It's Sandersman!

Fry tells the Pitch that he was surprised to hear rumors about his departure; he says he didn't leave angry and wasn't fired. Instead, he says, he'd recently turned 50 and ushered his youngest child out of college. He figured it was time to try private practice.

Also within his first year, Sanders had to help in the campaign to get voters to renew the Community-Backed Anti-Drug Tax in August 2003. (First passed in 1989, the tax must be periodically extended.)

Sanders had much at stake in the election. The quarter-cent sales tax generates nearly $20 million a year; about $6 million of that goes toward Sanders' $15.5 million annual budget.

Shields controls the remainder.

The COMBAT tax passed easily — but the campaign would be the last time that Sanders and Shields appeared to be allies.

Soon after, an argument over the COMBAT funds would undo their public relationship.

Though voters had just renewed the tax in August 2003, by January 2004, Shields was predicting doom for COMBAT-funded programs, saying cuts were inevitable because projected revenues from the tax were declining.

The news discouraged Mills, who was running the KCPD's narcotics unit. COMBAT pays for its detectives and street-level narcotics officers, but over the previous five years, the dwindling budget had forced him to cut, he estimates, an average of one officer a year from the unit.

Shields' gloomy picture stung more because Mills' officers had played such an important role in getting the COMBAT tax renewed just five months earlier. "They relied upon us, on the police, to get that tax passed," Mills says. "We told our story."

Contrary to Shields' assertions, Sanders told the COMBAT Commission that the tax had generated a $10 million surplus that Shields was unwilling to acknowledge. (Shields later pointed out that the $10 million was accounted for in the annual audit.)

Even Mills was surprised when Sanders raised the question of the surplus and announced he'd be doing his own audit of the program.

Within weeks, Shields said the FBI was investigating Sanders' office and his handling of drug-treatment contracts connected to his drug court. The next day, in a highly unusual statement, U.S. Attorney Graves announced that he was not investigating Sanders. A week later, Shields acknowledged during a radio interview that she had been the one to call Graves about Sanders.

Sanders says he was warned not to cross Shields. "You are asking questions of one of the most powerful figures in the western half of the state of Missouri," he says confidants told him.

"I thought he was a bit nuts at first," echoes Kerr. "I thought it was a fight he probably couldn't win because of the Star being very pro-Katheryn Shields."

At home, Georgia echoed those concerns. She had resigned from the prosecutor's office when Sanders took over and was caring for the couple's first child, a 4-month-old boy who had been born prematurely and remained in the hospital for a month before he could go home. Her raw emotions were irritated by the mean-spirited nature of Jackson County politics.

But Sanders says he was worried about his budget, not politics. Had he been motivated by politics, he says, he would have waited two short months to question Shields' numbers.

That's because Beaird's term — the one Sanders was finishing — would expire at the end of 2004. By January 2004, no other candidates had emerged to challenge Sanders. Maybe none would have.

"If this had been a political decision on my part, I would have waited until after the [March 30] filing deadline," Sanders says.

But by publicly questioning Shields, Sanders virtually guaranteed that he'd have at least one Shields-backed challenger in the August 2004 primary.

He had two. Shields supported both Kathy Finnell and Cynthia Clark Campbell (she donated money to Campbell's campaign) for the August 2004 primary election.

But Sanders won handily. (Adding insult to injury for Shields, the Committee for County Progress, a political organization Shields had long dominated, endorsed Sanders.)

By April, Shields would be in political — and perhaps legal — trouble when a federal grand jury began calling in witnesses to talk about an appointment to the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority that Shields had helped broker. By November, Shields' political ally Bill Waris would be indicted for lying and obstruction of justice related to that appointment, and Shields would be outed as the subject of an FBI bribery investigation.

Sanders, meanwhile, continued to amass political power.

Over Shields' objections, he was able to muscle through raises for his prosecutors and administrative staff, both of whom are represented by unions. By doing so, Sanders made good on his promises to the county's labor groups.

"There is no question we [labor interests] haven't always agreed on candidates, but Mike did bring unanimity," says Bridgette Williams, president of the local AFL-CIO.

In the past, Williams says, candidates who asked for labor's support didn't always keep their promises once they were elected. "Mike, we've never had that problem," she says. "He's been willing to stand up and do what's right for the betterment of his employees, not because of politics but because it's the right thing."

The deal also included provisions for domestic-partner benefits, something the Four Freedoms Democratic Club had all but given up on.