In addition to the friends and family one expects at a farewell celebration, White also invited several people you might not have invited, including Kenyatta Mitchell, a top aide to Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens during the height of the Buckhead City movement, whom White sat right next to him for dinner.
Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts was also in attendance. Like Dickens, Pitts vocally fought efforts to divide the first town of Fulton in two, but White readily invited Pitts to speak Wednesday while toasts were made. Pitts obliged.
It was a moment of civility that would have been impossible to imagine when White announced during a 2021 news conference in Loudermilk Park that a group of Republican lawmakers would soon introduce a bill to create the “town of Buckhead City.”
White said that day that Atlanta was a “war zone” due to “a complete lack of leadership from the city of Atlanta.”
The mayor of Atlanta at the time was Keisha Lance Bottoms, who had already announced that her single term as mayor would be her last. His tumultuous four years in office included the COVID-19 pandemic and a sharp increase in violent crime that shook every corner of the city, including Buckhead.
A few months after White’s Buckhead City announcement, Dickens was elected mayor of Atlanta and quickly set about defeating the Buckhead secession effort that White was leading. The mayor contacted Republican leaders before sunrise the day after his victory. He opened a new police station in Buckhead and invited Gov. Brian Kemp to speak at the dedication. By the next legislative session, crime was down, Buckhead City was defeated, and White was packing his boxes to decamp to Mar-A-Lago and help Trump run for the White House once again.
But that was all history Wednesday night, when White gave “Bill White” challenge coins as souvenirs and offered olive branches to people he once bitterly fought. He praised Dickens as “a good mayor and a good man” and noted that Pitts had introduced the original city council resolution declaring Atlanta and Brussels sister cities.
“We gave ourselves hell,” White said of his past confrontations with city leaders. But they are now all part of the same team, he added, to promote the city and state on the world stage.
White said he plans to use some of his time in Belgium to strengthen ties between Atlanta and Brussels and encourage continued Belgian investment in Georgia. He also reminded the crowd that he still owns property in Rabun County and may be out of Atlanta for now, but he said with a laugh, “I’ll be back.”
The soft-spoken Walker didn’t mention his 2022 Senate run at all in his speech. Instead, he explained that his path to becoming an ambassador could have started earlier this year after an interview with Fox News about his decision to return to the University of Georgia at the age of 63 to complete his college education.
“They asked me what I would do next, and I joked, ‘Well, I think I need to go out and get a job.’” Walker said. “The president must have been watching because he called about an hour later and said, ‘Herschel, I have a job for you.'”
Walker has ties to the Bahamas as his wife’s parents owned a home there for decades and his mother-in-law still lives there.
He began his speech by thanking Jesus, as is his custom, and ended by promising to represent the country well. “I will never embarrass you,” he said.
Several Republicans at the state Capitol and Democrats at City Hall with whom White has sparred in the past were skeptical of the sincerity of his softer, gentler message. Perhaps he plans to run for governor or mayor once Trump leaves office, they wonder?
But the new ambassador seemed to have bigger and better things in mind. He will soon meet with the King of Belgium, as all American ambassadors do, to present his credentials to the royal leader. He and his husband, Bryan Eure, plan to move into the ambassador’s lavish residence in Brussels, where White hopes to add a work by Atlanta artist Steve Penley to the extensive art collection there.
While Walker’s duties will focus on trade and tourism, as well as counter-drug efforts in the Caribbean, White’s new role will include both policy and high-level policy, since the European Union and NATO are also headquartered in Belgium.
Above all, in a sensitive position like the one he currently occupies, White will need to be diplomatic. It’s a transformation his opponents might never have thought possible, but Wednesday’s dinner showed it’s already well underway.
