On a Rail

In his mind, he was taking the high road. In the end, it just guaranteed another light-rail failure at the polls. Chastain could dream aloud, prodding people to sign his petition, but he could not lead.

And despite the failures, humility has yet to help him understand his leadership shortcomings.

"I'm not bitter. It's not my nature," he says. "(This vote) was the most disappointing yet because I know it's going to be my last one. Nobody in this town is going to do what I did."

Let's hope not. Let's hope there are no more failures when it comes to light rail. Let's also hope that Chastain really does what he says this time and stops mounting petition drives. But he promised to go away after his 1999 proposal was defeated, yet he returned, clipboard in hand.

"Anybody has a right to make a personal choice. I have a right to change my mind," he says. "I don't think that's unusual. I'm not going to apologize for changing my mind."

That comment points to Chastain's need for celebrity status and his denial of the responsibility that comes with occupying the public limelight. For Chastain, being public doesn't mean being a public figure. Why else would he brush aside as inconsequential the fact that he lied to the public about ending his light-rail petition drives? And why else would he lay blame everywhere except at his own feet when his proposals fail?

"It's a sick climate," Chastain says of the criticism directed at him and his ideas. And when The Star failed to endorse his most recent light-rail proposal, it was because it was "personal."

In 1996, when city officials prevented Chastain's competing sales tax proposal for renovating Union Station from getting on the ballot, it was personal. Chastain took the city to court, winning $50,000 and the opportunity to say he was right. The public recognized the wrong, and that empathy carried over into the 1998 vote on his light-rail proposal -- it got 45 percent of the vote. But Chastain didn't know how to ride the goodwill. Despite the legal vindication and his voluntary step into public view, every criticism, every question, every snub became personal. In a leadership role, nothing can become personal because that results in isolation. Chastain can't see that. Amid such blindness, he filed two libel lawsuits, keeping it personal. The basis for the suits were articles in The Kansas City Star and comments made on KCPT Channel 19's Ruckus program, both having to do with Chastain's 1999 proposal.

The Star was named in both lawsuits. Cleaver and Star reporter Jeff Spivak were also named in one; Chastain named political consultant Steve Glorioso and Rockhurst University political science professor Frank Smist in the other. A judge has since granted a motion to dismiss both lawsuits. Chastain says he doesn't plan to appeal the ruling on the suit against Glorioso and Smist but will appeal the one that includes The Star, Spivak, and Cleaver.

Incredibly, Chastain, the plaintiff, offered to drop the lawsuits for $150,000. What he does not understand is how the offer could be seen as attempted extortion, that the rights or wrongs of his lawsuits become irrelevant, that people would view them as nothing more than attempts to make some money. I have to wonder whether Chastain's debts from the 1999 and 2000 light-rail campaigns -- some $13,000 by his count -- drove him to such stupidity.

Many of his arguments I can support. In this town, leadership efforts find little footing when they come from outside the circle of attorneys and businessmen who maintain the status quo. Chastain's ideas for Union Station, Penn Valley Park, and light rail are visionary. If a banker like Bill Nelson or a philanthropist like Louis Smith or a businessman like Ollie Gates had come up with them, the civic establishment would have worked hard to lay the groundwork for public acceptance. There wouldn't have been the heavy-handed ridicule and blanket negativism that greeted Chastain at almost every turn.

There's no doubt that Chastain was hit hard in the press and on the street and that there was a conscious effort to magnify his faults and play to his greatest failings.

But when Chastain says, "It's too late for me," in response to my question about whether he'll mount yet another light-rail effort, I want him to mean it. If light rail never becomes a reality, a lot of people in Kansas City, including me, don't want to blame Clay Chastain. There will be plenty of other people needing something upside their heads.