It was a bad week for Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, who dropped her court battle challenging the recall effort against her after it blew up in her face in Genesee Co. circuit court.
Meanwhile, veteran Flint councilman Scott Kincaid announced today at a local UAW Labor Day celebration that he will pass up the chance for certain re-election to the council for the opportunity to take on Weaver in November. There are more than a dozen other candidates in the race, but Kincaid is confident he can prevail.
Kincaid challenged then-incumbent mayor Woodrow Stanley back in 1999 and lost narrowly. Two years later, Stanley was recalled. Now, Kincaid perceives he has a second chance against a different flawed incumbent.
Weaver’s attorney watched in embarrassment and shame Tuesday after Weaver’s own witnesses offered testimony before Judge Geoffrey Neithercut that Flint police questioned and allegedly tried to bribe Flint residents into claiming in court that they had participated in petition signature-forging to enable the recall effort against Weaver.
The embattled Weaver had filed her legal challenge Aug. 22, asking Neithercut to order Genesee Co. Clerk John Gleason — a former state senator — to rescind his declaration of November’s recall election.
But everything changed in court this past week when, one by one, under oath, four of the mayor’s own witnesses testified that they had been summoned to court by police after signing recall petitions. In fact, two petition circulators said they were offered bribes by Weaver or City Administrator Sylvester Jones to stop collecting signatures.
Weaver’s effort to “spin” her administration’s agenda for the past year and a half has now been brought up short by the Flint city council, which refused to authorize payment to a Lansing public relations firm that has been propping up Weaver gratis since 2016, hoping to eventually be paid. Now Weaver and her city hall flacks are on their own.
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Actually it was A Great Week for Mayor
Weaver Virtually Assuring Her Continuence.
Her Field of Challengers will split the Vote
For her Benefit!
Nobody cares about some Courtroom Ballet.
No one in the field has any real Money or Talent.
Her Base feels She has done a better job than the last few Mayors!
Jerry could,be right — see April 25 article in TheBallengerReport.com that tells how difficult it has become under the new recall law to recall an incumbent …
In the nearly 2 years since the Flint water situation went viral in the national news and became a trendy cause celebre, the Democratic Party has masterfully pulled the public relations wool over an unsuspecting and, I would argue, ignorant populace. That is to say, the Dems have placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the man at top –Gov. Rick Snyder, who has been in office for only 6 years and — rather than placing the scrutiny where it really belongs: the generation-after-generation stranglehold that the Democratic Party has had on Flint’s municipal government positions. The infrastructure and pipes did not deteriorate in six years. They deteriorated over the last 50 years, when the Democrat-dominated mayors and city council members were asleep at the wheel. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, though, they pointed to the 48th governor and assumed no blame for their negligence over the long term. Not fair. . . but the public largely has fallen for the bait hook, line, and sinker. Just my two cents.