If elected to the Lawrence City Commission, Mike Anderson promises that City Commission meetings won’t become a monologue for his cable television talk show, the “Not So Late Show.”

Perhaps a more titillating question though, is whether Anderson’s dissertation topic would find its way onto city agendas. Anderson has his doctoral degree in communication studies, and his dissertation was on the value of communicating sexual fantasies.

Don’t worry. Dr. Anderson doesn’t plan on dispensing that sort of advice from the City Commission podium either. But he does think his academic background is going to be helpful. He said his academic career — both as a student and as an instructor at Kansas University — has taught him to be a professional researcher and someone who knows how to ask the right question. Plus, he said he understands well all the angles of political rhetoric, which he said will be helpful when it comes to spotting disingenuous arguments at City Hall.

Mike Anderson

“I know how to ask difficult questions, and we need to ask more difficult questions at City Hall,” Anderson said. “We need to hold more people accountable. I can promise you that nobody is going to convince me with emotional appeals or convince me to give them money because of esoteric reasoning.”

Finding humor

Anderson didn’t know how much one television commercial was going to change his life. A roommate saw a commercial that was seeking a talk show host for a new program on Channel 6, the local station on the WOW cable system.

With the help of his roommate and an old camcorder, he taped a five-minute segment to send to Channel 6 producers. But there was a problem: His camcorder was so old he couldn’t figure out how to burn the video to a DVD. So, he found an old VHS tape in his apartment that he had used to tape an episode of WWE wrestling. He turned the tape — five minutes of Mike Anderson and a partially interrupted WWE wrestling match — into the producers, and hoped.

“I was hoping they were wrestling fans,” he said.

They were fans. Anderson now has done 130 episodes of the “Not So Late Show.” The job, which also includes writing and producing the show, has become Anderson’s full-time venture. He previously taught communications classes at KU while a doctoral student, but Anderson said entertainment and politics are his true passions. He thinks humor can be helpful in politics.

“Here is what I love about comedy: It gets people to challenge their pieties,” Anderson said. “Comedy can be a very important tool in our world.”

It also leads to some interesting situations for a man making his living from it. Anderson may be the only City Commission candidate who has a video on YouTube titled the “Sexy Librarian,” a comedic music video that features Anderson singing a slightly risqué song while dancing in the Lawrence Public Library. Anderson, though, said he’s confident voters will be able to separate his comedic characters from his genuine interests in being a city commissioner.

Anderson — who grew up in Minnesota but came to Lawrence as a graduate student — said he comes from a family where service to community is important. His mother was a colonel in the Air Force and his father was a captain in the Navy before he started his own company that made specialty aircraft heaters and other devices. Anderson worked for the company throughout high school, including in a sales position where his job was to sell the heaters at a major air show — in August.

“Selling heaters in August,” Anderson said. “I think that is how I got interested in persuasion.”

Issues

Anderson said the No. 1 topic he is hearing from voters is unease about how the City Commission is handing out tax incentives.

“I understand how important they can be to attracting new businesses,” Anderson said. “But you have to hold businesses accountable and ask difficult questions about why they need this amount.”

On other issues, Anderson said:

• The current condition of facilities for the police department is “embarrassing.” But Anderson said he thinks more research needs to be done on whether a single, central police facility is better than having smaller locations around the community.

• Recreation centers are a “fine idea,” but he said he “did not like at all” the process that was used by the city to build a new recreation center at Rock Chalk Park.

More 2015 City Commission primary election coverage

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