For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK
In 1997 he was elected to the Riga City Council as representative of the For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK, a Latvian nationalist party. In 2000 and 2001 he was the Riga City Council Chairman (mayor). In a poll conducted in December 2000, he was the third most popular politician in Latvia with a rating 35.4 points on a scale from -100 to +100, after President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga with 54.6 points and Bank of Latvia President Einars Repše with 52.5 points.