Effort to recall Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas unmasks racial animus
The “Recall Quinton Lucas” rally was taking up 1 ½ tables at the otherwise mostly empty North Kansas City bar where they were collecting signature sheets on Friday night, and there’s no question that the movement to overturn the mayor’s 2019 landslide victory is more of a trickle than a tidal wave.
But the 13,713 valid signatures that it would take to force an all-new mayoral election — not an up-or-down on Lucas, but a start-from-scratch election — is not that high a bar to clear.
So, what do those pushing “to recall and remove the tyrant” want, exactly? The crew at the bar didn’t want to say, but they do plenty of talking online, and it isn’t lovely to behold.
Many of their messages have to do with race.
Some object to the mayor’s mask order in response to COVID-19.
And those who want Lucas gone also think he’s been insufficiently supportive of the same Kansas City Police Department that civil rights leaders here feel he has on the contrary hugged too tight.
They don’t only want to recall the mayor, though he’s first on their list, but also talk about removing Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr., U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II and several members of the Kansas City Council.
Most, but not all, of their targets are Black. They’d also like to defund the Kansas City Health Department, sue local school districts for responding to COVID-19 and boycott the Chiefs for locking arms during the national anthem the other night.
So is the goal chaos? White nationalism? A distraction from the public pressure to oust Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith?
I’ll let the recall proponents tell you what they’re about, from some of the public posts on their Facebook page.
On race:
“Anytime someone calls me a racist, I just look at them and say, ‘Thank you for the compliment.’”
“We need a team of doctors for birth control. 90% of this madness would go away by itself if people that wanted kids and were going to raise kids were the ones having kids.”
“Get someone in there who’s not a f---ing RACIST towards white people.”
“It’s been a minute since the last tar & feathering.”
In response to a post about a shooting in Swope Park, “that’s a hood rat neighborhood anyway.”
There are also calls to burn Lucas’ house down, to “dethrone Quinton Mucas … cut the head off the evil snake” and to “pull the MF out of the building and throw him in the street, right on top of his BLM murals.”
They mocked civil rights activist Stacy Shaw’s hair and wanted her fired, too, until someone pointed out that as an attorney in private practice, there is nothing from which to recall her.
Clear? Thought so.
On COVID-19:
“I’m just not going to wear a mask when I’m not sick.”
“You’re putting my health at risk by forcing me to wear a mask.”
Oh, and Lucas, “puppet of George Soros,” is supposedly part of a conspiracy to “destroy some businesses and force mandatory vaccines.”
On the link between this effort and the push to oust Chief Smith, which we on The Star Editorial Board have endorsed but Lucas has not:
“How do we prevent the firing of the police chief?” “Get Lucas out. He wants him gone.”
“Fire the mayor … Keep the police chief.”
Lucas is “going to regret that” — marching with protesters, just as Chief Smith did — “when the bloodbath starts.”
On the link between this group and President Donald Trump’s insistence that “Democrat mayors” are the root of multiple evils:
“Trump is the only person who has done anything in the right direction for this city.”
“Justice will be when all Democrats are unseated.”
So what does all of this add up to? Those trying to recall Lucas want not just a different mayor but a different Kansas City, one that looks and thinks like them.
They can’t possibly get what they want, even if they could agree on what that is. But they can cause a lot of damage in a city that does not need to add a manufactured challenge, motivated by intolerance, to the list of our real problems.
