Ben Lazarus of Warren, the 25-year-old leader of the recall campaign against Gov. Rick Snyder, had a loud, alcohol-induced run-in with the police in 2014 that led to his arrest, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department in Florida.
The middle-of-the-night incident, with Lazarus displaying obnoxious behavior toward two officers, resulted in an arrest for “resisting an officer without violence/obstructing justice.”
The Lazarus-authored recall petition approved by a state panel earlier this week has already generated a lot of questions as Lazarus, a maverick member of the Warren Consolidated school board, is viewed as an anti-Snyder tea party Republican.
A number of critics of Snyder’s handling of the Flint water crisis have distanced themselves from the recall effort in recent days. The recall petition makes no mention of the Flint debacle but instead seeks Snyder’s ouster for moving the Office of School Reform to the state budget deparment.
The Michigan Education Association teachers’ union, a staunch political enemy of the governor, has said it will play no role in assisting the recall campaign. A first reported by Eclectablog, MEA president Steven Cook distributed a hard-hitting letter urging members to keep clear of the Lazarus effort.
Cook asserted that the recall effort was a scam designed to succeed Snyder with a “right-wing tea party” favorite in 2018. The labor leader also incorrectly claimed that the Lazarus arrest in 2014 was accompanied by a second violation on drug charges.
For more on Ben Lazarus, click here and here.
In a statement delivered to me today via email, Lazarus responded:
“When visiting a friend a few years ago, I made a regretful mistake. There were no drugs and no charges were filed because I did not break the law. I have moved on from this and I hope you … will refrain from tabloid journalism.”
When subsequently contacted by phone said he would not comment beyond the statement, but he repeated: “No charges were filed because I did not break the law.”
Here is what happened, according to the police report filed by the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department:
Lazarus and a friend were loitering in a Deland, Fla., McDonald’s parking lot at approximately 3 a.m. on June 17, 2014. The call to police was made by restaurant staff in part because of “repulsive” behavior, as Lazarus and his friend, the driver of the car, took cash out of their mouths at the drive-through to pay for their food. Upon arriving first at the scene, a police officer clearly detected alcohol on the breath of both young men.
Lazarus initially refused to provide an ID and was acting in a “contemptuous and disrespectful” manner toward two officers. He proceeded to “laugh out loud and make loud comments” to disrupt an officer’s attempt to determine if his friend had violated the Florida drunken driving law.
As a result, Lazarus was removed from the vehicle and arrested for “resisting an officer without violence/obstructing justice.”
Based on Volusia County Circuit Court records, it appears that charges were later dropped against Lazarus and he was not required to appear in court.
Lazarus’ Florida connection developed when he was attending a Sunshine State college in 2012 at the same time that he was running for a school board seat in his hometown of Warren.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts, right, has been a high-profile supporter of Ben Lazarus.
On Wednesday, Lazarus received a subtle slap from his most prominent political ally, the eccentric Warren mayor, Jim Fouts. Without acknowledging any of his ties to Lazarus – or the school board member’s past campaign tactics that were labeled racist – the mayor posted this on Facebook: “(It) seems unseemly that an elected official would attempt to recall another elected official. Not appropriate in the least.”
Warren Consolidated is one of the largest school districts in Michigan and Warren is the third-largest city in Michigan, so this is local politics at a high level.
Of course, Fouts has been subjected to recall attempts in the past – as a Warren city councilman and mayor – but he was a strong supporter of Lazarus’ successful Warren Con school board run in 2012. In campaign literature, Fouts said of Lazarus, “He will be a great leader for our schools.”
In addition, the Fouts political organization played a major role in backing a pro-Lazarus slate of Warren Con school board candidates in 2014. That group embraced Lazarus’ call to block “outsider” students from Detroit and elsewhere from enrolling in the district’s schools.
With Lazarus is in defense mode it now seems highly unlikely, given the daunting statewide task of collecting enough signatures to make a governor face a recall election, that Snyder is in any danger of losing his job.
zika