Chuck Swore, at-large City Council candidate and past council member, undergoing prostate cancer surgery today; won't slow his council bid, he says

Chuck Swore, a former City Council member and council candidate for an at-large council seat in the November 3 election, is undergoing prostate cancer surgery today.

Swore, 66, had learned of the cancer prior to announcing his current run for the council in mid-July.

“I look at challenges as opportunities,” he said then.

Swore won the west-side District 4 council seat in 2005 in the first election for what then was the new, nine-member, part-time City Council. He was defeated in a reelection bid in 2007 by Chuck Wieneke.

Swore, a retired Acme Electric vice president and general manager and one-time union electrician, has worked on several endeavors related to small business since leaving the council. He is the spokesman for the Cedar Rapids Developers' Council and has worked as a flood-recovery case manager on contract since the June 2008 flood. He also is the small-business representative on the City Hall flood-recovery advisory committee, the Recovery and Reinvestment Coordinating Team.

Swore thinks the current City Council likes to take its time.

“I like to have some deadlines,” he says.