Since 2010, Fort Oglethorpe’s mayor and a councilman have stewed in a silent war.
Lynn Long and Earl Gray don’t like each other, but they have avoided direct confrontation. That’s about to change.
Gray resigned from his council seat Thursday so that he can run against Long in this November’s mayoral election. If the candidates agree to hold a debate, the verbal contest will make for the longest stretch of time the men have conversed since they were elected.
“I’ve only talked to him for about 30 minutes,” Long told the Times Free Press after Gray resigned. “Total.”
“I’d be surprised if it was that long,” Gray said.
The voters elected the candidates to make Fort Oglethorpe’s municipality function – ostensibly by working together. So why have they given each other the cold shoulder for this long? They have different theories.
“He’s a distant fellow,” Long said of his opponent.
Gray disagrees: “I’ve been able to communicate with everybody down there for six years through three, four different elections. Everybody but him. I don’t think the problem is on my end.”
Gray said their lack of communication isn’t necessarily Long’s fault. But, he added, it’s not his fault, either.
So there is a problem. But it’s not Long’s fault. And it’s not Gray’s fault. In a city government known for contentiousness, it’s just one of those Fort Oglethorpe things.
If Gray loses the election in November, City Manager Ron Goulart said, he won’t get his old council seat back. Voters will, in the same election, choose between candidates who want to take Gray’s position.
Why does Gray want to risk his current spot?
“March the 22nd, 2013,” he said.
On that day, an hour after a new councilman was sworn in and changed the balance of power, Goulart resigned from the city. He claimed the council was about to fire him. Long was a member of that group.
The elected officials then replaced Goulart with Harold Silcox, a former councilman. Minutes later, Silcox fired police Chief David Eubanks and Public Works Director Jeff Long, who is not related to Lynn Long.
At the time, Gray called the maneuver “a sad day for the city of Fort Oglethorpe.”
Goulart, Eubanks and Long regained their jobs a year later, after another election brought in a council that favored the men.
On Friday, Gray declined to say why the 2013 events make Long an unworthy mayor.
“The people already know,” he said. “There’s no sense rehashing and digging up dirt.”
Gray said he and Long have different ideas about how the city should operate, but he refused to be specific. He said the people already know based on his time on the council.
Long, meanwhile, said he plans to run as the candidate who will bring development to the city. He touted his work as a real estate broker, and said he will point to a couple of specific accomplishments: adding an access road to the Wal-Mart where a Buffalo Wild Wings will be built, and securing a $3 million grant to improve LaFayette Road. The grant brings in new sidewalks and landscaping. It also allows the city to install power lines underground.
Long said Gray’s candidacy doesn’t bother him.
“Anybody that wants to run for political office, if that’s what they want to do, they just need to do it. Get it out of their doggone system.”
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@times freepress.com or 423-757-6476.