This is a story about a mayor who seeks to play the same tricks as his preferred presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. It’s the dirty old game of leaking something dubious (and not quite true) about your rival or presumed rival, letting it run its course in the gullible media, and then taking the high road of scoffing at the facts (or lies) in the leak. Meanwhile, of course, you smugly know the damage has been done.
The story begins with a hunch: that it was the office of Mayor Francis G. Slay that got the Post-Dispatch started on the non-story about the non-bodyguards and non-drivers that may or may not be provided (as needed) at taxpayers’ expense to Comptroller Darlene Green and Aldermanic President Lewis Reed. It is important to keep in mind that the sheriff’s deputies in question would be neither bodyguards nor drivers, if they even get budgeted by the City, yet Jake Wagman’s lead in the Post on Tuesday identified them as “bodyguards, and possibly drivers.”
Why the hunch to point a finger at Slay? For one, Slay’s Chief of Staff Jeff Rainford called Reed’s office to tip them that Wagman was digging around for this story. How did Rainford know? Neither he nor Slay is quoted in the piece. They apparently spoke to Wagman on background – in other words, to get a reporter pointed in the direction of a story (or non-story). How clever, having put Wagman on their trail, for Rainford to call Reed (but not Green) to say, “Wagman is on your trail.”
And remember that the Post is biased toward Slay as a matter of official arrangement. The EYE pointed out a month ago that the Post’s Community Advisory Board includes Slay and Rainford, but neither Green nor Reed were invited to serve on the board. Neither Green nor Reed has been invited to serve on the board since the EYE pointed out that the board does not include one single black elected official. The board still does not include any black elected officials, even after this fact has been pointed out in a black newspaper that prints 70,000 copies (and reaches 200,000 people, according to our reader research) every week. The Post evidently does not care if black St. Louis knows its editorial direction appears to be biased in favor of Slay and other white elected officials.
So what really happened with the non-bodyguards and non-drivers who may or may not be funded to protect Reed and Green?
As part of a budget request, the Sheriff’s Department asked that four new deputy sheriffs be added to the budget. The final budget added five deputy sheriffs (one more than the four requested). It also requested that, built into their job duties, two of the new deputy sheriffs would be available on an as-needed basis for security support at the Board of Aldermen. (Not two particular, individual deputies as personal “bodyguards,” but any two of the sheriffs on duty at any particular time.)
Sheriff Jim Murphy sought four new deputy sheriffs in the budget – in the end, five were added. To say, as Wagman did, that “the two deputies were not sought by Sheriff Jim Murphy’s office” is either mistaken or intentionally misleading. The “overall push” was initiated by the Sheriff’s Office and the St. Louis City Circuit Court, not Reed, as Wagman reported.
The “bodyguard” descriptor also is a Wagman concoction. The new deputy sheriffs would spend a majority of their time at the courts and would only be on-call, as needed, for security for the aldermen and comptroller. Wagman provides no source for his “bodyguard” description of these new deputy sheriffs’ roles. In his piece, the phrase only appears in the mouth of Alderman Jeffrey Boyd. Boyd is answering a question posed by Wagman and apparently repeating terms used in the question.
As Wagman reported: “‘Why don’t the aldermen get a bodyguard?’ Boyd asked. ‘Can we just call the sheriff and say, Can you drive us around the neighborhood today?’”
This “personal driver” image is obviously silly, if Wagman or any of his editors had given it the slightest sniff test. If an elected official requested security to accompany him or her to an event, who do you think would drive? Do you see Darlene Green driving the deputy to the evening meeting or the deputy driving Darlene Green? Or should they take two cars and burn twice as much City gas? Hello?
Driving, in any event, would be secondary to the main task of providing security. The deputy also may walk, talk, chew gum and urinate, but that would not make him the comptroller’s personal gum chewer or urinator.
The strategy of Wagman’s piece suggests that this whole thing is an outrage, but in fact there is a benefit to public safety. Currently, if there is extra security needed at the Board of Aldermen or at an event attended by a member of the board, police officers are (in an informal process) taken off the streets and assigned to perform these duties. If Murphy gets his new deputies and Reed’s suggestion for their assignment is honored, this would actually keep more police officers on the streets.
As for the security needs of elected officials, surely Wagman (and Boyd) are not suggesting they do not exist? If they do think that, they should ask the family of the late Connie Karr, one of the Kirkwood City Council members shot dead in February.
By the way, Karr was one of the white elected officials included on the Post’s Community Advisory Board. She remained on the board, according to the Post website, for more than a month after her death, until the EYE pointed out that the Post valued the opinion of one dead white politician but no living black politicians.
Driving the divider
As we all know, Karr and others were shot dead by Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton. Most also remember that Thornton was yelling, “Shoot the mayor!” as he went about his rampage. He did shoot Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda, but thankfully Swoboda recovered.
Clearly, fears of “Shoot the mayor!” have occurred to Slay. Though his office almost certainly drove this non-story hinting outrage for adding security for Green, Reed and the other aldermen, Slay himself uses a rotating shift of three uniformed police sergeants for his detail. While the new sheriff’s deputies would cost about $27,000 each, with benefits Slay’s detail costs more than $200,000 a year. This also takes three officers off the streets to drive Slay around. (One of Slay’s many cousins was once a cop on his security detail. By the way, he quit and went back to the force.)
Wagman’s non-story does beg a genuine question, however. Why doesn’t Slay give up his police officers and get sheriff’s deputies to drive him around instead? It would be cheaper for the taxpayers and put more officers on the street.
As Jeff Rainford and Richard Callow would tell the Post, “Put that at the end of your story, please.”
Driving Darlene
There is a back story here. A couple of years ago, Darlene Green made a request for a police officer to protect her (similar to what the mayor has for security). An officer had volunteered for the duty. All that needed to be done was for the Board of Police Commissioners to vote on it. Slay began calling members of the commission to ask them to vote no. Green was tipped off and subsequently pulled the request, so it never came to a vote.
One wonders why this request to protect a black female elected official bothered the mayor so much. Was it a status thing? “Only I get a security detail”? Does he assume Darlene is tough enough to take care of herself because she’s black?
Ways and Means Circus
Unless the Post finally gives this thing the sniff test, or Rainford and Callow lead Wagman by the nose in a different direction, expect the media circus to reassemble for this non-story when it comes up on the agenda of the Ways and Means Committee. A star in that show already has been foreshadowed: Jeffrey Boyd, again. He sits on that committee. “I can’t wait to hear the justification,” Boyd told Wagman.
Wagman or his editor even gave Boyd a little macho makeup job: “Boyd’s ward includes some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, including one where a police officer was killed last year.” Wow! He’s tough!
If you haven’t figured this out by now, Slay and Rainford are grooming a stalking horse in Boyd. If all these people stay alive until then – in this town, one never knows – then Boyd will come in handy to split the black vote whenever a viable black person finally runs against Slay (or his anointed successor, most likely Greg Daly or Joe Mokwa).
Final rubs
By the way, Slay himself already has voted in favor of this appropriation, as we learn in a paragraph buried deep in Wagman’s piece. He, Reed and Green – the City’s Board of Estimate and Apportionment – all voted for it, before Slay flipped on his colleagues and tried to use against them an appropriation he also had voted for.
This story also becomes a vehicle to whip Darlene over the sales tax increase.
Wagman reports Ways & Means Chairman Stephen Conway saying, “It does seem a little ironic that the comptroller, who did not support the sales tax for additional police, feels that there is a need for additional security for her.”
Actually, the sales tax increase mostly pays into pension funds that the City should have been paying into all along. And Conway seems to be suggesting that Darlene deserves whatever she gets on those mean streets based on her public position on a regressive sales tax hike. That’s very civic minded of Mr. Conway.
And, finally, here is that Clintonian high road at the end of the crawl through the slime. In that pompous tone found nowhere but on mayorslay.com, Slay says he thinks the aldermen “should” approve the appropriation for the sheriff’s deputies that he already voted for. “In the post-Kirkwood era of municipal government, it is probably better to be prudent,” Slay the prudent intoned. Jeffrey Boyd and Jake Wagman having done the mayor’s dirty work, Rainford and Callow now pose Francis to look mayoral. That’s the way St. Louis politics perpetuates itself.
Clay for Calloway
U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay has endorsed attorney Don Calloway for state representative in the 71st District. He hopes to replace the term-limited Esther Haywood. “Don is bright and motivated, and will bring great ideas and energy to the State House,” Clay said of his constituent.