Tracy Walker is a candidate for Blaine County clerk. As an Independent she will be on the November general election ballot to face the winner of the June 30 primary between two Republican candidates.
Walker moved to Blaine County from Pocahontas, Ill, where she was an accounting and payroll clerk. Her husband, John, is a truck driver who was brought up in Blaine County. The couple bought a property at auction and decided to relocate here in 2012.
Walker was a cosmetologist early in life, running her own shop with several employees. When the couple was raising their four young children, Walker helped out with the trucking business, and went into human resources for another trucking company. They branched out and started their own string of trucks, and Walker became the agent for the line.
Since coming to Watonga, Walker has worked at Roman Nose State Park and was lured away when Diamondback Correctional Facility was supposed to reopen. Thereafter she went to work at Great Plains Correctional Facility in inmate payroll processing and worked for a time in the Blaine County clerk’s office. There she worked in payroll coordination for the county, did some land records work and trained in insurance and retirement programming.
Walker registered as an Independent because she likes things about both major parties. “But the states would be better off if the parties would stop all the fighting,” she said.
If elected, Walker said she would like to update and reorganize the office and its procedures.
“I would welcome citizens to the office. They would be treated with courtesy and respect. After all, we’re public servants,” she said. ”The public pays our wages and we work for the people of the county.”
Walker describes herself as a happy person, focused and organized. Some of those characteristics are part of her personality, while others have developed as she learned how to run a business and apply accounting principles to the books she kept both for their company and other employers.
Walker also recognizes she doesn’t know everything about how the clerk’s office works, even after working there for almost a year. “But if I don’t know the answer, I will do my best to find it,” she said.
Connie Burcham can be reached at Editor@WatongaRepublican.com