Monroe Council Democrats play race card on pick

As always when it’s dealt, the majority Democrats on the Monroe City Council played the race card from the bottom of the deck, exposing their misbegotten and counterproductive agenda.

Last week, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Monroe’s new fire chief would be Timothy Williams. A new law gave him the power to do this, breaking a stalemate between the Council majority and independent Mayor Friday Ellis stretching past a year where the Council rejected two of his appointees.

The majority gave somewhat conflicting reasons for their rejections. Ellis’ first choice, Monroe Fire Department’s Daniel Overturf scored middling on the civil service exam and the majority said the city could do better, despite his strong rank-and-file backing. Williams, Bastrop’s fire chief, scored highest on the exam, as well as had a strong record in Bastrop, but then the Democrats switched their objection to he didn’t have managerial experience in a larger department. But besides having their candidacies sidelined by the Democrats, who are all black, the two had something else in common: both, like Ellis, are white.

Landry gave a mid-September deadline for the city to select, but talks between the Democrats and Ellis didn’t gain traction. Meanwhile, West Monroe hired away Overturf.

After learning of his choice, the majority’s rhetoric went into hyperdrive. Democrat Councilor Rodney McFarland called Ellis “anti-black.” He also called him a “liar,” because Ellis had kept negotiating over the selection while he didn’t publicize his request to the legislation giving Landry backup authority.

Another point of contention by McFarland, echoed by Democrat Councilor Verbon Muhammad, was Ellis reopened the exam qualification days before the Landry announcement. They and Councilor Juanita Woods said the pool was adequate for a selection and viewed this as a negotiating tactic.

However, understand much of the majority’s rhetoric on the issue is deceptive, if not at odds with reality. Oddly for someone described as “anti-black,” Ellis in his five years has appointed a number of blacks to significant city positions and his staff. Indeed, last year the majority rejected one of his highest-profile ones, esteemed black pastor Ike Byrd III for Community Affairs Director, out of pique that they felt Ellis had consulted insufficiently with them. For them, it’s all about using patronage power to create appointees of allies and/or beholden to them in their quest to elevate their power relative to the mayor’s.

As well, while they may share skin color, Ellis is a bit hair-impaired on his pate but sports a fine beard and Landry is the opposite. They aren’t the same person. Landry gave a deadline but the majority couldn’t come to terms with Ellis – it’s he, not they, who the city charter bestows with appointment power – and Ellis had no control over Landry’s decision, who or when. That doesn’t make Ellis dishonest, nor that he turned to legislative help to resolve the impasse during negotiations.

But let’s get down to brass tacks: what the majority really wants is to make race the defining qualification for top-level appointments, specifically to put blacks into those jobs. Muhammad has admitted that, endorsing a theory that with a majority black population appointments necessarily must reflect that. Yet why can’t they put that aside and consider new chief Williams, who served with record-setting distinction in a city with a higher proportion of black residents than Monroe’s, with an all-black city council, and whose boss was a black female? What more does he have to do to show he’ll run the department well and for the benefit of all citizens, take a lot of melanin and camp out in a tanning bed?

Unfortunately, in the short time since McFarland and Muhammad joined the Council it has become clear the majority they joined would inject race into issues such as budgeting and contracting; now, it has thrust race into the open in such a divisive way that this threatens to interfere with city progress. It's disturbing, if not shameful, that the Council majority can’t judge the content of a candidate’s character ahead of the color of one’s skin.