Dan Fischer, a candidate for Greensboro City Council, suggests finding a cool place to sit down and, besides, he’s hungry. So we head up Elm Street from Center City Park to the US Trust Building and take seats at a table at the redoubtable Zaytoon.Crossing the street, Fischer mentions that he would like to meet with Jorge Cornell, leader of the NC Latin Kings and a candidate for city council in District 5.
“He and I come from different backgrounds, but we see eye to eye,” Fischer says. “We both feel that people should treat each other with respect.”
A registered independent, Fischer cut his political teeth serving as senior vice president of the Association of Student Governments for the University of North Carolina system. He learned about leadership as a Navy corpsman and service through his work with refugees in Greensboro. This is his second bid to represent District 2, a minority-majority district in northeast Greensboro.
Two years ago, he recalls sitting across from Alma Adams, a state House representative, for his interview with the Simkins PAC, a group that purportedly promotes the interests of the black community and seeks to swing the black electorate in support of favored candidates. He didn’t meet with the firefighters union or any of the real estate interest groups that year.
This time around, Fischer seems ambivalent about meeting with the Simkins PAC. The idea of meeting with an interest group in a setting where the public is not invited or any perception that a candidate would make promises in exchange for a group’s support doesn’t sit exactly right with him.
One person potentially has more clout than all of them in District 2. Goldie Wells is a respected community activist who led the fight to close the White Street Landfill before she was elected to represent the district in 2005. Since retiring from the council in 2009, she has led the fight to keep the landfill closed. Her successor, Jim Kee, came up with Wells in Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, but at times their relationship has been strained because of Wells’ impatience with Kee’s conciliatory style. Fischer said he has been told that he should seek Wells’ backing.
“Do I think it’s good to sit down and talk with Goldie?” he said. “Only because, contrary to what everybody said, the White Street Landfill is opening.”
To be clear, Fischer is opposed to the landfill reopening.
“Nobody in Greensboro wants it in their backyard,” he says. “Why is it in District 2? Nobody can answer that. Why not put it in northwest Greensboro? Lots of land out there.”
Fischer wants the city to bring in a Nevada-based company called Ecologico-Logic that uses a machine called the Muncher to process solid waste through aerobic digestion. The city council eliminated a vendor that proposed to use waste-to-energy technology from consideration during a second round of requests for proposals earlier this year.
“I met the guy who’s part of the company that wants to get rid of garbage,” Fischer says. “This machine eats garbage. It spits out mulch and liquid byproduct. It gets rid of the garbage. Out of the back end comes stuff that is natural and can heal the land and help products grow.”
He has nothing critical to say about the Kee, who is seeking reelection while completing his first term.
“I am not going to badmouth anyone,” Fischer says. “I’m sure he’s done the best he can.”
Two years ago, Fischer was recovering from surgery.
He won 106 votes out of 1,116 cast in the primary. Fischer and a fourth candidate, Gordon Hester, were eliminated, while Kee and Nettie Coad went on to face off in the general election.
“I didn’t campaign at all,” Fischer said. “The votes I got were from interviews, debates and Facebook.
“This time, it’s going to be, ‘Hi, how’re you doing?’ he adds, acting out the ritual of door-to-door retail campaigning.
Fischer promotes a vision of local government that is innovative and expansive. Many of his ideas focus on using schools as a unifying element to strengthen communities. That might seem counter-intuitive, considering that city government doesn’t deliver educational services; the county finances public schools through property taxes, in tandem with the state.
“If every K-12 school system was a community center we could literally help solve health problems with garden plots,” he says.
He proposes that funds from the state education lottery be used to install solar panels on the rooftops of public schools so that they can begin to generate revenue by returning electricity to the energy grid. Those funds could be used, in turn, to hire more teachers.
He also wants to harness the research capabilities of the Joint School of Nanoscience & Nanoengineering by attracting a manufacturer of an advanced paint product that reduces heat transfer and encapsulates toxic lead paint. Additionally, he suggests that grocery stores replace their produce sections with local farmers markets.
These initiatives would rely more on persuading public and private actors to work for the public good than manipulating the levers of power through the authority vested in the council by the city charter. Fischer acknowledges that he can pursue them as a private citizen.
“I have a chance to influence the process,” he says. “Sitting on the council means I’ve got the votes to get out and do this. It means that many people believe in me.
“These are all ideas that we could put into play,” he adds. “People talk about ‘think globally, act locally.’ City council would be the perfect place to talk to business leaders: ‘You want to cut your transportation costs? Here’s what we can do.’”
The candidate pledges to take an open approach with the news media.
“Having defended the Constitution of the United States for 20 years, I like the press,” he says. “The press has been very kind to me.”
Fischer’s vision of innovative government appears to be set apart from the increasing factionalism on council that has seen Mayor Bill Knight and council members Danny Thompson, Mary Rakestraw and Trudy Wade drive a hard line to take the council in a more conservative direction, while council members Robbie Perkins and Dianne Bellamy-Small — joined by a host of candidates, including Yvonne Johnson, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Wayne Abraham — push back.
“You don’t know who you’re working with until you cook a meal together,” Fischer says. "We need to go on a retreat and get to know each other."
“Everything that has been done is supposed to be for the betterment of the community,” he adds. “If there’s infighting, that needs to be solved.”
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