What does an Ivy League grad and corporate-exec-turned-soup-shop-owner know about running a city? According to some, judging from his relatively nonexistent political background … not much. But if experience is any indicator of future success, Chuck Brewer has plenty to draw from.
Like current Mayor Greg Ballard, Brewer is a Marine. Also like Ballard, Brewer held no political office prior to his run for mayor. But Brewer says that is where the comparisons end.
“When I think about the similarities, we’re both Marines … and prior to (running for mayor) neither of us had any political experience. Besides all that — there are a lot of differences. He and I come from very different experiences outside of all that.
“I am an entrepreneur at heart, but I haven’t always been an entrepreneur,” said the East Coast native. “When I left college there was an expectation I join the Marine Corps. I traveled all over the western Pacific on aircraft carriers, lived in Japan for a year … it opened my eyes to what’s out there,” he said.
Upon returning stateside, Brewer enrolled at Harvard University where he earned a master’s degree. “I thought I wanted to be a college history professor. As it turns out, when you have a master’s degree in classical Greek and Roman history, it’s actually hard to find a job,” he said with a laugh.
Brewer later found his way to Chicago, where he started in a management training program at Sears Roebuck Co. During his 10-year tenure, he rose from a low-level manager position to working as chief of staff to the CEO. He also served two combat tours in Iraq as a member of the Marine Corps reserves — the second of which he described as a “harrowing experience” that changed the trajectory of his life.
“I had a moment where I swore if I got out of there I wouldn’t return to corporate America,” he said. As fate would have it, Potbelly’s — a fixture on the Chicago food scene — was looking to bring on its first group of franchisees. Brewer, who had by this time earned an MBA from Northwestern University, applied alongside other hopefuls and ultimately got the opportunity to open his own shop. He used his self-described “slick” skills with Excel spreadsheets to compare a group of potential cities. In terms of economic growth and livability, Indy continually came out on top.
Owning and operating two businesses (Soupremacy and Potbelly’s) in the heart of the city helped to pique his interest in discovering how Indy could further succeed in attracting and retaining residents.
Over the past couple years, Brewer said, his interest grew into concern.
“You read in the paper how the city is basically fighting against itself — lawsuits from the council and the mayor or gridlocks in the council that just don’t let anything get passed. When you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for progress to happen — and it had been happening to a point — you’re thinking, ‘What has happened, why have we gotten to this point?’
“When you’re really invested, meaning your livelihood is on the line, you want to know, ‘What can I do to affect this? How can I get involved and make a difference?’ Sitting on the sidelines is not in the DNA of an entrepreneur.”
Getting in the game
Brewer’s first thought when considering an entrée into politics was to run for City-County Council. He ultimately changed his mind upon learning that Mayor Ballard was not going to seek re-election. “When he said he wasn’t going to run I immediately said, ‘I’m going to do this job.’ I’m not a politician, but this is exactly what we need,” he said, noting that many of the city’s ills — finances, infrastructure, public safety and education — could be addressed from a business standpoint.
“We do this in business all the time, find ways to make us more efficient … I immediately knew that with all my public safety experience of carrying a weapon as a Marine in combat and understanding what it takes — the gravity of having people’s lives entrusted to you on a daily basis — I knew this would be a really good fit between what the city needed and what my skill sets were.
“That’s what we desperately need right now. We need to shift the culture inside the city to make people realize there are different ways to do things and achieve results.”
Addressing the issues
For Brewer, that “different way” includes looking at technology as a resource in improving education and public safety.
His plans for education include redirecting the city’s Office of Education Innovation focus, from charter school management to adult education.
“I put out a proposal where I would like policy going forward to transition the focus of that office to be more in bridging the gap between a lot of the folks that are out in the community that didn’t finish high school or don’t have the right skill sets, and mapping their education to all these employers who have empty jobs.”
He shared that while he is a fan of the potential common enrollment system, endorsed earlier this year by IPS Superintendent Lewis Ferebee, he is more interested in providing a common evaluation system.
“One of the things that the city has not done a good job with is they’ve created all these charter opportunities in neighborhoods, but when parents grab their tablet or their phone and they look at all the education opportunities in their neighborhood, you can’t compare them apples to apples. We haven’t done a good job of making them compare.”
He said he would like to also have the mayor’s office take a more hands-on approach to the internal operations of school corporations by putting two mayoral appointees on the school boards, beginning with IPS.
“If a school struggles with things like funding, etc., all of a sudden you have people that own the resources around the city be able to say, ‘Hold up, how can the city help you here?’ Let’s start to change the dynamic, instead of them feeling like they are all by themselves,” said Brewer. “I want to prove the model. If I can prove the model, I can create an opportunity for other school districts to say, ‘Come help us too.’ I want to create reasons why they would want our help.”
On the subject of public safety, while he applauds IMPD’s efforts in identifying targeted crime areas, Brewer stated that the data doesn’t mean much to him if it doesn’t produce results. He also noted the lack of diversity within the department as a cause for concern.
“I’m not sure that they’ve done a good enough job of recruiting inside the minority community. They don’t have enough women … the military has to be representative (in terms of race and gender) of the U.S. population. (The military) is off by like half a percent, but in general that’s where you need to be, and the military takes that seriously. A lot of organizations do that very seriously.”
As a part of his 12-point public safety plan, Brewer seeks to add 171 IMPD officers and staff by 2019. He also proposes a system that will capture specialized data on the frequency and type of emergency calls, history of arrests and more from high-crime areas, and filter it through to tablets that officers will be able to view prior to going on runs while in the field.
“Right now we don’t do this, but the information and technology is there and it’s not that expensive. We’re only talking about a million, maybe a couple million bucks. Pretty reasonable when you think about what that means in terms of providing officers with additional intelligence,” he said, adding that he would like to also analyze the information gathered to connect people with city services and other resources that address issues such as mental health, drug addiction and domestic violence.
“I don’t know what the future of public safety entails other than what I’ve proposed, and it involves injecting not only more manpower, but also injecting technology and utilizing it to use our resources more wisely.”
Brewer said he wants to be seen as the kind of leader that is “fresh, young and innovative,” as well as inclusive of all.
He also promised, “No matter what, there will always be engagement. There will always be inclusion.
“I envision this administration that is focused entirely on great ideas. If my cabinet was made up of people who were all Democrats, I wouldn’t care as long as they are the absolute smartest people in the city, the most forward-thinking on issues.”
One issue that has gained a high level of attention among presidential hopefuls is the Black Lives Matter movement, with some BLM supporters calling for a presidential debate entirely focused on the topic. When asked what his thoughts were, Brewer didn’t take the stance of his fellow party member Donald Trump, who told Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly he felt the group was “full of hate” and “looking for trouble.” Rather, Brewer answered indifferently, initially confusing it with “Your Life Matters,” an Indianapolis offshoot of President Barack Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, spearheaded by Michael Twyman of Indiana Black Expo.
When Brewer was corrected by a member of his campaign staff, Brewer simply responded saying, “I really don’t have an opinion … I’m entirely focused on Indianapolis and how well we fare in terms of changing lives and producing the kinds of opportunities that make a difference.”
