Ha, not true.

I’ve had a handful of experiences with Zeke. He’s incredibly accessible as a politician. I’ve messaged him on Facebook, tweeted at him, called his office. All on regular things (pothole/garbage collection shit), and he — not his staff, him — has always responded.

On one thing I was particularly impressed. A friend ran into a house to save two people from a fire. He was badly burned. After he was awarded and decorated, two years later one of the people who lived in the house — the son of the woman who owned the house, who my friend tried to save — was a guy with mental health issues who was living on the back patio of the burned out house. Sadly, his mother had died despite my friend’s rescue attempt. The son was left alone. He was out of his depth and autistic. With no home, no place to go, he just started sleeping on the back patio of the house.

Neighbors saw this and we reached out to Zeke. He gave us as much assistance as he could do in his job. He had the house condemned, which allowed neighbors to do certain things to give the son a way to live on the patio (which he wouldn’t leave, so we got him a shelter and port-o-potty). He, Zeke, took the initiative to reach out to us now and then, to check in.

Sadly, the son died of alcoholism after several months of us providing him shelter, food, clothing, and taking him to homeless shelters now and then until he checked himself out.

Zeke has always been responsive. He was responsive then. I always heard from him, not his staff. When I’ve reached out to him over pothole-like issues, I’ve heard from him, not staff. He responds like a neighbor, not a politician.

One of the dings against Zeke I’ve heard is that he’s too empathetic, too soft for the job of City Council President. I understand that. He’s compassionate and kind and looks to long term solutions for underlying causes of crime, and some people think he’s not as focused on reducing crime in the near term..

I get all that. It may hurt him.

But he would hardly be the sketchy dealer Mosby is.

I’m all in on Zeke.

What does one need to bring to this?

Also, because if this city were to somehow roll the dice and hit a 20 and elect a truly effective and generationally unique mayor/council and then have to let that go away because of an arbitrary term limit…well, that would be tragic.

Local voters are generally more sensitive to local issues not being attended to — or attended to — and tend to vote out or retain incumbents at a much higher rate than national or statewide incumbent officials. There have been numerous historical reviews supporting this. I wrote a huge college paper on this. Term limits may be more beneficial (depending how you define that) at a statewide or national office level, but is actually likely more arbitrarily limiting on a change-embracing local electorate.

Question K should be defeated. It’s a pointless amendment that will actually limit local voter choice where such choice is more effective.