This past Tuesday, the Democratic candidate for St. Louis city Recorder of Deeds, Sharon Quigley Carpenter, won the post with 61% of the vote. Not a big surprise, if you know that St. Louis is a pretty strongly Democratic-leaning city. Except here's the problem: Carpenter should not have won, based on reports this year of nepotism and financial mismanagement. So for all that our side rips on the fools of FL and WI for re-electing Rick Scott and Scott Walker as their governors, Repuke voters don't have a monopoly on blind party loyalty. More (from others, of course) below the flip....
The Riverfront Times has had a serious of blog posts and articles this year about the sleazy dealings of Carpenter, such as this post from October by Danny Wicentowski which notes:
"....Carpenter hired a great-nephew for two summers and a winter between 2010 and 2012 and paid him more than $12,000. This was hardly a Watergate-level revelation, but Carpenter had broken the law. The state's nepotism statute forbids officials from hiring anyone "within the fourth degree" of relation."
Carpenter resigned in July in the wake of this revelation, but she fully intended to run again in the fall, since her name was on the August primary ballot and she won the Democratic nomination handily. STL Mayor Francis Slay appointed a past Democratic alderwoman, Jennifer Florida, to the post of Recorder of Deeds after Carpenter's resignation. In addition to starting to clean house in the Recorder of Deeds office, Florida had to ramp up a campaign to try to hold the post in November. But because Carpenter was the chosen Democratic candidate, Florida had to run as an independent. A friend did hit bit last summer and urged me to vote for JF in November, and I got the negative attack ad mail on behalf of JF's campaign last month. Not a peep from the Carpenter campaign, but then, according to Marie Ceselski, an employee in the office of the Recorder of Deeds and the main whistle-blower about the Carpenter sleaze, Carpenter probably didn't need to, per
this RFT blog post from Wicentowski this past Monday:
'Despite the scandal, Ceselski sees Carpenter as the favorite to win. Ceselski faults Florida's campaign for not better educating voters on improvements Florida made since taking over in July....
"I think both campaigns have failed voters, I think the media have failed voters, and I think politicians have failed voters," Ceselski says.'
To add to the Carpenter sleaze, Wicentowski had
this other post the day before Election Day, which stated:
"Former Recorder of Deeds Sharon Carpenter misspent $130,274.08 of city funds between July, 1 2010 and and June 30, 2014, according to a draft version of an audit conducted by the St. Louis Comptroller's Office.
The expenses included reimbursements to employees for restaurant, travel and hotel bills during conventions, as well as picking up the tab at meetings with vendors. According to the audit, which was acquired by Daily RFT through a Sunshine Request, Carpenter payed [sic] for those items by tapping the Technology and Archival Account, a fund whose usage is restricted under state statute to "record storage, microfilming, and preservation, including anything necessarily thereto."
Ceselski elaborated on her own blog
here. Here are just the bullet point sentences:
"Sharon Carpenter Took Vacations With Her City Issued Vehicle."
"Sharon Carpenter Used Public Funds To Restore Her St. Louis Statue"
"Sharon Carpenter Used Public Funds To Buy Her Family’s Genealogy Books."
"Sharon Carpenter Booked A Conference At Her Daughter’s Hotel:"
"Sharon Carpenter Used Campaign Funds To Buy Flowers From Family."
"Sharon Carpenter Used Campaign Funds For Her Family’s Participation in St. Patrick’s Day Parade."
"Sharon Carpenter Used Campaign Funds For Cardinals Tickets."
"Sharon Carpenter Used Recorder Staff And Equipment To Plan Her Children’s Weddings And Other Events."
Granted, this could almost read like a negative campaign mailing for Jennifer Florida's campaign. But clearly
it didn't work. What will happen after this, who knows. It's not hard to guess that Carpenter will retaliate against the whistleblowers, particularly Ceselski, are on Carpenter's "dislike" list. Ceselski doesn't seem afraid, though, per
this blog post of hers the day before Election Day:
"Recorder of Deeds employees who are whistleblowers have the right to sue if we are retaliated against. We can sue for retaliation against reporting wrongdoing and violations of law or public policy. We can sue for retaliation against refusal to perform an illegal act or act contrary to public policy.
Recorder of Deeds employees are not at-will employees. We can be fired for cause and only cause. Sharon Carpenter is not coming back to power and punishing everyone who did not remain “loyal” to her. She can try, but she won’t win. And it will be very costly for her.
Recorder employees cannot be fired for our politics. (Not yet anyway.)..."
The question is how much of a Mark Sanford that Sharon Quigley Carpenter can pull off, as she goes back to her old job. In all likelihood, with time, especially given how clubby and parochial STL can be, things will probably blow over and people will forget, or at least not enough people will have the bandwidth to care to keep the spotlight shining on Carpenter. In a small election where STL Democrats could have shown themselves as truly superior to Republicans in kicking out the trash and putting in good people, this was not their finest hour. I was one of the 15,918 who voted for Jennifer Florida. Too bad only 58,652 STL city voters cared enough to vote on this.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week......