Ghost Patriots

Frances Semler keeps backfiring on people.

In spite of howls from minority constituencies, a stubborn Funkhouser refused to accept Semler's offer to resign. I still don't understand why the mayor, who preaches honesty, didn't dump Semler after she claimed — falsely — that she was "not active" in the Minutemen. (After Semler made that claim, Pitch writer Carolyn Szczepanski quickly revealed, in blog entries, the real extent of Semler's involvement.)

Funk screwed up, all right. But critics of the Semler appointment have screwed up, too — one of them in a way that bodes ill for her next few years as a 4th District city councilwoman.

On July 16, The Wall Street Journal printed a 1,300-word, trouble-in-the-heartland piece about the Semler controversy. The author, Miriam Jordan, quoted Councilwoman Beth Gottstein as saying: "This is about racism and divisiveness — everything we are not supposed to be about."

No argument about that. But later in the piece came this nugget: "Two days after the council approved a resolution against Mrs. Semler's appointment, several demonstrators gathered outside council member Ms. Gottstein's gated condominium with placards protesting her vote. Her office has been flooded with angry e-mail from Minutemen supporters across the country, she says."

I believe that angry 'mericans gave Semler's opponents an electronic piece of their minds. But the bit about protesters outside Gottstein's condo? I think the councilwoman made it up.

I've been reading about the local Minutemen since Szczepanski's cover story on them last fall ("To the Rescue," November 16, 2006). The feature didn't leave the impression that local chapters of the "corps" mustered that frequently. Yet we're to believe that the Minutemen or their supporters rallied for the not-very-satisfying experience of waving signs outside the crib of a councilwoman who voted with eight others on a largely symbolic resolution?

Szczepanski went to Topeka for a Minuteman rally on the day of the supposed Gottstein protest. None of the people she spoke with, she says, brought up the council resolution. Olathe resident Ed Hayes, who founded the Kansas Minuteman chapter, says he doesn't know anything about the demonstration described in The Wall Street Journal. "I don't even know where that woman lives," he tells me. The manager of Gottstein's condominium declined to comment.

I called the councilwoman on July 18 in an effort to talk to her about the Journal story and left a message. She didn't return the call, so the next day I tried to get a word with her after the council's regular Thursday business session. This is a fairly normal course of action for a reporter (after the meeting adjourned, The Kansas City Star's Lynn Horsley went behind the council table to chat with Funkhouser), but Gottstein acted as if I had ambushed her. She refused to talk and ducked into an elevator. Later, she called Pitch writer Nadia Pflaum, whom she had met on the campaign trail. Pflaum encouraged Gottstein to give me a call, which she did.

Gottstein, as you'll read in this lightly edited transcript of our conversation, refuses to remove my doubts about the protest. After greetings are exchanged, she begins by scolding me for trying to interview her between council meetings.

Beth Gottstein: "The element of surprise does not work too well with me when I've got my head all over the place."

Me: "OK. Well, I wasn't trying to — "

BG: "Oh, it sure felt that way. OK. So what was your question?"

Me: "Yeah, I just wanted to follow up with you about the story that was in The Wall Street Journal on the 16th."

BG: "What are you writing about? What are you covering?"

Me: "I wanted to follow up with you about the section of the story where it talks about the demonstrators outside your condominium. Can you describe that a little bit for me?"

BG: "I need to know what you're writing about."

Me: "I'm writing about you saying that there were people gathered outside your condominium."

BG: "Why now? It was so long ago. It's been over a month."

Me: "But the story just came out in The Wall Street Journal. That's the first I had seen of it, that this had happened."

BG: "Well, it's kind of old news now. How long ago has it been since he appointed her, five weeks?"

Me: "But, again, reading this article was the first time I had seen this mention of them protesting outside your house."

BG: "My complex. I live — "

Me: "Your residence — "