DIVISIVENESS SIMMERS IN ST. LOUIS : EFFORT TO OUST BLACK OFFICIAL STIRS CONCERNS ON RACE ISSUE

Things have quieted down around here lately. The mayor is sleeping at home again. The yelling and name-calling have all but faded into memory. The barricades have even come down at City Hall.

It’s hard to say things are normal, though.

Last month, in the span of 12 hours, a prominent black city department director found herself barred from some areas of City Hall after the City Council stripped her of most of her powers and staff; her former husband, a city airport commissioner, was arrested after he allegedly threatened white Mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl’s life, and Schoemehl, saying the man was linked to dangerous reputed drug dealers, took his family on the lam.

Drug Charges Surface It gets stranger still. Allegations of drug use permeate the tale, and the still-simmering controversy threatens to further polarize an already racially divided city.

Still, longtime City Hall observers say it all is politics as usual in the Gateway City.

“St. Louis politics is off the wall,” said Kenneth Warren, political science professor at St. Louis University. “It’s racist. It’s conniving. It’s undemocratic. It’s still machine-like . . . . It’s out of the Tammany Hall machine era.”

Referring to the events of June 23, when things went wild at City Hall, Warren said: “It’s not that atypical.”

Since local politics is, by all accounts, awash in wave upon wave of eccentric occurrences, finding the start of the most recent one is about as easy as tracking the course of a drop of water as it makes its way down the Mississippi River, on whose banks this most Southern of Midwestern cities sits. But last Oct. 17 is as good a place to start as any.

That was the day Billie A. Boykins, the city license collector, was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. The Illinois state trooper who stopped the car she was in and arrested her contends that Boykins admitted using cocaine “a lot” and told him, “I’m a politician. This is really going to hurt me.”

Boykins was subsequently indicted on drug charges. Her trial is pending.

Since she had only been charged and not convicted, no one sought to remove Boykins from office over the narcotics indictment. Even her frequent absences from work did not get her into trouble because it was known that she had cancer and she claimed that she kept in touch with the office by telephone.

But then, in March, Boykins came under fierce attack. Missouri Auditor Margaret Kelly issued a devastating report on Boykins’ department, alleging--among other things--that the city had lost up to $9 million through Boykins’ inept collection of a city business tax and that she had illegally invested city funds. Kelly said the department was by far the worst she had ever audited.

St. Louis Circuit Atty. George Peach filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Boykins from office on the grounds of malfeasance and neglect of duty. At the same time, Thomas A. Villa, the president of the Board of Aldermen, introduced legislation to immediately strip Boykins of most of her authority and staff.

Because Boykins’ is a county office mandated by the state charter, the board did not have the authority to abolish it altogether. But it moved all but two of her 53 employees to another department and slashed her budget by $1 million to $138,631. The mayor supported both moves.

“They basically attacked her from two fronts,” said Kenneth Jones, an alderman who supports Boykins. “It was sort of like a double whammy.”

On the night the council took action, Schoemehl had Boykins’ office locks changed, had barricades erected separating her personal office from the rest of the department and instructed guards to keep Boykins and her top assistant from entering the building. Some City Hall employees refer to it as the night of “the coup.”

‘A Sad Chapter’ Villa called the events of that night “a sad chapter. I think the whole situation, from day one, was not something that any of us are particularly proud of.”

Most of the city’s black leaders have rallied behind Boykins, a former state legislator who is one of the city’s few black officials elected citywide. Jones and others accuse her attackers of racism and of waging a political vendetta.

“She is an African-American officeholder who basically is independent and would not allow the mayor to run her department,” said Jones, noting that the department was rich in patronage jobs, many of which are filled by blacks.

In addition, he said, Boykins ran the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s local campaign for President last year in which Jackson defeated Rep. Richard A. Gephardt in the congressman’s own hometown.

“That was an embarrassment for the mayor as well as other local Democratic Party officials” who supported Gephardt, said Jones, who accused the party officials of trying to pay Boykins back.

Competency Issue Cited Those who voted to oust her from office said their action stemmed entirely from questions of her competence.

“The audits don’t lie,” said Alderman James Shrewsberry. “The problem is that her offenses were so flagrant that something had to be done.”

As for Jones’ charge that politics is involved, Shrewsberry said: “First off, I would not call Billie Boykins independent. Billie Boykins is part of the old organization . . . . She has been a longtime part of a patronage system that has served both black and white politicians.”

Nevertheless, the city’s political whirl quickly enveloped the Boykins case.

After Boykins was arrested on drug charges in October, unsigned leaflets were distributed in some parts of the city alleging that the mayor, too, was involved with cocaine. The rumor became so rampant--even now City Hall employees whisper about it--that Schoemehl released the results of a urine test last February during the mayoral campaign.

In a written statement he said that rumors of a drug habit started when he was hospitalized in 1987 for a pinched nerve and again in November, 1988, for a hernia operation.

“I have never even seen cocaine,” he told reporters.

Drugs entered the picture again, at least obliquely, on June 23, when Schoemehl had Boykins’ ex-husband arrested. Luther Boykins had gotten into a loud, profane argument with two of Schoemehl’s assistants after the Board of Aldermen took its action against his ex-wife. Schoemehl contended that his life was threatened.

In taking his family into hiding, Schoemehl charged that Luther Boykins, an airport commissioner and a former ally of the mayor, was connected to a religious group, the Moorish Science Temple of America, that the police believed was linked to drug dealing and violence.

Allies of Boykins noted that Schoemehl, too, had once been connected to the group, allowing its members to campaign for him in past elections.

Refuses to Press Charges Peach, the St. Louis circuit attorney, refused to press charges against Luther Boykins, saying that name-calling and loud talk do not constitute a crime.

“I think the circus atmosphere prevailing at City Hall should be kept over there,” he said.

Testifying to the raucousness of St. Louis politics, Shrewsberry said: “I once spent four days in the hospital after I’d been beaten up because somebody didn’t like who I was supporting for office. I take any kind of threat seriously. But I don’t think Luther is a hit man . . . . I think it was just emotions were running very, very high that night.”

Things have quieted down somewhat, but the controversy is far from over. Boykins had filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the aldermen’s actions. After a judge dismissed it Monday, her attorney said he would appeal all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Peach’s lawsuit seeking to remove Boykins from office altogether still is pending, as is her trial for cocaine possession.

Warren, the St. Louis University professor, said he finds it mystifying that black leaders are rallying to the support of an official who has been as discredited as Boykins has. The reason, he said, can only be that she holds an office that has traditionally, since the start of the civil rights era in the 1960s, been held by a black.

If she is removed, Gov. John Ashcroft, a Republican, would get to appoint her successor and he may choose to appoint a white to the post.

Jones says that has nothing to do with his support of Boykins.

He is supporting her, he said, because she is being persecuted unfairly. “The facts don’t bear out the audit. There are logical, clear explanations for most of the charges lodged against her, but the press never printed her side of the story as it relates to the substantive matters raised.”

As for the cocaine indictment, he said: “I feel that a person is innocent until proven otherwise.”