Jamilah Nasheed is off the ballot in the Missouri Senate’s 5th District race in the city of St. Louis, pending an appeal, but her campaign remains a target of bullying tactics by a staffer for the incumbent, according to a witness.
Footage from the surveillance camera at Salama Market, 1525 Choteau, shows John Bowman, legislative staff for 5th District state Senator Robin Wright-Jones, showing paperwork to Alaa Akaana, who was clerking the market counter, at approximately 1:50 p.m. on Saturday, June 9.
Bowman is wearing a golf shirt with the State of Missouri seal.
“He had a badge on his shirt.” Akaana said. “Not a badge, but the badge was part of the shirt.”
Akaana told The American that the man with the official “badge” sewn on his shirt, which Bowman admits was him, showed him some official paperwork. The paperwork stated that Nasheed has been taken off the ballot.
Akaana said Bowman told him that he and the company that owns the market would be sued if they did not take down the Nasheed campaign sign prominently displayed on their fence facing Choteau.
Bowman denied this claim. “I passed on information,” he told The American. “I didn’t threaten anyone. I know how these people are, so I only went in with the information. I was very friendly.”
Akaana said he told Bowman he was not the boss but would give the paperwork to his boss.
When he gave the paperwork to his boss, Akram Salama, Salama took down the campaign sign.
“We took it down,” Salama told The American.
When Nasheed heard of the incident, she explained to a partner in the family business, Muhammad Salama, that they were not breaking the law by displaying her campaign sign – and, in fact, the person who threatened that his company would be sued if they did not take down the sign may have broken the law.
“I don’t know anything about the law,” Muhammad Salama said. “Jamilah told me this man did not have the right to do that.”
A St. Louis police detective interviewed Nasheed on Tuesday. By then, her campaign sign had been returned to the fence at the market.
“I did not know that he was a false – whatever,” Akram Salama said of Bowman.
Asked if he threatened anyone at the market or told them to take down their sign, Bowman said, “No, no, no, no, no, no. I haven’t done anything wrong. If they say I did, I’ll have my lawyer respond to that.”
The 5th Senatorial District race will in effect be decided in the Democratic Primary on August 7. Nasheed is fighting to be reinstated on the ballot, claiming that the Missouri Constitution establishes the right for her to run in the district, where she does not live, because her current district was redrawn following the 2010 Census.
Jeanette Mott Oxford, who is termed out as a state representative, also has filed in the 5th District.
