David Sweat is widely known for writing the book “Brunswick’s Golden Era of Minor League Baseball.” He now hopes that voters will look back on his tenure as District 4 commissioner as the golden era as they approach the polls in November.
“I may have whatever credentials I accumulated, whatever experience that I’m bringing to bear in being their commissioner. There should be good things that they experience as a result of that,” he said.
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The 69-year-old Sweat, a Republican, will face Democratic challenger Cornell Harvey, a 73-year-old former mayor of Brunswick, in the November general election.
Sweat, a retired banking executive, grew up in the district he now represents and says he is uniquely positioned to help the county’s metamorphosis from a blue-collar town it used to be into the growing economic engine.
“District Four is going places. I mean, we know where we’ve been, but now it’s more about where we’re going, and there’s a lot of infrastructure work that has to go into place,” Sweat said.
Sweat worked in commercial banking for 25 years and then took a job at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as a bank examiner and bank regulator, mostly out of the Atlanta office.
He retired in 2020 and said he had more free time than he could handle. He ran for county commissioner in 2022, feeling he could offer the county his economic development expertise.
“Sometimes I’m asked, ‘What are your hobbies?’ I live what I love to do. Being a county commissioner, you’re involved in every phase of life, be it business, be it roads, drainage, recreation or our tourism attractions. I like being active. You never slow down. You never grow old,” he said.
Since winning his seat, he has succeeded in launching a $20 million drainage project in District 4, and he cites this progress, especially around College Park, as among his top achievements.
Sweat said that if elected, he would concentrate more effort on housing issues. He sees opportunities to make workforce housing more feasible by directing credits back to developers.
His vision for the district is a highly efficient corridor with more accessibility for walking and biking.
Sweat said that being a freshman commissioner taught him a lot, most notably that four years go by fast, but if given the opportunity to serve as the district’s representative again, he plans to address the question marks that are the Glynn Place Mall and former Hercules/Pivova site.
For the Hercules site, he sees an opportunity for housing. With the expenditures that will be necessary, he hopes to be able to set the property up to turn a profit. He is also open to creating an area for recreation there as well.
The Glynn Place Mall, on the other hand, presents a different set of challenges because it is owned by a real estate investment trust. He’s not sure whether the county would be willing to buy the mall because of the property tax revenues it generates, but he acknowledged that redevelopment of some sort is needed.
“When people get off the interstate, what they see is right there, and so there needs to be more done, and that will be a focus of my second term,” he said.
