As the many controversies swirling around Warren Mayor Jim Fouts for months seem to be fading, one of his most loyal underlings on city council proudly proclaims his support for the mayor as the councilman attempts to raise big bucks for his re-election campaign.
Councilman Robert Boccomino has sent out a fundraiser invitation that emphasizes his endorsement by Fouts and urges voters to donate $75 each to his effort to win another 4-year term in the elections 2 ½ years into the future.
At the infamous December and January City Council meetings Fouts allies refused to condemn him for racist and sexist comments made on tape, as well as crude diatribes about the handicapped. Boccomino has asserted that Fouts had become a victim of “domestic terrorism” if, as the mayor illogically suggested, his voice had been doctored on the tapes by his political enemies.
To be fair, Boccomino, who received considerable help from Fouts in 2007 when he first won election to council, called the language on the recordings “unacceptable and disgraceful” and said the mayor “should consider resignation” if the tapes are authenticated.
Since that meeting, WDIV-TV has relied upon a nationally prominent audio expert to report that the recordings are almost certainly legitimate. In particular, Primeau Forensics concluded that the tape in which Fouts refers to developmentally disabled kids as “retards” and offered anti-religious themes are, based on scientific methods, legitimate comments made by the mayor.
Yet, the council has not revisited the issue since January, which would involve publicly condemning the mayor of Michigan’s third-largest city for a series of ugly, discriminatory comments.
Another curiosity in this saga is that Boccomino is holding his April 27, $75-per-person fundraiser – more than two years before election time — at the Andiamo’s banquet hall in Warren, which serves as the scene of the eccentric mayor’s alleged election law violations.
Based on an ongoing investigation by state officials, Fouts is accused of engaging in a strange plot in which the mayor’s annual 2016 State of the City Address was subtly turned into a fundraising event for a pro-Fouts political action committee (PAC).
As the state probe continues, the mayor faces potential fines from elections officials for converting a benign civic event into a cash-collection gathering.
In recent days, news reports revealed that Fouts, with little advanced notice to the public, and a short-circuited cancellation of the usual Andiamo’s event, delved into peculiar territory where few mayors have ever gone before.
Hoping to avoid public protests and audience criticism that have plagued him for many months, Fouts transformed the traditional State of the City speech for 2017 into a solitary, videotaped commentary that has aired solely on Warren’s cable TV channel.
So far, the only substantive efforts to remove Fouts from office have come from recall petitions (six, in all) that were filed by political gadfly Joe Hunt. The Macomb County Elections Commission in March rejected the initial attempt as, among Hunt’s errors, were misspellings of Fouts’ name.
Meanwhile, the printed invitation for the upcoming event slated for Andiamo’s, featuring a photo of a very young-looking Boccomino, has apparently been spread far and wide.
Joe DiSano, a Democratic political consultant who has loudly criticized Fouts, based on DiSano’s past associations with the mayor, went on Twitter Thursday to bash Boccomino:
“Warren Councilman Boccomino displays his Fouts endorsement to make money off hate, lies bigotry of @mayorjimfouts.”
The 2019 city elections, though they are far off, even by Warren standards, shape up as uncommonly ugly. Voters may want to buckle up.
