LAKELAND -Republican Phillip Walker announced his candidacy for the Florida House seat District
64.
Walker is founder and president of the Frederick Douglass Republican Club of Central Florida, 1st
Vice-Chairman of Polk County Republican Executive Committee and owner of Phillip Walker Allstate
Insurance in North Lakeland.
If elected, Phillip Walker will be the first black Republican to serve in the Legislature from Polk County.
"I look at my involvement in the community and the fact that I reach across all groups of the community in
a unifying manner, and I certainly want to represent and help that community," Walker said Wednesday.
"We are developing our campaign and the team, and I don't want to share our strategies just yet," he said.
"We are strategically putting together our platform and I don't want to discuss issues until they are
complete, but it is forthcoming."
A 1971 graduate of Kathleen High School, Walker received bachelor's degrees in history and political
science from Morris Brown College in Atlanta in 1975. He received a master's degree in criminology
from Rollins College in Winter Park in 1978 and was a Lakeland police officer for three years before
going into insurance.
Phillip and his wife Cappie have five children.
Walker is the leading fundraiser for the open seat. Phillip is considered one of the top Republican activists
in the region and across the state. This year Mr. Walker was nominated and became a finalist for the
Statewide Republican Grassroots Volunteer of the Year Award given by the Republican Party of Florida.
He is the founder and Chairman of one of the largest Republican clubs in all of Central Florida. He
additionally is a Vice Chair of the Polk County Republican Executive Committee.
Walker has been the owner and principal of a Lakeland Allstate insurance agency for almost two
decades. A small business owner now for over 17 years, Walker’s agency was awarded the Small
Business of the Month Award from the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce. He and his company are
partners with the North Lakeland Elementary School of Choice SAC and is a past business mentor with
Lake Gibson High School SAC. He is also an officer of the local Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity
which administers Men of Tomorrow, a mentoring program for at-risk young men. In 2000, former
Governor Jeb Bush gave the Polk Mentoring Award to Phillip Walker
Before entering the private sector, Phillip Walker was a Lakeland Police Officer and helped provide for
our region’s public safety needs. Walker got his start in public service at the Atlanta Police
Department as a student intern, where he witnessed the investigation and the arraignment of the convicted
individual who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King’s mother. Previously, Mr. Walker also worked
for an arm of the Polk County government, now called Polk Works. At the county government he
supervised and administered the distribution of federal funds. He now serves on the Board of Directors
for Polk Works and is President-Elect.
Mr. Walker sat on the recently dissolved Polk County Efficiency Commission and is a graduate of
Leadership Lakeland. He has consecutively received the Great American Teach-In Award. Walker
serves on the Advisory Board for the Salvation Army, the Board of Directors for the Life Path
Hospice/Good Shepherd Hospice and also the Christ Community Christian Center Church, and
additionally sits on the Advisory Council for the Education and Enlightenment Group, which helps educates
the Lakeland area communities. Walker previously served on the Board of Directors for the local United
Way and the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce.
Phillip Walker grew up without the presence of his father, and pulled himself up by the bootstraps and out
of the housing projects. At one point, to make ends meet and provide for his family, Phillip was a janitor.
But, he graduated from Kathleen High in Lakeland, and then became the first in his family to graduate from
college. He holds a B.A. from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, and a Masters from Rollins College in
Winter Park. Mr. Walker is now an elder at Christ Community Christian Center Church in Lakeland.
Mr. Walker’s first wife tragically passed away very early on of cancer and he was left alone to raise
their two daughters as a single father for years. Prior to his first wife’s demise, they raised two other
boys they met at church and made a part of the Walker Family. Phillip remarried to his present wife,
Cappie, a local school teacher, and they have a seven year-old son, Chrisitan.