Tom Fetzer is one of North Carolina’s most accomplished and recognized public servants with extensive government and private sector experience spanning over three decades. In the early 1980’s, Fetzer’s professional career included serving as Executive Assistant to U.S. Senator John East (R-NC) and Campaign Manager to Bill Cobey for Congress. Tom was a senior campaign advisor in U.S Senator Jesse Helm’s improbable 1984 re-election victory, helping lead a successful effort to register 80,000 new Republican voters.Tom Fetzer also served as President of Builders Direct, a small building supplies business. In 1988, Fetzer was the Republican nominee for Congress in North Carolina’s 4th District, raising a record $800,000 for his campaign.
Fetzer’s early experiences propelled him into senior roles in state government. He served as Assistant Secretary of Environment, Health and Natural Resources from 1989 until 1990 and was promoted in 1991 to Chief Deputy Secretary of Transportation under Governor Jim Martin. In 1993, Fetzer was elected the first Republican Mayor in the history of the City of Raleigh in an election hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the “most impressive reform victory in the country” that year. As Mayor, Tom Fetzer stood firm for the conservative principles upon which he had campaigned. He led a successful effort to privatize vital city services and cut taxes four times in three years. Fetzer was re-elected with over 60% of the vote in 1995 and 1997 before stepping down as Mayor in 1999. In all three of his campaigns, Tom raised approximately a half million dollars, shattering all previous fund raising records by tenfold.
In 2000, Tom Fetzer was honored to serve as a teaching fellow at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University, and was then named Chief Executive of Community Tennis at the United States Tennis Association. While at the USTA, Fetzer oversaw an organization of 200,000 volunteers in communities across America. In 2004, Fetzer became a partner in a political consulting and government affairs firm, Fetzer Stephens. For the next five years, Fetzer consulted for government leaders, corporate clients and conservative political candidates.
Currently, Tom is a corporate consultant for clients including Hillsdale College, one of America’s leading conservative institutions of higher learning. Fetzer has served on the boards of North Carolina Right to Life, Raleigh YMCA, Communities in Schools and WakeMed Hospital. Tom holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from Wake Forest University and is a member of Holy Trinity Church in Raleigh.
