Cop or Clown?

January 17, 2017

Mr. Schemp:

Why did I write the e-mail below sent to Alice Wolters and Lowell Pearson? You were Roger Wilson’s lawyer, and I had a brief encounter with Acting Governor Wilson at Mel Carnahan’s funeral. I was in Jefferson City that day for a meeting of my Department of Mental Health Central Office staff and figured I could file past the casket. I did not see any of my colleagues there from a critical job Bob Holden saw fit to remove from the budget.

I led a lobbying campaign to put the Mental Health Coordinators back in the budget and we failed, though RSMO 631 & 632 are still there. Many adventures followed at Chestnut Health Systems in Illinois and Saint Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center a.k.a. “State Hospital.”

I later took my vacation time payout of $6,300 and went to New Hampshire to write a book, then continued on to California with intent to sell a screenplay. Those are long stories. Today, I have invitations from the Hughes Center for Public Policy and the Eagleton Institute of Politics, which is not named after Missouri Senator Tom Eagleton, but the courthouse I don’t like much is.

In Galloway, New Jersey all are free to study the career of William J. Hughes, who had many successes in congress. At the Eagleton, they have a center within Rutgers University that studies governors, like Richard J. Hughes, a well-liked New Jersey Democrat. And then there is Harold E. Hughes, who was an Iowa governor for one term and a U.S. Senator rumored to be a possible presidential contender despite having disclosed climbing in a bathtub to kill himself with a shotgun. That Hughes relative also talked Bobby Kennedy into running for president, with an unsatisfactory outcome; on this I think we can all agree.

How was Governor Hughes a Democrat and powerful statesman in a predominantly Republican state? He told the truth, as do I, and people responded to it. I’d like to emerge from some time in New Jersey either set on representing my old neighborhoods instead of Lacy Clay or beating the tar out of this arrogant, two-faced, Democrat defector weirdo you’ve elected governor.

This costs money. No, you cannot have the phone number of a California DMH official who said, “If you ran for governor, I’d vote for you.” He was not joking, and I am not either. Why would I try to run for governor out there? My California identification card oddly remains the only valid I.D. I have, despite four years of trying to reason with local associates and a family that was kind enough to rent me a claptrap structure at a notorious drug-dealing address.

I’ll follow-up on this tomorrow, and please do not mention the ACLU, as this is one liberal with a very low opinion of them.

Thanks,

William C. Hughes