In recent weeks, St. Louis County Councilman Mark Harder announced that he “somehow” acquired video footage of County Executive Chief of Staff Calvin Harris engaged in a sexual act with a woman inside a county office. According to County Councilwoman Lisa Clancy, Harder received the video via email from county executive candidate and current State Representative Shamed Dogan (R – Ballwin).
Once again, the Post-Dispatch has exposed a young woman, without her consent, to public attention and scrutiny regarding an intimate act, the recording of which happened without her consent.
While Dogan has failed to account for how he managed to obtain a private tape of two consenting adults who did not consent to his acquisition of said tape, somehow – some way – the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wants to create an absolute worst kind of political scandal:
Once again, the Post-Dispatch has exposed a young woman, without her consent, to public attention and scrutiny regarding an intimate act, the recording of which happened without her consent. One wonders whether victims ever mattered to the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board?
But instead of questioning how Dogan got the tape – which may possibly implicate Dogan in committing a Class D felony in obtaining it – the often vindictive Editorial Board even went so far as to call the non-scandal a “generous gift” to – of all people – Jane Dueker, the perennial police lobbyist and the Democratic county executive candidate challenging incumbent County Executive Dr. Sam Page. Political insiders have viewed Dueker (far from being a serious candidate as rather a weak candidate due to her considerable personal political baggage) as a “ringer,” or a weaker Democratic opponent, for Republican Dogan to face in the November general election.
How is a video tape – likely illegally obtained – of two consenting adults engaged in intercourse (the conduct itself was wrong) a “gift” for anyone, when the situation seems to involve the strongest Republican county executive candidate with the felonious invasion of privacy of a victim who did not consent to the recording in the first place? Dogan has joined the non-stop opposition to Page, much of it led by former St. Louis County Police Chief Fitch and his political minions. This latest attempt to smear Page seems to come out of far right Republican Fitch’s playbook as does much of the Dueker/Dogan campaign against Page.
This unfortunate situation is far from Dueker’s first desperate attempt to leverage a sensitive situation for her political gain. Our readers will recall Dueker’s dupe from earlier this year, when she launched a failed publicity campaign against the City of St. Louis at a domestic violence victim’s expense. But Dueker has been wrapped up in worse since parting ways with her former boss, convicted former county executive Steve Stenger.
The stench on Dueker’s résumé after her service to Stenger has left little to be desired by voters: including a stint advising Rex Sinquefield’s failed Better Together project; working for Kingdom Principles, a right-wing lobbying firm, to eliminate protections for sexual assault victims at Missouri colleges; and her limitless support for the distrustful St. Louis Police Officers Association and its former notorious racist-in-chief, Jeff Roorda.
That’s certainly not an employment history that demonstrates the leadership experience necessary to lead the largest county in the State of Missouri in the midst of both public health and human rights crises.
But Dueker’s biggest problem? Her entire career rests on the laurels of lesser men. She sadly has no major legislative accomplishments of her own to promote.
Considering her paid legal fight against an increased minimum wage, what has Dueker done for the working class? The overwhelming majority of labor unions and building trades have sided with Page. We still remember Dueker’s scrambling to help Stenger support his false claim that the Northwest Plaza office lease deal “saved” more than $10 million for St. Louis County taxpayers, when it was instead a sweetheart deal for two of his biggest donors.
Her measured defense of maskless anti-science extremists who stormed County Council meetings and hurled racist epithets at former County Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan – what good has that done for frontline workers facing the real impact of the COVID pandemic? Doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals enthusiastically support Page’s re-election. As a stern rebuke to St. Louis for the backward thinking that enabled the political hatchet job on Khan, he was appointed, after a national search, to be the next public health director of Seattle/King County, an agency with a staff of 2,000.
Although Dueker spent years on an executive committee for the Missouri State NAACP; how could she possibly have been working to improve the lives of Black St. Louis Countians while she simultaneously represented the interests of the untrustworthy County Police Department as their attorney & paid lobbyist? Not hardly – Dueker has publicly doxed Black activists in St. Louis, and has been known to encourage violence against anti-racism protesters through her social media accounts.
Let us also not forget Dueker’s falsely-filed complaint against St. Louis Alderwoman Cara Spencer, alleging that Spencer violated state ethics codes by filing two board bills targeting the payday loan industry while serving as the executive director for the nonprofit Consumers Council of Missouri. These same predatory lenders, mind you, are the folks who paid Dueker large, undisclosed sums of money to represent them before the Missouri Supreme Court.
And Dueker’s close relationship with Fitch as well as Republican extremists in Jefferson City – did she leverage any of those close connections to protect childbearing persons in Missouri against the second-class citizenship they now face? The St. Louis chapter of the National Political Women’s Caucus rescinded its endorsement of Dueker after overwhelming push back against the organization called attention to Dueker’s sordid history of thwarting progress, rather than promoting it and no other women-centered organization has publicly announced its support for Dueker since.
Dueker is no Democrat – her employment history best demonstrates that – and she stands to bring nothing new to the County Council. What Dueker wants St. Louis County voters to endorse is the return to Stenger-era politics – a type of pay-to-play dynamic that is still sending its participants to federal prison with white collar crime convictions. Dueker unquestionably was part of Stenger’s inner circle and advised his administration on a number of deals. And yet somehow, Dueker was one of only a few Stenger advisors to NOT face a federal investigation or grand jury.
If the Post-Dispatch wants a political scandal, it need look no further than Dueker herself, one of the architects of Stenger’s schemes and a key player in some of the deals that landed Stenger himself in federal prison – forever barred from running for elected office again.
So now, it’s one of Stenger’s closest friends’ turn to run for the seat that he forfeited on his way to Yankton Federal Prison in South Dakota. And once again, Jane Dueker seeks to rest on the laurels of lesser men.
On August 2nd, St. Louis County voters will have the choice between the man who cleaned up after Stenger, or the woman who helped put Stenger into office in the first place, just one of her many other wrongdoings.
