- We support Klipsch over Gluba
- Gluba’s liberal ways bad for the city
- Gluba just as dependent on higher donors
- General dissatisfaction likely to doom Gluba more than any one issue
This is a hodgepodge of impressions regarding the recent municipal primary election in Davenport and Tuesday’s general election (polls are open 7:00 AM to 8:00PM).
The city-wide elections are for mayor and two alderman-at-large positions. All ward seats are up for election but three are unopposed – wards one, six and seven. The October city primary narrowed down the mayoral race to two and the at-large race to four from which to fill the two open positions.
The mayoral race features four-term incumbent Bill Gluba against Frank Klipsch, a retired CEO of the Scott County Family Y. The at-large race includes current Fifth Ward Alderman Barney Barnhill; incumbent Alderman-at-Large Jason Gordon, former Mayor Phillip Yerington and political newcomer Kyle Gripp who substantially out performed all the other at-large contenders in the primary. More on the at-large race later.
Davenport mayoral race:
Klipsch is positioned to win and we support him over incumbent Gluba.
The raw primary results for mayor were that with four candidates on the ballot Klipsch won over 55% of the vote, Gluba receiving not quite 32%. If all of the voters for the also-ran switched to Gluba he would not have carried the primary. Gluba was incapacitated for much of the two months leading up to the primary due to a reaction to an antibiotic. Nevertheless as an incumbent mayor and well-known Democrat with ties to slavishly Democrat interest groups and adeptness at using the bully pulpit, his showing was very weak.
In the heavily Democrat Third Ward Gluba eked out only three more votes than Klipsch (185 Gluba, 182 Klipsch). That Klipsch has substantially out-raised incumbent Gluba does not bode well for Gluba (although a campaign can waste a lot of money operating almost solely through Victory Enterprises as Klipsch has done). See our previous report on campaign finances this election but keep in mind the reports do not cover the ten days before the election, so information about recent infusions are not available.
In order for Gluba to win he will have to crank out the union vote and other Democrat entities. We do not see that happening at a level sufficient to overcome the general attitude we detect of dissatisfaction with Gluba from the general population. We do see motivated rejection of his liberal persona, his unwarranted attempts to take Davenport taxpayers along as fellow travelers in liberal schemes and proposals, his scapegoating and blustering and lack of concentration on the basics like city streets. He has only achieved mixed support for some of his high-profile positions on municipal issues of the day. After four terms people are ready to try someone new.
That someone will likely be the big winner in the primary — Frank Klipsch. We could be more enthusiastic about him if we were aware of a track record of political positions to test for authenticity or if there was any indication that he had participated in city government even to the extent of speaking out at city council meetings or leading on matters primarily of concern to municipal government — roads, public safety, taxes, business development.
The non-profit field where Klipsch comes from is aware of budgets, and that is a useful demeanor, but uniformly growing commerce is another matter. Crony or special interest capitalism advocated by elements of the Quad City Chamber of Commerce does not impress us. We hope Klipsch is above it all but are not confident of his separation at this point. Klipsch is registered “no party” and we note that his political contributions have included Republicans and Democrats. We have not turned up any independent evidence of political philosophy that might predict behavior or policy. We are taking a chance with him.
All the candidates talk of ”growing commerce.” But we are for all businesses, not just insider businesses or models of business that speak of public private partnerships. Hold your wallet just as tightly when you hear such verbiage. Klipsch sponsored radio ads that spoke of his objection to Gluba’s desire to have the city own the recently relocated casino. Klipsch says he does not want city government to compete with private business. We agree with the statement but wonder what degree of help and “partnership” Klipsch wants to put taxpayers on the line for directly or indirectly as buried in platitudes about local commerce. That said, Gluba is worse because he tries to own businesses outright!
Gluba should be repudiated at the ballot box
We believe this vote will be more a reaction to Gluba’s current term than support for the vague agenda Klipsch has proposed, platitudes really, variations on some of the same ones Gluba espouses. Aspects of Gluba’s reelection problems are political blunders or irresponsible posturing, and some, just part of his political being, appreciate them or not. Here are some of our main objections and reasons not to support Bill Gluba:
First he is a liberal Democrat, a local mover and shaker of a cynical and contemptible political party contemptuous of: the Constitution, a republican form of government, free markets, national sovereignty, pretty much the rule of law and certainly important cultural traditions. Many of these are reflected in his use of the mayoral bully pulpit. Despite any demurrals or meaningless objections here or there, Gluba supports his party’s nominees right or wrong, aggressively promoting even those dedicated to the legal destruction of unborn members of the human family at any time and for any reason.
We might have truncated the paragraph above by saying simply that Gluba is an Obama supporter. We will be a little more succinct henceforth.
- Introduced as Mayor of Davenport, Bill Gluba bowed to a Chinese despot, on American soil.
- Bill Gluba joined Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The preposterous name is intended to mask hostility to legal guns as well, or rather to make more guns illegal for the most illogical of reasons eliminating elements of Second Amendment rights.
- Bill Gluba implicated area taxpayers without warrant or prior discussion with the city council by promoting the arrival of welfare dependent non-citizens (minors allegedly). His actions irresponsibly encourage unsustainable illegal immigration and border jumping. His actions encouraged the exploitation of vagaries in our laws and Obama’s unconstitutional immigration related executive orders. Inevitably such actions are at the expense desperate families including minors from other countries unable to present themselves on our border.
- As already referred to, Gluba promoted the idea of Davenport owning a casino. It was an atrocious idea from many aspects.
- Gluba scapegoated all blame for the city’s costly obligations regarding grading work for the land-based casino onto the then City Manager, and sought his dismissal resulting in a costly buy-out of the remaining part of his contract. On such a large obligation regarding a large real-estate development, real-estate agent Gluba seems to have exercised little due diligence himself prior to approval of the measure.
Call it guilt by implication, but given past statements, we wonder as to how many readers doubt that Mayor Gluba is not philosophically inclined to support “sanctuary cities” or would not be inclined to join an organization like Cities for Action and their pursuits?
No strong evidence that the general election will be controlled by localized sentiment about the location of the St Ambrose stadium or land based casino
Much has been in the news about those two matters in the last couple of years, including “not in my back yard” reactions from residents in closest proximity to the developments. We engaged in a little study in an attempt to get an idea of the depth of feeling in precincts surrounding the locations of both developments by looking at voter turnout in the non-partisan primary election. Both areas have residential precincts that are arguably impacted by the developments. A big weakness in the value of this is that both matters are essentially settled leaving only a hypothesis by us that the issue was still somewhat alive in those precincts even though construction has begun.
We presumed that depth of feeling, at least in combination for and against, might be evidenced by turn-out out above the norm. In other words more than the average for the city in those precincts. Undermining a whole lot of reliance on that is that turnouts in the last two elections for Davenport municipal races have been excruciatingly low with few contested races of any “profile.” And it is true that in some precincts voters normally turnout more than in others. We did not control for that, only looking at whether the turnout was above the baseline of the reported average for the entire city for this race. We also looked at support for candidates in the same precincts however any determination regarding at-large candidates is hindered by vagaries in the primary election which involved voting for two candidates, not one.
We assumed Davenport precincts D43, D44, D51,D52 and D72 were most impacted by the stadium issue. The city-wide turnout was reported by the Scott County Auditor’s office to be 10.20%. The average turnout in “stadium” precincts was essentially the same as city-wide at 10.19%. The turn-out in the precinct with the actual situs of the stadium, precinct D 72, was but 10.45% or only slightly above the city-wide average.
Similarly we assumed that Davenport precincts D 61, D 62, D 63 and D 84 were most impacted by the casino siting issue. Their turnout on average was 11.33% compared to the city average of 10.20. That is approximately 10% higher but we do note that the 6th ward generally has an above average turnout.
We also tried to get an inkling whether support for the mayoral candidates (on the primary ballot) was driven one way or another by the notoriety of their positions. We find that as regards our presumptions about the precincts and the candidates that Gluba, notoriously against re-zoning to accommodate St. Ambrose, received 38.05% in the stadium precincts compared to his overall total of 31.8% of the city-wide vote. Klipsch received 50.1% in those precincts compared to his city-wide vote of 55.53%. But those are also more Democrat precincts and Gluba is a notorious Democrat. Still Klipsch handily beat Gluba there, but then he beat him everywhere. But Gluba did even worse in even more Democrat precincts so we guess Gluba did get a relative bump from “anti-stadium” folks. Without polling or more statistics to crunch we do not have a lot of confidence about the overall impact of the stadium matter as a political factor in those precincts.
Gluba just as dependent on higher dollar donors
Typical Democrat rhetoric is to accuse their opposition of being tools of monied interests, as if Democrats are just out for the little guy. We have seen such suggestions emanating from Gluba supporters in comments to news reports about the race. Klipsch has raised substantially more money, but at least as regards the available reports, the percentage of contributions to his campaign from individual donors giving more than $500 is a little less than Gluba’s percentages. Scanning the names of donors we do not see that Gluba can accuse Klipsch of any more conflicts. See the names of higher level donors to both in our earlier report here.
Bye bye Gluber!