the “blue laws” banning certain purchases on Sundays before 1:30 p.m. have been repealed, Cheek said.

“With the lifting of the blue laws, that is going to impact significantly the sales-tax dollars that normally went to Augusta,” Cheek said. “It will put folks in Aiken County on a competitive basis. Apart from the religious implications of working on Sunday, from a business perspective, it helps people work and provide for their families. So from an economic standpoint, it enables our businesses to compete on a level playing field.”

Looking back on his eight years on theAugusta Commission, Cheek said he was amazed at the way some voters criticized him for befriending Williams and working closely with the five black commissioners on the board.

Less than a year after The Augusta Chronicle endorsed both Williams and Cheek for office in 1999, the paper’s editorial claimed that Cheek had entered an “unholy alliance” with the five black commissioners. The newspaper nicknamed this alliance the “Gang of Six.”

“I am proud of what I accomplished on the Augusta Commission,” Cheek said. “And I see Marion [Williams] in a whole different perspective than the way he has been portrayed in the press and the persona that he puts on at meetings.

“Marion is my friend. Marion will always be my friend. I was raised that you don’t turn your back on family and friends.”

However, if Augusta doesn’t wake up and stop letting petty politics prevent progress, Cheek predicted that more citizens in Richmond County will happily relocate across the river.

“Augustans, if they are smart enough, will become fed up with the way things are run over here,” he said. “I am a classic example of someone who could have moved anywhere. I grew up and did all I could to work with the school system and the community in Augusta. But I just got plain fed up with the backward nature of the way this city is being run.”

Ever since speculation began that state Sen. Ed Tarver will be appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia by President Obama, Marion Williams has been flirting with the idea of running for the senate if the seat becomes vacant.

For a politician who has been called everything from a loose cannon to a “maniacal micro-manager” who is on a “jihad” to control the county government, Williams realizes winning the District 22 senate seat will be an uphill battle.

Some of his local supporters would rather see him concentrate on running for his former District 2 seat on the Augusta Commission in 2010.

But Williams is known for never doing what is expected of him.

“I am leaning towards running for thesenate,” Williams said this week, smiling. “I can always run for my commission seat if I don’t win the senate race. It’s up to the voters.”

Last year, when Williams ran for the District 22 senate seat, Tarver beat the former commissioner by capturing about 70 percent of the votes cast.

“I ran for the senate seat and they cleaned the floor with me,” Williams said. “But I’ll just say this: I don’t know how many times it is going to take, but I’m offering my candidacy for senate to help the community. I don’t care what my critics think. I make my haters my motivators. They motivate me to keep moving.”

Williams is convinced that Augusta needs a strong voice — his voice — to teach the state that the Garden City is the second-largest city in Georgia.

“There is so much in Atlanta that they are running over themselves,” he said. “We ought to try to get a piece of that here in Augusta.”

Augusta needs to offer its residents a better quality of life with top schools, family entertainment and high-paying jobs,Williams said. But many residents inRichmond County fear growth will only result in more problems, such as an increase in crime or congestion on the roadways, he said.

“A lot of people don’t like growth. We say we do, but we really don’t,” Williams said. “We have to get over that and realize when you grow, you have to manage your growth. And we are starting to do that. Just look at all of the roadwork out on I-20. We are looking like a city ought to look.”

As a freshman senator in Atlanta,Williams realizes he would be seen as a little fish in a big pond. So many people are questioning why Williams would want to be senator when he could rule the roost on the Augusta Commission.

“I’ll be a freshman in Atlanta. So what? I am not intimidated by anybody,” Williams said. “People who are intimidated by other folks are people who don’t believe in themselves.”
As Williams is being interviewed, his phone rings. A former constituent is having a problem with a vacant lot in her neighborhood. Williams tells the woman that he will call her back in about 20 minutes to see what he can do.

“People call me all the time,” Williams said laughing. “They think I’m still their commissioner and they need help, so I’ll do what I can.”

Few people outside his district get to see this side of Williams. Many people only see his face on television or read critical stories about him in the newspaper, he said.

“People who have not sat down and talked to me don’t understand because they are not even listening to me,” he said. “They read something in the newspaper or they hear a sound bite and they automatically push you over in the corner and say, ‘This is how that person is. That’s that.’”

But that’s not real life, Williams said.

“I was at the flea market the other day and a man came up to me and went up one side and down the other side lecturing me,” Williams said. “I let him finish. When he was done, I basically told him what I did when I was on the commission, why I did it, why I believed it was right and what I had to deal with afterwards.”

It was as if the clouds parted and the man saw him in a completely different light, Williams said.

“He said, ‘I have a whole different opinion of you now because I talked to you,’” Williams said. “My critics have not talked to me. They have not asked questions. They just assumed who I am because they have been poisoned by the newspaper or sound bites.”

Williams said he got his directness from his mother, who always told him to speak the truth and stand up for what is right.

“If that is bad, at least people know where I’m coming from,” he said. “You may not agree with me, but you always know where I stand. Some people you don’t know where they are. Some people say a lot of words, but nothing comes out.

“I know some people who can talk for 20 minutes, but you’ll get up and think, ‘Now, what did he say?’ The truth is, he really didn’t say anything. I’ll never be one of those people.”

If Williams does not win the senate seat, he vows to return to the Augusta Commission and shake things up a little bit.

“No one is talking about the big issues facing the city down there,” Williams said of the current commission. “Either they are meeting before the official meeting in order to not have any conversation or they are avoiding the issues. Either one is wrong. You are elected by the taxpayers to keep them informed and to let them know what is going on with their money.”

A 20-minute meeting dealing with millions of dollars worth of contracts and bids throughout the city was unheard of when he was on the commission, Williams said.

“This is the people’s money, not private money,” he said. “There is no conversation. Personally, with the little money that I’ve got, I want you to spend more time than 20 minutes discussing it. This is millions of dollars in contracts we are talking about.”

Augusta’s government pretends it is more open and civil than in years past, but Williams believes it is simply less confrontational because people aren’t discussing the important issues facing the city’s future.

“You can’t hide from the people you work for,” Williams said. “If you don’t have the time, then you ought not to apply for the job. You know what the job pays. You know what the hours are. You went out and knocked on doors and asked people to vote for you, so you ought to now work for it.”

As for his past relationship with his twin brother, Williams said he misses regularly seeing Cheek, but he is thrilled to hear he has decided to run for office in Aiken County.

“I wish him all the best,” Williams said. “I’m glad to see him trying to put his hat in the ring and we’ll see if it works out. That’s all you can do. It’s like me and the senate race, nothing fails but a try.”