The Third Ward

Ahhh, the third ward. One of the most controversial figures on the current council is the current third ward alderman, Keith Meyer. This race will be an interesting one, as a rematch of two years ago when Bill Boom was defeated by only 9 votes. With 16 undervotes in the ward, that had to be painful.

Keith Meyer

Keith has been a lightning rod on the city council since his very first day. He has stood up for neighborhoods and stood against the establishment. His distaste for certain staff members is as obvious as their frustration with him. Keith has no website and didn’t respond to my e-mail request for his top issues. EDIT – Keith has put up a blog you can find here.

Strengths - Keith’s supporters are avid. His stepping up against a city administration which has ignored and been a roadblock for struggling neighborhoods has gained him loyalty. He also has gained support by constantly questioning city spending and finding serveral irregularities.

Weaknesses - Keith’s more recent actions have made even his most loyal fans question him, and he seems to not heed their advice to choose his battles. While choosing the most important topics and spending the rest of his energy building alliances seems to be a no-brainer, Keith continues to jump in full force against anything he feels is wrong. Keith does have a very good working relationship with some city workers, although that is not common knowledge and he is largely seen as an antagonist to the city worker. Keith has also been labeled as having a negative view of Davenport, including his statement that E-Serve workers wouldn’t choose to live in Davenport (which I very much disagree with).

Bill Boom

Bill was Keith’s competitor in the election last year. He has a website at http://billboom.com/. His list of community service shows a long history of leadership including work in the Coast Guard as well as successfully running a business in downtown Davenport. His top issues are Leadership (bringing an end to conflict), Professionalism, Activism and Team Building.

Strengths – Bill has strong leadership skills and has ideas for his ward. He talks about transparency in the city government as well as creating a 3rd ward stakeholders team to involve citizen’s in the government process. His ideas of working together with both citizen’s and city staff sound promising.

Weaknesses – Keith has extreme loyalty from many of his supporters and Bill is going to face some resistance because he isn’t Keith. He will need to prove he has the ability to listen to and stand up for his constituents in order to win them over. His constituents seem to want a representative who doesn’t just go with the flow.

Summary

This will be a very interesting race. I tend to suspect that the controversy surrounding Keith will have a negative impact on his campaign. This is really too close to call but I have a feeling Bill will edge out Keith this time around. But I have been known to be wrong – sometimes. EDIT – It appears Keith has decided to campaign after all, including starting a blog. This will be a tough race to predict.