JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Kansas City’s mayoral candidates went eastward Saturday, and not all received a warm reception.

In fact, two of the candidates, Mayor Mark Funkhouser and Councilwoman Deb Hermann, got a downright chilly response. The forum drew a crowd of about 100 people at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center on Blue Parkway.

The candidates on hand, besides Funkhouser and Hermann, were Mike Burke, Jim Rowland, Sly James and Charles B. Wheeler. Henry Klein was absent.

Funkhouser, Rowland, Burke, James (standing), Hermann and Wheeler

Under the rules of the forum, sponsored by The Call newspaper, people in the audience had a chance to question the candidates directly. When that part of the program arrived, about 10 people quickly lined up behind the microphone.

One questioner put this question to Funkhouser:

“Why is it we should give you a second term?”

Funkhouser said he had initiated several programs in the 3rd and 5th council districts, including his Schools First program, which aims to improve curbs and sidewalks around public schools. In addition, he said, “I’ve been in the community over and over.”

His explanation drew no applause or expressions of approval from the audience.

People queued up to ask questions of the mayoral candidates

Another person told Hermann he had never seen her in the inner city. “I’m sorry if that’s your perception,” she said. “But that’s not the case.”

Like Funkhouser, Hermann got very little, if any, positive response from the audience throughout the event.

Another candidate who got roughed up a bit was Rowland, who has secured the endorsement of Freedom Inc., the city’s major black political organization.

After Rowland bragged that $180 million of the $700 million Sports Complex improvement project had gone to women- and minority-owned businesses, Eric Wesson, an event moderator who is news editor of The Call, challenged him, saying he didn’t think the minority role was as significant as Rowland depicted it.

The audience’s lack of embrace for Funkhouser, Burke, Rowland and Hermann could indicate that each will have a problem getting a significant number of votes from black residents. Funkhouser has never been popular with black voters; Burke and Hermann hail from the Northland; and Rowland lives in the 4th District, in western Kansas City.

Burke got a spot of good news earlier in the day, however, when six black ministers, including Wallace S. Hartsfield and Wallace S. Hartsfield II, endorsed him. A Burke for Mayor press release quoted Hartsfield II as saying: “Mike Burke is the only mayoral candidate that backs up his words of inclusiveness with real actions. We feel that he is truly committed to working with our communities, fighting to have our voices heard and represented in city government.”

The only candidate who received anything close to a warm reception at the forum was Sly James, who is the only black mayoral candidate. He drew applause a few times, including once when he countered a moderator’s assertion that the City Council had no direct role in the quality of education in the Kansas City School District.

“The district is not under the direct jurisdiction of the city,” James said, “but we certainly have a moral obligation and citizen obligation to address education.”

Nevertheless, James, a lawyer, has his work cut out for him on the East Side, partly because he doesn’t live there and partly because he didn’t get Freedom’s endorsement. Also, this is his first run for public office, while all of the other candidates have run for or held public office before.

It appears at this point that the vote in the black wards could be very dispersed in the Feb. 22 primary. That would hurt Rowland and help Hermann, whose popularity in the Northland might give her the single largest voting block.

Burke expects to do well in all parts of the city, but he has no single area that he can count on for great numbers of votes.

And, so, with three weeks remaining in the campaign, here’s how it is shaping up:

Klein and Wheeler are out of it. No chance. Funkhouser is fading fast, as the other candidates have started to use him for the punching bag that he is. James sounds good but has no record to back up his words. Rowland comes off as knowledgeable but antiseptic, seldom connecting with his audience.

That leaves the two Northlanders — Hermann and Burke — as the favorites, at least in my book. Hermann comes across as genuine, unpretentious and level-headed. Burke, although hardly charismatic, is as solid as a rock and has built up a trove of goodwill citywide, partly through his service on just about every economic-development agency that operates in the city.

They are the best candidates, and, for the future of Kansas City, let’s hope they are the top two finishers on Feb. 22.

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One of my favorite movie lines comes from a 1971 classic, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” in which Warren Beatty plays an enterprising but bumbling whore-house owner in the Wild West. He falls in love with the madam, Julie Christie, but runs into all manner of problems. At one point, speaking of women, he mumbles to himself, “Money and pain. Pain and money…Money…Pain.”

Beatty/McCabe

Funk/Funk

Given the legal developments of the last week or so, that would be a suitable refrain for Mayor Mark Funkhouser and other City Council members, including mayoral candidate Deb Hermann.

Join me, then, in taking a closer look at that story and two others — one a local story that became national and one out of Chicago.

:: The tidal wave of money going out of City Hall because of legal setbacks. Translation: Bad news for incumbents.

The front page of today’s Kansas City Star — the lead story, in fact — tells most of the ugly story. In the last four days, courts have awarded more than $5 million to two former employees who were wrongfully terminated and to a judicial candidate who was on a panel that the City Council improperly rejected in 2006.

On Thursday, a Jackson County Circuit Court jury awarded more than $2.6 million to two former budget analysts — 63-year-old Jordan Griffin and 54-year-old Colleen Low — who claimed the city discriminated against them when it laid them off in 2009. Part of the problem for the city was that Griffin and Low were laid off by now-acting City Manager Troy Schulte after Schulte told them they wouldn’t be laid off.

That verdict came on the heels of a Tuesday decision by the Missouri Supreme Court upholding a damage award of nearly $3 million to former municipal judge candidate Melissa Howard. Howard contended that the City Council unfairly denied her consideration for a judgeship in 2006 because she was white. (Interestingly, the council, after twice throwing out the all-white panel of three candidates, ended up appointing a white woman to the post.)

City Hall reporter Lynn Horsley wrote in her story that the Supreme Court ruling “sent shock waves through City Hall,” partly because employees worried that the ruling might adversely affect their wages.

I mentioned that Horsley’s report told most of the story. For some reason — perhaps because she’s not the sort to pile on — she omitted the City Council’s approval last week of a $125,000 settlement with a former aide to Mayor Mark Funkhouser. Funkhouser fired the aide, Shawn Pierce, because Pierce sided with another mayoral employee, Ruth Bates, who also sued the city successfully.  The city had to shell out $550,000 to Bates, a black woman who alleged she was harassed and discriminated against by Funkhouser’s wife, Gloria Squitiro. That’s $675,000 in city funds paid out because of Gloria’s totally unprofessional bearing.

How will all this play out in the current city elections? Hard to say, but today’s big, front-page headline certainly has to be more than a pinprick for incumbent council members seeking re-election. Two of seven candidates in the mayor’s race are incumbents — Funkhouser, who was elected in 2007 — before the Howard matter came up — and Hermann, who is completing her second term on the council.

In fairness to Hermann, she voted against the motion to reject the Howard panel. Her hands are clean on that matter, but the problem is that, to some degree, she’ll be seen by some city residents as having been painted with the same broad brush.

On balance, this is probably another major setback for Funkhouser, a medium to mild setback for Hermann and a bonus for the other three top mayoral candidates — Mike Burke, Jim Rowland and Sly James.

:: The uplifting story of Gil Meche. He made the front page of Thursday’s The New York Times.

NYT writer Tyler Kepner brought to the attention of readers nationwide the remarkable story of Meche, who decided to retire because of a lingering shoulder injury rather than hang on and collect $12 million for the last season of his contract.

Kepner quoted Meche as saying: “When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it. Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”

Inspiring, isn’t it? Someone who values self-respect over cash? It’s a great lesson for young people.

On a personal note, when Meche made his last start last season (I don’t remember what month it was), I stood up in the stands and booed loudly at one point, as he got shelled by opposing batters. What I didn’t realize was that Meche was pitching in pain; he couldn’t perform up to his capabilities. I apologize, Gil.

:: Unflappable Rahm Emanuel: The force that will not be denied.

At the end of a topsy-turvy week, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama is securely on the ballot in the Chicago mayor’s race. Candidates for mayor are required to have resided in Chicago for at least a year before Election Day. Emanuel left the White House last fall, but Emanuel argued that he was still a Chicago resident because he owned a house, paid taxes and voted there.

On Monday, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that Emanuel did not qualify, saying he had to physically live in the city. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court overturned that ruling, putting Emanuel back on the ballot once and for all.

What was perhaps most amazing about this story was how Emanuel appeared to maintain total equanimity during the turbulent days.

“Throughout the challenges to Mr. Emanuel’s candidacy,” Monica Davey wrote in today’s New York Times,” he had confidently asserted that he would be allowed to run, and had proceeded with routine campaign events as if there was no crisis.”

Davey went on to report that “moments after the ruling was issued late thursday,” Mr. Emanuel was shaking hands with voters at a downtown “L” train stop, where many had yet to hear the outcome, and asked what had happened.”

I guess that after the pressure cooker of the White House, a little dust-up with the top Illinois courts is not something that will not easily rattle a guy.

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The issues of conventions (can Kansas City be competitive?) and development (where’s it gone?) took center stage tonight at a mayoral forum sponsored by the American Institute of Architects of Kansas City.

More than 100 people attended the forum at the AIA’s comfortable, cutting-edge space at 1801 McGee. Those in attendance sat in black, hard-back chairs under a wide, red, runway-type ceiling. The five mayoral candidates who participated sat at a table in the front of the room, against a red wall that presents as a vertical extension of the ceiling.

The candidates took turns answering questions put to them by Kevin Collison, The Star’s development writer.

Participating candidates were Jim Rowland, Henry Klein, Sly James, Mayor Mark Funkhouser and Mike Burke.

An AIA official said Deb Hermann had informed the group that she would arrive late, but she failed to show. Later, she said she had attended a long-scheduled campaign event at a home in the Brookside area. “You can’t just hit everything,” Hermann said, referring to the many mayoral events.

The seventh mayoral candidate, Charles B. Wheeler, said later when reached at home that he didn’t know about the forum. The AIA official said she had either e-mailed or called the Wheeler campaign but had not heard back. “That’s possible,” Wheeler said, adding that he was enjoying a Laurel and Hardy movie on TV.

Wheeler and Hermann missed a good show. The discussion was energetic, for the most part, and sometimes intense.

Is the party over?

For example, on the issue of a proposed $300-million-plus convention hotel, Funkhouser essentially wrote Kansas City off as a major convention destination. “We do not need this hotel,” he said forcefully. “…This is a huge (financial) risk. We are probably not going to be a high-end, national convention city…This is a bad, bad idea.”

In surveys and elsewhere, he said, few city residents cite a convention hotel as a high priority.

Sitting to Funkhouser’s left and answering after Funkhouser, Burke, a former Convention & Visitors Bureau board member, took a sharply contrasting position. Convention business is critical to the city, he said, and the need for a downtown convention hotel is great.

At the same time, he said, “we cannot put the city’s general fund at risk.”

Klein said he was “very skeptical” about the feasibility of a convention hotel and pointed to the bankruptcy of a downtown hotel in St. Louis (apparently a Sheraton property that failed last September) as good reason to be skeptical.

Rowland urged patience, saying “a process is in place” that probably would determine whether the city should provide significant financial incentives and backing for such a project. He was referring to a steering committee that has been studying the issue and could make a recommendation to the City Council as soon as March.

Like Burke, James said the city needed a new convention hotel but that it should not come at the expense of a lower bond rating for the city or increased debt level. (As a practical matter, there’s virtually no way the city would be able to provide significant financial backing without taking on new debt.)

Earlier in the forum, Collison asked the candidates to rate, on an A-to-F scale, how the city was doing in recent years in terms of “development and investment activity.”

Starting off, Burke handed out a grade of “D,” citing the “collapse” of the Plaza’s West Edge project and the loss of the Wizards soccer team (going to KCK) as evidence of significant slippage. He offered optimism, however, saying “we’re coming out of this recession” and that the city needs to take advantage of the improved situation.

Funkhouser gave a grade of “C” and said the city had lost thousands and thousands of middle- and upper-income residents in recent years to the suburbs. A turnaround, he said, will hinge on “slow, organic growth.”

Like Burke, James issued a grade of “D,” and Klein, while he took his full quotient of time, didn’t give a specific grade. He said, among other things, that incentives the city handed out in earlier years (presumably for projects like the Power & Light District) might have created the illusion that things were significantly better back then.

Rowland gave the city the lowest grade — ”D-minus, at best” — charging that Funkhouser and the council had established “an environment that is toxic for development and business.”

“There are too many road blocks, too many barriers, too much red tape,” he said. Later, answering a related question, he said: “I would change fundamentally the tone at City Hall.”

The evening had its funny moments. At one point, for example, Rowland found himself agreeing with Funkhouser on an issue, after having agreed with him on another issue minutes earlier.

“This is twice,” he said, “and I’m not going to do it again.”

The last question of the evening — from an audience member named Tiffany Miller — made all of the candidates, except Burke, squirm. As a prelude to her question, which had to do with a HUD home-repair program, Miller said she had e-mailed her question to each of the candidates, using e-mail addresses on their web sites. Burke was the only candidate to respond, she said.

The candidates — except Burke, who was smiling contentedly — scrambled to come up with reasons why they had either missed the e-mail or failed to respond.

Funkhouser covered himself by saying he had spoken with Miller about the issue in the past. James said Miller’s e-mail was in a queue of 200 or 300 messages that he hadn’t read yet.

Then came Rowland with a real head-scratcher.

“I haven’t been home or slept the last 48 hours,” he said.

That was greeted with tittering from the audience.

Minutes later, after the forum had ended, I asked Miller what she thought about Rowland’s explanation.

“Yeah, my dog ate it,” she said.

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