Kassim Busuri's Broken Promise is Worst than Most

We live in an era of brazen political mendacity, where President Trump's lies, denial, and fabrication has become an everyday event at the top of government. So far that level of explicit duplicity hasn't made it to Saint Paul city politics, where, believe it or not, elected officials generally operate in good faith. But with Interim Council Member Kassim Busuri's announcement this week, that might be changing.

The Ward 6 City Council election was already a weird one. Back in December, long-time Council Member Dan Bostrom made a surprise announcement that he was not going to run for re-election in 2019. The move caught his colleagues off-guard, even more so because, importantly for this story, he also announced he was not going to serve out the rest of his term. Bostrom, a former cop and soporific old-school law-and-order East Sider, could have slept through finished the rest of his term and let the election play out. I'm not sure why he did not do this, but when Bostrom decided he was going to step down immediately, it left a nine-month Council vacancy that would have to be filled by appointment.

[Some of the people that could have been an interim Council Member.]

For good reason, Saint Paul has a firm policy when it comes to interim Council vacancies.  Council Members do not want to anoint political successors. People believe -- and rightly so -- that Council Members should be decided through a open democratic process and a ward election, where as many people as possible decide who will represent them. At the local level, where everybody knows everybody else, having an open election process is fundamental to democracy.

So the rule is straightforward: anyone who wants to be considered for an interim City Council appointment explicitly promises not to run. I have talked to people interviewed for interim City Council positions, and this is made crystal clear for the candidates. It's one of the first questions that the City Council asks during interviews, and applicants pledge on the spot.  

And as far as I know, this rule has never been broken. Interim Council Members have thought about running in the general election in the past, but nobody has gone back on their pledge until last week, when Interim Council Member Busuri, who received a letter of recommendation from Police Chief Axtell, who was appointed in January on the condition that he not run in November, announced he was running in November.  (For the record, I have never met or spoken with Busuri. In fact, I've never even heard him speak at a City Council meeting.)

This is the biggest lie I've seen in years of Saint Paul city politics. Certainly there are levels of dishonesty in government, where politics is full of vague promises and debatable language. You might see a politician promise to do something difficult, and then not do it, or only follow through symbolically. You might have a politician say they are against a thing, and then vote for it anyway after some hand-wringing. All that is to be expected.

And there are always people who pledge to abide by the party endorsement, and then run in the general election anyway when they don't get it. That's happened more than once on my watch. To my mind that kind of promise is a bad sign, to be sure, but it's also part of the game when it comes to DFL conventions, a deeply flawed system that we'd all be better off without. (That's especially true now that Saint Paul is a city with ranked-choice voting.) 

What Busuri is doing is worse than that. There were many qualified and deserving candidates who applied to be the interim Ward 6 Council Member, and each was considered on the condition that they not run for office in the fall. That was the agreement, and this week Busuri brazenly broke it. Going back on that promise is a huge black mark, and that's why five of the six Council Members have castigated Busuri in the press. 

[Busuri trying to create an incumbency advantage.]

Not only is Busuri breaking his word, his campaign is misleading about his position as an incumbent. In his official statement, he states that "my colleagues on the City Council chose me as the best candidate earlier this year." His campaign logo, too, makes the technically-accurate claim that he is the Council Member. In both cases, it's seems to me that Busuri is attempting to use his incumbent position as an advantage in the general election. To me, that's dishonest.

I believe in the intelligence of Saint Paul voters, and doubt Busuri will do well in the election. I wish he had not listened to whomever told him to run for office, because having strong Somali-American voices in city politics would be great improvement. But if Busuri were to be elected, he would start his career on a foundation of dishonesty. That would not bode for Saint Paul's future.

Update: 

I have since heard from Council Member Thao that he is calling for Busuri to step down from his post. See his statement on Busuri.