TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

This is the second of six introductory candidate profiles for the Bakersfield City Council Ward 1 race. Remaining profiles will be published in subsequent days.

Candidate: Wesley Davis Jr.

Age: 45

If you're around Wesley Davis Jr. for any length of time you see how deeply his life was altered by the events of April 23, 2006.

That's when his 16-year-old son, Wendale, was killed in a drive-by shooting in southeast Bakersfield. The crime remains unsolved.

"Once I was able to get my wits back about me, I just wanted to do more," he said.

Within a year, he'd founded the Wendale Davis Foundation, a growing, all-volunteer effort to help at-risk youth that takes up a good chunk of his time outside work. (He's a community specialist at Vista West Continuation High School, where he's worked for 16 years.)

The desire to do more is the "driving force" in his council run, Davis said.

He was born in Bakersfield and raised in the southeast, graduating from Foothill High School.

Davis readily admits he's done things in his younger days he's not proud of.

"I obviously lived a different type of life 20 years ago, doing what kids do in these neighborhoods," he said.

That included sometimes having two or three girlfriends at the same time.

He fathered 23 children, now aged 17-27, with eight women. A second child died in December 2008, his 25-year-old daughter who had severe cerebral palsy.

"Out of 23 kids, 19 to 20 are doing very well," he said. "In the black community, it just doesn't happen on its own."

Davis, the youngest of seven, grew up in a household where some of his siblings also raised children.

"There were about 20 of us, and only two high school diplomas between us," he said.

He contrasts that to his clan, who have so far all earned diplomas. Most are in college, some already graduated. Three sons are in the Navy.

The Rev. Kevin Rhamie, pastor of Southside Seventh-day Adventist Church, has known Davis about 10 years and baptized 16 of his children.

Rhamie, who calls Davis "a man of integrity," said the father stressed education and went to all of his kids' parent-teacher conferences.

Davis said he went to church every week with "at least 15 kids sitting on the pew with me."

He and nine of his children who attended West High and played sports there were profiled in a 2004 Californian story.

PUBLIC RECORDS

The Californian's profiles of political candidates include results of public records searches for criminal, civil and financial filings.

Davis has no criminal convictions in Kern County, online court records back to 1989 show.

He and his wife, Carla Davis, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2004.

"That was really my wife's deal," he said.

The filing does show a debt of $86,000 -- one not cleared by bankruptcy -- owed for back child support.

Davis says about $300 or $400 a month comes directly out of his paychecks toward the debt, though interest and penalties continue to accrue.

County filings show he and his wife bought a house in Ward 4, on Triple Crown Drive, last October. Davis said he isn't living there. They've been married about 13 years, have an on-again, off-again relationship, he said, and have frequently lived apart. He said he's been living in his current residence on South Brown Street, with an in-law, for about a year.

SQUARES

Keith Jackson, a friend of Davis' since their grade school days at Fremont Elementary School, said they prided themselves on not doing things other boys in the neighborhood did.

"We did not get into gangs," Jackson said. They didn't get into drugs or smoke marijuana. But they did go to school every day and played sports.

"We were considered squares," Jackson said.

In high school, they were on the basketball team -- Jackson was captain -- and ran track.

"He's a great leader," Jackson said.

Davis -- whose athletic activities were clipped recently when he tore his Achilles tendon during a basketball game -- said growing up on tough streets is "part of what makes me the candidate I am."

He talks almost exclusively about helping young men and women stay away from gangs, but insists he's interested in other city issues too.

You won't see yard signs or be invited to fundraisers, Davis said. He's campaigning by faith and word of mouth.

"I really think my name speaks for itself," he said. "People believe in me. I really am the candidate next door."