The Grudge Report

Proponents of the effort to recall Saundra McFadden-Weaver say she is unresponsive and unethical. They complain about the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council member's missed meetings, unreturned phone calls and clumsy breaches of trust.

"Our community is the laughingstock of the districts," says Quinnetta Fristoe, who signed the affidavit stating the grounds for recall.

McFadden-Weaver, however, does not see community pride welling up behind the movement to remove her from office.

She sees old grudges.

The recall vote is scheduled for February 8. McFadden-Weaver made her first formal defense at a December 14 meeting of the Citizens Association, a political club that endorses candidates, at the Screenland Theater downtown. Fristoe and fellow recall proponent Marlon Hammons spoke first, sitting at a table positioned between the first row of seats and the movie screen. Later, McFadden-Weaver spoke, remembering to smile as she enumerated the city's good deeds during her time in office.

McFadden-Weaver told the Citizens Association that "a small group" wanted to oust her. Speaking to reporters in the theater lobby afterward, McFadden-Weaver whittled the group to two men: Clinton Adams Jr., a lawyer renowned for his interest -- his detractors call it "meddling" -- in the affairs of the Kansas City, Missouri, School District, and former Councilman Ron Finley. McFadden-Weaver described the pair as "longtime political rivals" of hers and suggested that they had manufactured the uprising.

McFadden-Weaver won the seat in 2003 by defeating Finley, who served the 3rd District on the council from 1991 to 1999. Term limits forced Finley to find another office, and he was elected to the Jackson County Legislature in 1999. His wish was always to return to the council, though. McFadden-Weaver dashed that dream, winning the race in 2003 by 18 percentage points.

Finley shares a law office with Adams, whose influence over school business was such that he was said to keep a mailbox at district headquarters, despite holding no job or title there.

The one time Adams ran for the school board, in 1994, he got trounced, receiving the fewest votes of 13 candidates. At the Screenland, McFadden-Weaver noted that she had been the campaign spokeswoman for the candidate who won the race in which Adams had been so humiliated.

The recall, McFadden-Weaver believes, is a visit from the Ghosts of Elections Past. During the City Council campaign of early 2003, she called Finley and Adams "unethical" after Adams circulated an internal record from the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office that purported to show that McFadden-Weaver had bounced a $1,200 check to an auto salvage yard. No charges were brought, and McFadden-Weaver obtained a record showing that the case was "closed/paid."

As McFadden-Weaver sees it, the dirty tricks continue. She said at the December 14 Citizens Association meeting that she'd heard that Diane Charity, who has collected the 300 signatures necessary to be listed as an alternative candidate on the recall ballot, was recruited by Clinton Adams. McFadden-Weaver said that "several people out on the street" obtaining signatures to put the recall on the ballot had told her that Finley paid them.

"I haven't paid anybody," Finley tells the Pitch. "I haven't put in any time on it. I haven't helped organize or anything of that nature. She's trying to make this election, once again, about me and her. And she's trying to play the victim, which she's very good at."

Adams also plays down his involvement in the recall effort, telling the Pitchto talk to Fristoe and Hammons. They are, he says, "people who have been actively engaged in the process."

Adams cannot claim a total lack of interest, however. Documents at the city clerk's office show that he is the circulator of record on 13 of the recall petitions. Adams says he supports the recall because McFadden-Weaver has been ineffective and has lost her credibility. "She's basically not fit to serve," he says.

Adams rejects the notion that he has a vendetta. "I have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies -- just permanent issues."

However it was coordinated, McFadden-Weaver made the recall plausible when she appeared to say one thing and do another in the debate over raising taxes to build a downtown arena. When she ran for the council in 2003, McFadden-Weaver opposed public funding for an arena, which at the time was just an idea. Mayor Kay Barnes offered a plan in early 2004, putting the question on the August ballot. McFadden-Weaver was the only council member to voice opposition -- but she changed her stance a week before the election, explaining that city officials had promised that minority- and women-owned businesses would be suitably involved in the project. Shortly thereafter, a company run by Ricardo Lucas, a McFadden-Weaver ally, received $5,000 from the pro-arena side.

But on Election Day, Barnes' supporters found McFadden-Weaver with the anti-taxers, a coalition of whom had contributed to a political action committee, Partners for Community Progress, that McFadden-Weaver founded in 2004. An angry Barnes stripped McFadden-Weaver of her appointments on the Operations Committee and the Planning, Zoning and Economic Development Committee. "Those were key positions," Marlon Hammons says.

McFadden-Weaver toils today on the Aviation Committee and the Legislative, Rules and Ethics Committee -- where it's hard to show that she's making any difference in her constituents' lives.