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When Springfield mayoral write-in candidate William
D. Waters visited the offices of Illinois
Times for an interview, he brought along a
list of talking points, a campaign brochure, a camcorder, an
“interview contract,” and a young public-relations
representative who identified herself only as “Theresa.”
The video camera, they explained, was to protect the
candidate from possible defamation of character, and the contract, which
remained unsigned, would have barred the paper from photographing the
candidate or mentioning his race — even though Waters says he plans
to build a campaign Web site and post videos on the Internet. His naiveté aside, elections may need people
such as Waters to raise issues that major-party candidates won’t
touch. For Waters, these issues include addressing the
city’s homelessness problem, introducing nighttime bus service to
Springfield, and alleviating racial tensions — things that, although
not directly under the mayor’s control, aren’t completely
outside that person’s purview, either. Born in East St. Louis, the 30-year-old Waters spent
three years in the U.S. Marine Corps before moving first to San Diego and
then, in 2001, to Springfield. He currently owns a clothing store on
Springfield’s southeast side. “City government really needs some help and
really needs a person in office to take care of the needs of the
people,” he says of his decision to seek the mayor’s seat. Because he’s not affiliated with any political
party, Water says, he doesn’t have to answer to or try to please
anyone but the citizens of Springfield. “I’m neither a Republican or a Democrat.
I’m an independent, and, as an independent, I feel I can really take
care of the needs of the people,” he says. (Although city government
is nonpartisan, Tim Davlin, the incumbent, is a Democrat and his main
challenger, Ward 10 Ald. Bruce Strom, a Republican. The county election
commission has also qualified a second write-in mayoral candidate, Mario
Ingoglia.)
Waters says that he’s putting the needs of one
particular group of people, the homeless, front and center in his campaign.
“There shouldn’t be not [sic] one person outside. We all
pay our CWLP bill, and just to pay that bill alone we pass by and see
people sleeping right outside the mayor’s office, and I feel
that’s wrong and heartless,” Waters says.
He continues: “We’re always going to have
the issue come about because anyone could be displaced from their home due
to fire, floods, storms, etc. If anyone really does want to sleep outside
and feels that outside is their home, I really feel they really need some
mental counseling.”
As far as how he would pay for such an undertaking,
Waters talks about the resources the city has to fix the problem but admits
that he hasn’t looked at Davlin’s proposed budget to see where
the necessary funding might come from. Waters also says that he’s not
for raising taxes but that “sometimes situations arise.”
Waters accuses Davlin of backroom dealings to reach
an agreement with the Sierra Club to reduce pollution output from the
city’s proposed power generator. He criticizes Strom for advocating
for government transparency in his campaign for mayor but participating in
a recent budget discussion with three other Republican aldermen that,
Democrats claimed, violated the state open-meetings law. (Sangamon County
State’s Attorney John Schmidt, a Republican, has declined to
prosecute the four.) Asked about recent discussions of the Iraq War by
members of the City Council, Waters says it’s not the city’s
business but that everyone knows someone who’s fighting in Iraq based
on reasons, he says, that “are not true or accurate. “It’s our right, it’s our
responsibility, to be the voice of the troops that are overseas right
now,” he says. “Sometimes when you’re in combat
you’re on a need-to-know basis and you have to stay focused because
you’re in a combat zone. You really don’t have the ability to
protest and see what’s really going on. “So it’s the citizens’
responsibility to make sure the troops are being taken care of in all ways.
If they’re in situation where they don’t need to be, it’s
our responsibility to go through the corrective means to make sure they
come home.”
The city’s general primary is scheduled for
Tuesday, Feb. 27.
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2007.
