Mud ain’t all I smell

By Kevin Lee

Mobile Bay’s brown waves are thanks to the tons of silt rolling through the delta each year, but if you’re familiar with our history, you’d know the dirt might as well be flowing from the offices of our civic leaders.

Why, sleepy little Mobile? Corrupt? Just a bit. Enough that we might consider shelving the azalea and making a pair of handcuffs our city symbol. Corruption seems to be a more time-honored tradition here than mosquitoes, yellow fever or sweat. It’s as old as the town itself.

Everybody knows – or should – that Mobile was founded by the French in 1702. Want to take a stab at when the first scandal emerged? Try 1707.

Mobile was still located further upriver when word reached the crown in Europe that founding governor Bienville was working schemes with the warehouses on Dauphin Island and at Dog River, vital links in the supply chain connecting the new town with the ocean. Bienville’s boss appointed a new governor, then put him on a ship with a special investigator and shoved them in the direction of the New World.

Bienville was lucky, though, and his replacement died en route. When the investigator arrived in Mobile, he was facing an entrenched power broker (and posse) with no new authority to back him up. Behold, our first old “good ol’ boy” network staring down an “outside agitator.”

Bienville put up a cooperative front. After all, he had nothing to fear.

“Sure son, we’ll help you try and have me thrown into chains. Just don’t pay any attention to the fact you’re surrounded by hostile eyes and thousands of square miles of swampy wilderness, natives and alligators where anyone could dispose of your body with no one in France ever knowing what happened. We trust you’ll be fair.”

The investigator never proved any wrongdoing. Ain’t it funny the insight self-preservation can provide?

Mobile steamed in the Southern sun for centuries, building wealth with King Cotton then falling on hard times before slowly climbing upright again. But we weren’t so high and mighty we could forget about our crooked roots.

We had a Jazz Age District Attorney – “Black” Bart Chamberlain – who sprang from the city’s elite and entered the rackets via his office. He and a group of crooked cops hooked up with their underworld friends and ran a crusading newspaper editor out of town. Then when busted and prosecuted, he was the only in the ring to escape conviction. He went into private practice, became an oil tycoon then ran to Europe to escape federal prosecution on other matters.

There’s U.S. Representative Frank Boykin, a self-made man from north of town who did little to hide his corruption and was lionized by locals anyway. He bragged about his philandering to cronies, was known as a schemer and finagler of the first order throughout a life and career rife with nepotism and insider antics. Boykin served on the Hill for 28 years and was eventually convicted of racketeering. He only avoided federal prison because of his connections.

In the 1950s, Saraland Mayor Oscar Driver was killed outside his home when a shotgun blast tore through the crickets’ hum on a summer evening. The ABI files on that one are littered with tales and leads tracing through well-known Mobile families, through other Mobile officials and into the Ku Klux Klan and organized crime. It was never solved.

Newspaperman Arch McKay was shot in the ‘70s, murdered in the afternoon beside the busiest street in town. That’s unsolved too but appeared to be connected with the Dixie Mafia. There’s slipshod prosecution involved in that saga.

Not long after that repeat injury to the Fourth Estate, the scandal at the auditorium emerged. It turned out the town’s largest venue had been the center of money-swindling scams that benefited city officials. Auditorium Manager Buddy Clewis was tried in extortion charges. He got off.

More prosecution about auditorium hijinks emerged a couple of years later. This time, somebody – City Commissioner Gary Greenough and Auditorium Managers Henry Gwin and George Juzang – actually went to jail.

Another city leader from that era, Lambert Mims, was later convicted in federal court for extortion and racketeering. He served three years in jail.

Former school board president Dan Alexander was convicted of accepting kickbacks on school contracts in 1986.

In 1984, Mobile County Circuit Judge Elwood Hogan, Mobile County District Judge James Sullivan, and lawyer Willis Holloway were sentenced to 20 years each for “case fixing.”

Former Mobile County Solid Waste Department Director Gurney Owens was convicted in 1986 for extortion.

Prichard City Councilman Ed Reese was convicted in 1987 for racketeering, extortion and bribery case.

Citronelle Mayor Clay Bassett and business associate Charles Leo Malone pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges in 1989.

Then you got the DW twins: County Commissioners Douglas Wicks and Dan Wiley. Wicks was removed from office in 1987 on ethics violations. Wiley pleaded guilty to tax fraud and money laundering in 1999 then served two years in prison and two years’ probation.

County Commissioner Freeman Jockisch was convicted in 2004 of tax and ethics violations.

In 2006, School Board President David Thomas was impeached after steering official funds toward Mardi Gras throwaways and pleaded guilty to driving over a youngster while drunk.

Oh, and let’s not forget the ladies. Citronelle City Council member Barbara Kay Turner – there’s a Southern name for you – pleaded guilty to a pair of ethics charges in 1989.

But our latest three have certainly raised the titillation factor. Prosecutors thought they caught Circuit Judge Herman Thomas with his pants on the ground when testimony and actual scientific evidence seemed to show a pattern of exploiting young, male inmates for sado-masochistic sexual games. To top it off, one of Thomas’ character witnesses was a former archbishop who admitted to protecting pedophile priests during his own reign. Despite the science, the jury acquitted, the presiding judge revealed he wasn’t going to let any conviction stand anyway and the Paddlin’ Judge walked free.

Assistant District Attorney Steve Giardini lost his own criminal virginity when he was charged in August with attempting to lure a 15-year-old girl into some hanky-panky.

Then there’s Steve Nodine, the city councilman-turned-county commissioner currently facing federal gun charges, drug charges and murder charges for his mistress’ death on Mother’s Day. These three trials in three jurisdictions led to his impeachment and subsequent resignation from office. This one’s still a mess with any outcome possible.

So what’s it all mean? It means we’re well beyond the “take notice” stage and ought to be on the “fed up” section of the program. But if we squint through the Past-Is-Prologue-scope, Giardini and Thomas will likely open a youth retreat called “Camp Yank-N-Spank” while Nodine will be heading up the Jr. Miss Pageant this time next year.

This is no way to run a democratic republic. No one’s going to safeguard us but us.

Down South, we prefer it when folks “go along to get along.” It’s related to all the characteristics of the region: the friendliness, the politeness, the archetypal “hospitality.” There’s also a strong element of fatalism in Southern culture, a tendency to shrug such things off as unavoidable and relinquish to injustice.

Regretfully, when combined with an often-uncomfortable strain of anti-intellectualism, it can make for easy exploitation. I’ve often had to wince at some of the obvious flim-flammery that gets by people I’ve met, the scammers who find lots of easy marks. Kindness can be a cousin to naivete and, in turn, to gullibility.

I’ve also been dismayed to see others describe their view of this local corruption as whimsically endearing. There’s nothing funny about it. Lives are at stake.

We have to stop settling for these results, stop being leery of activism and resolve to get involved. The good of our community and future requires constant vigilance and deliberate ignorance of the easily manipulated emotional divisions between us.

Just like with Mardi Gras, New Orleans took our precedent and made something more famous with it. Sure the Crescent City can be a cesspool, but, by God, we got there first.

How about we beat New Orleans to another one? Let’s plug the flow of crap oozing over public trust.