KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — Commissioner Stephanie Moore, a Democrat, said “it’s never wrong to do the right thing,” using an unattributed Mark Twain quote in a statement explaining why she helped elect a Republican to chair the Kalamazoo County Commission.
There are a number of Democrats scratching their heads. Moore was re-elected in the 1st District, which voted 90 percent Democratic in the November election.
Partisanship and party politics has played more of a role in the operation of the county board for the last two years. It’s so often been cited as a problem that it was an issue in last fall’s campaign. There had been hope that may have been reversed with this new board, but it appears to have headed in the opposite direction with an apparent political deal struck during the first board meeting to elect the leadership for the group.
Democrats currently hold a 6-5 majority, but there will be a Republican chairperson this year because Moore apparently cut a deal with the Republican minority, swapping her vote for chairperson to secure the post of vice chairperson for herself. Moore voted in lockstep with the five Republican members when Republican Dale Shugars and Democrats Kevin Wordleman and Julie Rogers were nominated for the chairmanship, giving Shugars the win.
When Moore and Rogers were nominated for vice chairperson, once again, Moore had the backing of the five Republicans.
In a statement read by Moore during the meeting and distributed afterwards, she claims she opted for Shugars because of weak Democratic leadership for the past two years. She claims she looked past party to pick the best candidate.
But it’s clear a deal had been struck.
Republican insiders who were not on the commission knew vote trading had taken place and the fix was in, predicting the unexpected outcome before the nominations were even made.
Later in the meeting, the other Democrats on the commission went out of their way to exclude Moore from a task force working on creating a county identification program.
