Fox 5 alum Randy Travis on his city council win: ‘Better than any Emmy’
Randy Travis, an award-winning Fox 5 investigative reporter who took a buyout last year, swamped his incumbent opponent to win a seat on the Lawrenceville City Council Tuesday night.
“It’s better than any Emmy I ever won,” Travis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday after his victory. “It’s like a rush. I am so humbled and honored.”
He defeated Austin Thompson, an engineer and operations analyst who is serving his first four-year term in office. Travis more than doubled Thompson’s vote, winning by 1,062 votes to 527.
Thompson said Travis benefited from name recognition and the fact the Mayor David Still endorsed Travis.
“I didn’t always vote with the mayor,” Thompson said. “I voted down tax increases. I was looking out for my constituents and the small business owners. Randy says he is looking out for the little man. Let’s see if he can actually do it.”
During the campaign, Travis said he visited more than 2,700 homes in the city. That is more than one quarter of the estimated 10,524 residences in Lawrenceville, based on the 2020 census.
“I told him the biggest thing he needed to do was knock on doors,” said Tony D’Astoli, Travis’ volunteer campaign manager who was his producer and photographer for I-team stories from 1994 to 2007 on Fox 5. D’Astoli has worked on multiple political campaigns over the years. “Little did I know he’d be the king of it. Most candidates do a few hundred. I can’t believe how many he did.”
Travis has run 50 marathons and 34 AJC Peachtree Road Races. “Marathons are easy compared to this,” he said. “Marathons don’t have nearly as many hills and a lot more Porta-Johns.”
He enjoyed pressing the flesh and discussing issues face to face. He said about half the people recognized him from his time on Fox 5. He only had one man who got truly angry, confusing his time on the local channel with Fox News, the national outlet known for its conservative bent.
And if someone wasn’t home and had a doorbell camera, he would leave them a 30-second video pitch there, taking advantage of his TV experience. “I would tell them I wanted to serve the public, fight for the little guy and protect their tax dollars,” he said, similar to his job at Fox 5.
Travis came to WAGA-TV in 1990 and worked for the recently disbanded I-Team on Fox 5 for 28 years, earning a raft of national awards for his work.
He took a buyout last year and worked briefly for a fact-checking firm that laid him off earlier this year.
“I missed serving the public, I knew two city council races were coming up and thought I could do a better job than the incumbent. I had new ideas I didn’t think were being offered,” he said.
He wants to seek ways to build tax revenue in a city that has a lot of non-taxable land eaten up by government buildings. He also wants to find strategies to bring in more businesses and homes without negatively impacting traffic.
Travis raised just under $10,000, some of it from friends and family outside of Lawrenceville. He used most of the money for flyers, business cards and 150 lawn signs he planned to begin picking up Wednesday.
D’Astoli, who created one of his campaign videos, used AI to have Travis “speak” Spanish and Korean, videos he would sometimes present to people while campaigning when he felt their English wasn’t the best.
“My wife and I love living here,” Travis said. “Kindness is our superpower in Lawrenceville. We don’t all look alike or sound alike or pray alike, but everyone gets along. We celebrate our differences rather than complain about them. I got that same feeling in all different neighborhoods here.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
