LABORING FOR ANSWERS: Council candidates disappoint at labor union forum

COLUMBIA, Mo 2/1/25 (Op-Ed) -- With a couple dozen non-union audience members, last Saturday's LiUNA Local 955 Columbia City Council candidate forum wasn't just a screening exercise for the prize of a labor union endorsement. It was the first candidate forum of a campaign season that has proven unusually silent, the candidates oddly disengaged.

The forum bore out this "low energy" with union-repped city employees asking good questions that should have elicited informed responses. Instead, the audience got another reflection of the campaigns so far, enough to compile a top 10 list of what Mr. or Mrs. Average Partly-Informed Voter *might* have been thinking during and after the questions and answers.

1) The challengers seem really nice. I know Blair Murphy and he's definitely a nice guy and very down to Earth. I've known Jacquie Sample for a while too (she ran for some other stuff) and she's a lot like the Mayor but without all the fluff. I don't like the Mayor that much. I'm like, is she ever here? I heard a radio show where one of the commentators called her record "reprehensible." I agree.

2) The Black guy with the hat on and the summery shirt supports binding arbitration and living wages. The union guys asking the questions asked about that a lot. I think Jacquie Sample supports it too. She is running unopposed -- that seems sad to me for some reason. I have no idea where anyone else stands on those things.

 

3) Funny: that flowery shirt kinda reminds me of Karl Skala (my Councilman for a long time -- too long). But this new fellow is a lot clearer than Karl ever was.

 

4) Who is this "Gabe" or "Abe" or "Babe" the Mayor keeps talking to? Sounds like a BFF. Is she on her phone?

5) When the lady in the middle brought up a city worker cleaning homeless camps stepping on a needle that went thru his boot (I'm pretty sure she said 'needle' and not 'nail'), I was SURE the candidates would talk about how unsafe it is to ride the city buses. The news has covered that a lot. And they got questions about city buses and how to attract new drivers. But no one brought that up. (Murph for Mayor -- aka my guy -- DID say he supports public safety. JS).

 

6) I was surprised Murph let that kid at the podium mouth off to him for not filing a campaign finance report and something about a big donation he got from a guy named Sapp. That came totally out of left field and felt unprofessional. Besides, I read my guy filed that report a month ago!!  I've read in a couple places that the Mayor didn't report her big donations from labor unions until AFTER the last election in 2022!!  Did I miss something here?

 

7) Murph looks uncomfortable. But he has done more to support housing, jobs, labor, working conditions, customers, taxes, and Columbia than anyone maybe in this room (except for maybe Mr. O in the audience over there, at least I think that's him. All these grown men should take off their hats indoors).

 

8) Is the Mayor's record really "reprehensible?" Must not be that bad. No one talked about it. And she was her usual silly self, saying she was "nerding out" on whatever.

 

9) I kept hearing that teacher on the Charlie Brown cartoons whenever the two incumbents -- the 4th Ward guy who looked like he was frowning and the Mayor -- answered a question.  

 

10) My neighbor asked me who she and her hubby should vote for. Blair Murphy, obviously! Then she asked why. "You went to that meeting, right? What did they say?"  I was like, mmmm ...

 

 

 

From left: Council candidates Nick Foster, Ron Graves, Jacquie Sample, Tanya Heath, Blair Murphy, Lucio Bitoy, Barbara Buffaloe. See top photo for host Andrew Hutchinson at podium.