Shanghai, Brubaker, and Buffaloe

COLUMBIA, 01/21/25 (Feature) -- If politics makes strange bedfellows, two fellows who have emerged in Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe's political bed may be among the strangest in recent memory, as much for who they are as for the contradictions they represent.

Pro-China promoter Richard Brubaker and his nonprofit Collective Responsibility last March named Buffaloe America's 1st Sustainable Mayor after a podcast interview. And five days before the April 5, 2022 election, former Enron and fossil fuel executive Randal Clay Spears donated one thousand dollars to Buffaloe for Mayor.

Best known for climate change advocacy that shuns fossil fuels, Mayor Buffaloe was the City of Columbia's first sustainability manager prior to her current tenure at the top of City Hall. As Mayor, she is widely criticized for ignoring the city's most unsustainable and environmentally-damaging crisis, an out-of-control homeless population that frequently destroys private property with illegal garbage dumping, arson, break ins, drug abuse, and other criminal activity.

Campaign fuel

Buffaloe's caSpearsSpearsmpaign treasurer David Brown reported Spears' March 30 contribution to the Missouri Ethics Commission (MEC) ten days after the election, on April 15. Post-election filings generally avoid media and voter scrutiny.

Director of Enron International/Enron North America from 1995-2000 -- the year before the energy giant collapsed amid corruption charges and bankruptcy -- Spears joined former Enron exec Frost Cochran to start Signal Hill Power. As CEO, Spears "originated acquisition of, and performed business management of natural gas-fired power generation facilities in Texas and New York," notes his LinkedIn profile.

Signal Hill Power in 2012 sold a Wichita Falls, Tx natural gas power plant to an energy subsidiary of global conglomerate Louis-Dreyfus.

Spears later started Signal Hill Management -- the "employer" named in the Buffaloe campaign's MEC filing -- to develop, acquire, and finance companies that handle "electric power generation, electrical transmission, energy trading, and data center infrastructure," says his LinkedIn resume.

So is City Hall planning to privatize the electric utility? Is that why transmission lines and related projects remain inexplicably stalled? Or why Mr. Spears appeared? 

A Bainbridge Island, Washington resident, Spears has contributed thousands of dollars to political campaigns in  Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Texas. Obscuring matters more, Spears also donated one thousand dollars to a PAC known as the Climate Cabinet. But his local ambitions and whether he will donate to Buffaloe's 2025 campaign are presently unknown. 

"Being THE scene"

As an unpaid Columbia climate and environment commissioner early in her career, Buffaloe advocated for "stricter building codes," to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions," she told Sustain Mizzou and the Missouri Students Association in October. As Columbia's political leader, Buffaloe has spared no expense -- and no controversy -- nurturing her climate warrior reputation. Trips to Ohio, California, and Washington, DC and as environment committee chair for the United States Conference of Mayors, to China, Dubai, and Switzerland prompted anger and criticism in Columbia, but raised her profile elsewhere.

"It is really weird going from being behind the scenes to being THE scene," Buffaloe told Richard Brubaker during a February broadcast of his Sustainability Ambassador podcast, Shanghai, China looming behind them. 


Hands On CoMo?

A decades-long advocate for China and its people, Brubaker is the founder of Hands on China and Hands on Shanghai nonprofits that promote philanthropy, volunteerism, and corporate responsibility in that countryHis specialties include training, research, and programming -- a loaded term -- in Asian countries.

Given his background and our Mayor's tendency toward naive self promotion, Brubaker's podcast questions may strike some as inappropriately probing, with phrases such as:  Mayor BuffaloeMayor Buffaloe

What are the challenges cities like yours face ...

Do you know of any other mayors or governors who ...

That Heartland-China trip you made, the connection between agriculture and water ...

What are some of the specific resource constraints you face ...

Is it on states and cities to solve these challenges, or the Federal government ...

Asked if as Mayor she can still focus on climate change or "do you really have to focus more on community needs?" Buffaloe said her job is to "connect" climate change to community needs such as public safety and cost control. 

"With extreme heat in the summer comes an increase in the potential for rising crime," she told Brubaker. "When people have to use air conditioning in the summer or heating in the winter, that can affect their pocketbooks, their budgets."

Never far from another plug, "I was the first Mayor who worked in sustainability in a city. The first," Buffaloe insisted. "Now, the new Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee worked in sustainability. I reached out to him and said 'there's two of us. There's two of us now.'"

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