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07/18/22 09:54 AM #1    

William Meyers

Obituary, Racine Journal Times, 21 Jan 2022 by Adam Rogon

George Meyers, 1941 – 2021: He didn’t mind being a “thorn in the side” of Local Government

 

George Meyers Jr. was holding court. In a bar on Racine’s north side, at the center of a meeting of an outside group of concerned citizens who care about Racine but don’t care if their viewpoints are in the minority, Meyers was at home.

He led what is tantamount to a chant of how he believes the U.S. can improve election security, that all voting should be: in person, on paper, hand-counted, and in one day.

Meyers, who died Dec. 30, was unbothered that none of those ideas had majority support. Throughout his 80-year life, he never much cared if he was in the majority — and he rarely was.

A staunch, vocal and friendly libertarian, he ran for public office multiple times in his life but never won.

In a 2012 letter to the editor published in The Journal Times, Meyers argued against a claim that “quality health care is a fundamental human right. This is an incorrect estimation of the nature of health care. No one has the right to another man’s labor … in its most fundamental aspects, health care is but a commodity — a commodity like the many other commodities traded in a free market.”

He was happy to share viewpoints that many or most wouldn’t agree with, regardless of if they brought him any success.

As The Journal Times reported in October 2016 ahead of one of his unsuccessful runs for office: “Meyers readily admits he probably won’t unseat state Rep. Cory Mason (now Racine mayor) in the (upcoming Wisconsin state Assembly) election, and isn’t even all that interested in doing so anyway. ‘If I were to go to Madison, I wouldn’t know what to do,’ the 75-year-old said with a laugh.

He always knew he was a longshot.

In 2002, he got 2% of the vote in a race against Paul Ryan, seeking a congressional seat. Running for state Assembly in 2008 and 2010, he received 12% and 17% of the votes, respectively.

He’d even tried to get the city to eliminate one of its most important positions, city administrator, through his involvement with the Racine Taxpayers Association. That didn’t work, either.

Denis Navratil, a friend, would tease Meyers about it sometimes: “How do you keep doing this? Racine is a liberal area, and you lose every time?”

That didn’t matter. If Meyers believed in something, he was fighting for it, and he wouldn’t be quiet about it — even if it resulted in controversy and rebuke, as when he spoke out publicly in opposition to an eventual appointee to the Racine City Council.

“He didn’t mind being a thorn in the side,” Navratil said with a laugh.

Jim Spodick, who co-hosted the online talk show “Talking Racine” with Meyers for five years, said “George was like an adventurer,” as he moved from one project to another even in his later years. And that was after serving in the 101st Airborne Division in the Vietnam War.

He was born in Joliet, Illinois. He moved from Illinois after graduating high school to attend the University of Houston, then enlisted in the Army before moving to Racine in the 1960s.

For most of his adult life, he was a property manager. Countless people have rented from his properties around Racine. He coached others in baseball and soccer, ran in the Lighthouse Run, and lived to see his beloved Chicago Cubs break a 108-year drought and win the World Series in 2016.

Meyers relished that “thorn in the side” reputation most known to Racine municipal government and the Racine Unified School District. He was part of some victories, such as the successful opposition to a downtown arena proposed by then-Racine Mayor John Dickert; one of Cory Mason’s first acts as Dickert’s successor was to put an end to the arena initiative.

He had been a leader of the group behind the appeals and ensuing court battle that has prevented RUSD from being able to implement its $1 billion referendum, which an initial count in 2020 found passed five votes and a recount showed passed by five votes — albeit with three fewer votes in favor and three fewer votes against.

Members of the group Honest, Open, Transparent Government want to be able to review the ballots themselves, and have taken their case all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. There could have wide-ranging effects if the justices side with HOT.

It was at a HOT meeting in August, at DeMark’s Bar & Restaurant, 1600 Albert St., where Meyers held court, advocating for reforms that would take elections back to the old days.

They were talking about Racine

Meyers co-hosted Talking Racine with Spodick and fellow perennial third-party candidate Ken Yorgan for about five years.

Now, Talking Racine is at its end. Meyers is gone and Yorgan is moving to Kentucky. Spodick plans to do something along similar lines in the future, likely with a target audience beyond just Racine, but he said in the final episode of Talking Racine — published Jan. 10 — that he’s not sure what form the future program will take.

In that final episode, Spodick recalled his friend, Meyers, saying “the guy loved Racine, he really did.”

“George realized, and so harbored within his heart, the historical dream of Racine,” his obituary stated. “He saw it as a center of quintessential hearty American industry and home to heritage of families’ hearth. As a treasuring custodian of this dream, he lived a complex second life, as a passionate second career, entering the arenas that were the nebulous world of politics.”


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