|
| Affiliation | Democratic |
|
| Name | Andy Brack |
| Address |
Mount Pleasant, South Carolina , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
July 26, 1961 |
| Died |
Still Living
(63 years) |
| Contributor | Barack O-blame-a |
| Last Modifed | RBH
May 01, 2022 12:44am |
| Tags |
|
| Info | They say he is tenacious as a dog, persuasive, consistent and committed to the very end. They say he is meticulous, resourceful and burning to change the world." -- What people say about Andy Brack, from an October 1998 profile in The Post and Courier.
Andy Brack: A Listener Who Acts
Andy Brack listens. He's also full of the kind of energy it takes to get things done. He's an advocate for those who want government to work, and end its red tape and nonsense. He's a fighter for real solutions that will make a difference in the lives of people from Hanahan to Charleston, from Georgetown to Myrtle Beach. He's got the tolerant, progressive vision and new ideas to be a great representative of the people for the 21st Century.
The early years
Brack, 39, was born July 26, 1961, in the U.S. Army's 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, where his father ran an Army commissary (Elvis Presley was one of his customers). After a year's stint in Iowa, the Bracks moved to Jesup, Georgia, a town of 7,000 in south Georgia.
In Jesup, where he lived until age 12, Andy played in swamps, picked blackberries, studied hard in school and swam on the town's swim team. He enjoyed, as The Post and Courier described in 1998, a "Beaver Cleaver" Southern childhood with his Mom, Dad, two sisters, the family dog and regular Sunday services at the Episcopal church.
By 1975, the family moved to suburban metro Atlanta. During Andy's high school years, he was a cornet player in the band, school newspaper reporter, baseball announcer and honor student. In the summers, he worked at a Boy Scout camp in the north Georgia mountains, at Stone Mountain Park and as a groundskeeper at a golf course.
Andy remembers, "For two summers at Camp Rainey Mountain in northeast Georgia, I taught all sorts of outdoors merit badges - camping, cooking, pioneering, First Aid and emergency preparedness. It was good training and helped me learn how to work with people."
In January 1980, Andy entered Duke University. Three and a half years later, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology. In 1986, after a stint in eastern North Carolina as a newspaper reporter, Andy returned to school - this time to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - to study journalism. He earned a master's degree in 1988.
Loves the Lowcountry
Andy moved to Charleston in August 1988 and, like everyone who visits the Lowcountry, fell in love with its beauty, friendliness, warmth and people.
"We're luckier than anyone else on earth here in the Lowcountry," Andy said. "From North Myrtle Beach to Charleston, we've got a rich quality of life that everybody else wants. We've got all of the benefits of the city with the beautiful countryside nearby. The world we live in is something that tourists envy and something we must sustain."
Andy initially worked in Charleston as a police reporter at The News and Courier. By 1990, he moved to Columbia for the paper to cover statewide and government issues. As a key correspondent about the Statehouse scandal called Operation Lost Trust, he witnessed how government can corrupt.
"On the hill in Columbia Andy was a breath of fresh air," State Sen. McKinley Washington Jr. told The Post and Courier in 1998. "Andy was really a guy concerned about equity and covering the news fairly. A lot of black legislators were not covered by other reporters, and Andy talked to all of us."
National political experience
In 1992, U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings asked Andy to serve as his campaign press secretary during the Senate race against Tommy Hartnett. During that year, Andy saw politics from the inside and discovered something about himself - he liked working with the government for people more than writing about it. Following Hollings' 1992 victory, Andy moved to Washington, D.C., where he served as the senator's press secretary and chief spokesman.
"If I thought Columbia was eye-opening in 1990, Washington was eye-popping in 1993," Andy said. "Thanks to Senator Hollings, I learned (all sorts of things about) the real way government works. I enjoyed (my time in) Washington but after almost four years, I missed being in South Carolina. I felt it was time to get home to Charleston to try to start making a difference in South Carolina."
Back home to make a difference
Upon his return to South Carolina in mid-1996, Brack worked as an independent communications specialist and part-time as a professor of communications at the College of Charleston. Just as the Internet was breaking into the mainstream of American life, he became a nationally recognized analyst on how the Internet should be used in politics. By 1998, he started his own small high-tech communications firm, Brack Network Strategies. Currently, he works with national and international organizations to use the new medium in more efficient and effective ways.
But his professional life wasn't all-consuming. Politics - and the opportunity to make a difference - beckoned. In 1997, Charleston County Democrats overwhelmingly elected Andy to chair the local party. Among his key supporters were Washington, Hollings and Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr.
"I know of no one better qualified to assume that critical position," Hollings wrote in 1997 as Brack soon became chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party. "He is quick on his feet, articulate and intelligent." Riley added, "He is a young leader who has proven himself."
Observers say Andy took a struggling, sleepy organization and helped mold it into a political machine that helped to elect Gov. Jim Hodges, Sen. Hollings and two Democrats in a county council that had been all-Republican for years.
"I'm proud to be a Democrat - an independent and moderate Democrat who is fiscally conservative," Andy said recently. "But just because I'm a Democrat, Republicans can't in good conscience tag me with the label of a fellow who wants more big government. It's simple what I and most people want. We want government that works. When a program doesn't work, we should scrap it, not keep sticking it together with Band-Aids."
Andy, a 1994 graduate of the University of South Leadership South Carolina program, also is involved with the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, the state's largest conservation organization. Now the Federation's second vice president, Andy is a strong advocate of the organization because it fights for common-sense solutions to protect land for sportsmen, environmentalists and the average citizen.
|
|
 |
| Date | Firm | Approve | Disapprove | Don't Know |
 | BOOKS |
 |
|
| Title |
Purchase |
Contributor |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
| INFORMATION LINKS |
|
|
|
