The Fall of Paul

Shit rolls downhill.

"That's what I tell people," says Paul Danaher, who was the ninth child in a family of sixteen. "My brothers were tough older brothers."

Amid so many siblings, Danaher learned early to stand up and fight for what was his -- his fair share of dinner, his shoes, his dignity. On his first day of kindergarten, one of his big brothers ordered him to march up to another kid and punch him in the mouth.

That's the Paul Danaher Kansas City power players have come to know and love to hate.

Paul Danaher, the bare-fisted politician.

Paul Danaher, the "in your face" "anti-tax zealot."

Paul Danaher, the "negative" "parasite" "kook" who, in the words of one politically active business leader, "is basically against everything."

Until just a couple of weeks ago, he was the outsider with an outside chance of beating Mayor Kay Barnes. Many people hoped he would -- he had raised $75,000 from a wide range of people, from entrepreneurs to neighborhood activists to little old ladies north of the river. Even folks who were leery of him wanted him to stay in the race if for no other reason than to give Barnes a run for her well-documented money -- to make her account for a term that has been a disappointment to many of her early supporters.

But in the end, Danaher became the scrapper who would shock everyone by dropping out.

After all, he's the kind of leader who has the gall to take a stand against his own sister and people who live in the neighborhood where they both grew up.

Midway through his first term on the City Council, in 1998, Danaher invited dozens of homeowners from Coleman Highlands to meet with him at the Roanoke Community Center. The topic: a local businessman's plan to expand his warehouse operation near their backyards.

Coleman Highlands is an enclave of three-story stone and stucco houses with broad porches, spread across a bluff just west of Penn Valley Community College. Though quiet, the neighborhood is surrounded on the north and west by such light-industrial operations as the Kansas City Poster Display Company, Boulevard Brewery and Dean Machinery -- the company that was hoping to expand.

What the neighbors wanted was a buffer between their stately homes and all the trucks and beeping forklifts. They had hoped the city would condemn Dean Machinery's property and turn it into a park.

When they arrived at the community center, nestled between two steep, wooded hills in Roanoke Park, they had hoped for a private audience with Councilman Danaher.

Instead, he'd brought along representatives from Dean Machinery and their lawyer.

"His attitude at the time was fairly anti-neighborhood," says Joyce Williams, then-president of the neighborhood association. She and the other Coleman Highlanders in attendance -- including Danaher's sister Rita -- were outraged. At one point, Rita stood up in the back of the room and raised her voice in disagreement with her brother.

For Danaher, the issue wasn't about protecting a quiet community from a wealthy businessman's noisy scheme. He saw it as an opportunity to protect all of America from a small attack on the Constitution. "It's his property," Danaher says of the owner of Dean Machinery. "If I was just a go-along-get-along guy, I probably would have said, 'No, he's just one person. We'll let a vocal few dictate how he handles his property.' But fundamentally I didn't think that was the right thing to do."

Though he came off as callous and aloof, today Danaher says he struggled with the decision.

"I spent 25 years in that neighborhood," he says. "It's not easy to make what you think is the right decision but is maybe not the popular one. But that's the nature of leadership. You're not going to be popular."

That spring, Danaher's colleagues on the City Council approved a plan to condemn Dean's property. It wasn't unusual for Danaher to find himself on the losing side. Throughout his two terms on the council, he has often cast the lone dissenting vote -- a fact he's not at all ashamed of.

"Some of my best votes have been twelve to one," he says.

It's this kind of political will that ultimately snuffed out Danaher's dream of becoming mayor.

Its roots stretch back to the late '70s, when Danaher hurriedly filled college notebooks as a student in a political philosophy class taught by Dr. Leo de Alvarez at the University of Dallas. Danaher took the course his sophomore year, after a trip to Rome and Greece during which he had toured the still-standing foundations of Western civilization. Twice a week, de Alvarez held forth on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, Heidegger and Lincoln. Danaher would emerge from each ninety-minute class with seven pages of finely printed script.

Not long into the semester, he called Mary Anderson, whom he'd begun dating over summer break back home in Kansas City. He told her that he had switched his major.

"What are you gonna do with politics?" she asked.

"Well, I haven't given that any thought," Danaher replied.