Background: Donald J. Smith moved to the Presidential Heights neighborhood four years ago and immediately started campaigning for president of the Neighborhood Board. Smith, who had no municipal government experience, claimed to be an extremely successful entrepreneur, despite several very public bankruptcies. He remained secretive about the sources of his wealth (beyond inheritance).
Smith’s election slogan, “Make the Neighborhood Great Again,” offended many residents who thought their neighborhood was already great. Smith’s platform had few policies, but many accusations that other neighborhoods were dangerous.
He threatened to ban neighborhood visitors based on their religion and proposed building a wall around the neighborhood and somehow making the residents on the other side pay for it. He immediately gained an almost cultish following among some community members for his fancy mansion, flashy cars, and brash, “speaks-his-mind” ways.
Other community members were skeptical, finding Smith rude, incompetent and corrupt. They contacted residents of Smith’s previous neighborhoods and learned about his questionable past, including constant litigation and law enforcement scrapes.
Smith called these reports “fake news” meant to distract from the corruption of his election opponent, a longtime resident and active board member. Despite no evidence for these accusations, Smith’s supporters believed him. After all the votes were counted, Smith was significantly behind, but he won because an obscure bylaw gave more votes to households with greater square footage.
During Smith’s subsequent three years as board president, a majority of his neighbors disapproved of his incompetent leadership and frequent embarrassing incidents. Still, a vocal minority continued their support, and some even called him the best president ever.
Case Notes: The board recently voted to continue the neighborhood’s annual donation to a local food bank. Smith’s job was to make sure the funds were sent and to host a public meeting with the food bank director to promote the charity.
Then the local sheriff’s office received an anonymous tip that Smith hadn’t forwarded the donation and wasn’t scheduling the public meeting. The tipster claimed that Smith had sent his assistants to the food bank to investigate the leading candidate to replace Smith as board president, a former board member whose family had some dealings with the food bank in the past.
The sheriff had gone out of his way to bury several previous complaints against Smith, raising serious concerns when the sheriff also failed to investigate the anonymous tip.
Smith himself released notes of a call with the food bank director, describing the call as, “perfect.” But the notes showed that Smith asked directly for a “favor” when the head of the food bank asked about the neighborhood’s donation. The call notes amounted to a confession that Smith had withheld the donation for his own benefit, but he continued to claim that he had done nothing wrong.
Smith’s supporters urged their neighbors to read the call notes. But most of Smith’s supporters hadn’t actually read those notes or they would have realized that their leader had incriminated himself.
Meanwhile, the local state police began investigating because the sheriff wouldn’t. Although the state police were acting within their jurisdiction, Smith refused to cooperate. He ordered board members with direct knowledge of the events not to testify and hid documents required by board bylaws.
The police held public hearings where some witnesses braved threats from Smith to testify that Smith had abused his position to extract political favors from the food bank. Despite Smith’s stonewalling, the police discovered that Smith had committed multiple crimes relating to withholding the donation and hindering investigators.
Smith himself even said publicly that other charities should investigate his election opponent. One of Smith’s top assistants said that Smith does these kinds of things “all the time,” and anyone concerned about this corruption should “get over it.” Smith and his supporters attacked the anonymous tipster and the state police as the real criminals. When the local papers covered the investigation, Smith smeared them as, “enemies of the neighborhood.”
After the state police investigation, the board voted to have a formal proceeding to consider removing Smith from the board presidency. According to the board bylaws, a committee currently controlled by Smith’s supporters was charged with this proceeding. The bylaws called for this review committee to be impartial, but Smith’s supporters on the committee bragged that they would dismiss the proceedings in Smith’s favor, not even bothering to pretend that they would be fair.
Discussion Questions: (1) Should Smith’s troubling past influence how members of his neighborhood view his current behavior? (2) How should the board deal with Smith’s flagrant violations of board policies? (3) How should residents deal with the review committee members who reject their duty to be impartial jurors? (4) How should residents react to Smith’s attacks on the investigators and the press? (5) Should Smith be removed from office? (6) Should Smith face criminal charges for his actions? (7) What would happen if Smith had committed these crimes in a powerful position more important than a local board — President of the United States, for example? (8) Why did anyone vote for Donald J. Smith in the first place, and how could anyone consider reelecting him after his obvious abuse of power?
Please discuss.
John Sheirer is an author and teacher who lives in Florence. His new book is, “Too Wild: Flash Fiction.” Find him at JohnSheirer.com.