This week, the EYE defers to our Editorial Page for analysis of this week’s election results, and instead looks to news you may have missed in the midst of raucus campaign manuevers. We congratulate President-Elect Megan Green and new St. Louis Public School Board member Emily Hubbard for their successful campaigns and we look forward to watching the influence of their future endeavors.
With all of this time and money spent to lob legal challenges at Black women who are more than qualified for the jobs they hold, we wonder if IAFF Local 73 would perhaps be willing to set aside whatever their love is for Lewis Reed to consider fighting on the same side as the people’s mayor, Tishaura Jones.
The road to Tuesday’s General Election took several different twists and turns in the tradition of partisan politics, pitting friend against friend and forcing strange and unexpected bedfellows.
In days leading up to the campaign, Ald. Pamela Boyd (Ward 27) announced her endorsement of aldermanic presidential loser Ald. Jack Coatar in a very underhanded way. Using her official aldermanic letterhead – which is specifically prohibited under Missouri election law – Boyd referred to herself as the “13th Ward Alderwoman” (a position to which she has not been elected) and suggests that she and the “New 13th Ward” (which does not yet exist) endorsed Coatar (again, something that is not possible). The letter, delivered to “13th Ward Residents,” is dated September 28, but came to the EYE’s attention on Monday of this week.
The endorsement appears to be on city taxpayer-funded stationery, which is not permissible. Had Boyd used her own campaign letterhead, this situation wouldn’t warrant any mention. An ethical line was undoubtedly crossed and a state law was broken – and to what purpose – a showcase to gain Coatar’s favor?
Unfortunately, the Missouri Ethics Commission – the state body appointed by the governor to review and investigate campaign ethics complaints – has been so understaffed that its watchdog group has effectively been rendered useless. This problem could easily be remedied by Governor Mike Parson if he fulfilled one of the duties of his elected office and completed the appointment of members to the MEC. Parson has intentionally failed to follow through with making these appointments. Even if a complaint were filed against Boyd for this blatant misuse of public resources, the likelihood of consequences is slim. Restorative justice – which would address the misrepresentations that Boyd made to voters about her ward structure and subsequent endorsements – appears to be non-existent in this case.
Adding further chaos in Coatar’s collection of dubious recommendations were his repeated social media posts, touting an endorsement by the 6th Ward Democrats. There’s just one problem — the 6th Ward Democrats never actually voted to endorse Coatar.
In fact, the committeeman seat has been vacant for months and the committeewoman is close to Coatar’s conqueror, President-Elect Green. The only reason that makes sense is that Coatar received support from the former 6th Ward committeewoman – Mary Entrup, the spouse of disgraced former aldermanic president Lewis Reed. Entrup is known for her own government scandal when she served as a City housing court judge, somehow defying logic and hearing more than 26,000 housing cases from 2009 to 2011. That averages out to approximately 8,666 housing cases per year, and, if we assume that Ms. Entrup never took a day off from hearing cases, that put 23 evictions on her docket every single day. Of course, that translated to more than $450,000 in fees generated for city coffers, just through Entrup’s kangaroo court. Entrup ultimately was asked to resign by Reed himself, likely due to the perceived conflict of interest discussed when Reed challenged then-mayor, Francis G. Slay.
Coatar was a staunch ally of Reed’s, and his alignment with Reed’s operative platform and donors ultimately failed to pay off for the young alderman. It makes sense that Coatar would fabricate the support of “6th Ward Democrats” in order to conceal Entrup’s support. But it took a certain amount of chutzpah for Coatar to sneakily claim the endorsement of his federally-indicted predecessor.
The 6th Ward wasn’t the only (likely) fabricated ward-wide endorsement received by Coatar. An insider told the EYE that 12th Ward Democrats were controlled by Collector of Revenue Gregory F.X. Daly, a staunch Coatar supporter. A Republican under any other circumstances, Daly is believed to have unilaterally decided on Coatar’s ward endorsement with little to no input from other 12th Ward residents. Nevertheless, Daly represented his endorsement of Coatar as that of his ward’s, raising some red flags about Daly’s own involvement in disenfranchising, ward organization members and usurping the prerogative of those members.
Speaking of allies of Reed who have had their own recent reckonings, IAFF Local 73’s political ambitions created shame for itself after an embarrassing legal loss last week. In its lawsuit challenging the appointment of the new City Personnel Director Sonya Jenkins-Gray, IAFF’s attorneys argued that Jenkins-Gray lacked the credentials required for her new role, including at least two years of “public personnel administration.” Somehow, Jenkins-Gray’s service to the U.S. Army was insufficient to IAFF attorneys, who then argued that the Personnel Director did not update her LinkedIn profile. That was the flimsy basis the white firefighters union relied upon to challenge the credentials of a well-qualified Black woman.
But the constant moving of the goal posts eventually caught up with IAFF, when its lawyers failed to appear for an emergency hearing – that they themselves had scheduled. In response, the city counselor asked the Court to dismiss IAFF’s suit in its entirety, but Judge Jason Sengheiser came up with a different solution: IAFF’s lawyers were ordered to appear to answer for their absence at their own hearing and to explain why the union should not be obligated to pay the city’s legal fees. Sengheiser then denied IAFF’s request for a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction, effectively ending the union’s ability to block Jenkins-Gray from taking office.
With all of this time and money spent to lob legal challenges at Black women who are more than qualified for the jobs they hold, we wonder if IAFF Local 73 would perhaps be willing to set aside whatever their love is for Lewis Reed to consider fighting on the same side as the people’s mayor, Tishaura Jones. After President-Elect Green’s solid win on Tuesday, the will of city voters has clearly shifted to a more progressive, people-centered form of government.
Imagine the city we could live in if our firefighters – and police, for that matter – recognized that the tides of political change are already upon them.
