Missouri Mayor Says He 'Kind Of Agreed' With Alleged Jewish Center Shooter

The mayor of a small Missouri town has mostly nice things to say about the white supremacist accused of killing three people at Jewish facilities last weekend.

Marionville, Mo. Mayor Dan Clevenger spoke warmly this week of Frazier Glenn Miller, who allegedly went on a killing rampage on Sunday in Overland Park, Kan.

"He was always nice and friendly and respectful of elder people, you know, he respected his elders greatly. As long as they were the same color as him," Clevenger said while laughing, according to television station KSPR. "Very fair and honest and never had a bit of problems out of him."

Clevenger said he sympathized with some of Miller's views, but didn't like to broadcast that.

"Kind of agreed with him on some things but, I don't like to express that too much," Clevenger, the owner of a local repair shop, said.

"He had a lot of hate built up inside of him," Clevenger said. "And every time he'd come down here, he'd go on about different races -- mainly Jews. He claims they're all bad, but I don't believe that."

However, KSPR unearthed a letter to the editor that the mayor sent nearly a decade ago to a newspaper in Aurora, Mo. in which he expressed admiration for Miller's mission.

Thank you for PINGing me, justiceseeker93.

First, for my Jewish FReeper conservative online friends, please accept my sincere regrets that this kind of horrible act was committed by a resident of the rural and conservative part of my state. Most of us in rural Missouri are nothing like this man.

There aren't a lot of Jewish people in rural Missouri, which is actually a benefit because most conservatives around here never run into liberal Jewish people and tend to have a positive opinion of Jewish people and of Israel. This is the Bible Belt, and Branson is nearby, and you're **MUCH** more likely around here to hear patriotic Americans, especially evangelical Christians, making comments supporting Israel than to hear Klansmen spouting anti-Jewish nonsense. I can honestly say I haven't heard even one nasty anti-Jewish comment here in more than a dozen years, the Orthodox Jewish chaplain at Fort Leonard Wood gets thanked for his service when he goes off post, and the most prominent Jewish resident of my area is a hard-right Republican conservative business owner who detests liberals with a passion greater than my own. We did have some Klan recruitment efforts last year in an adjacent county, but none of the bigotry was directed against Jewish people, and as far as I know the Klan recruitment efforts were utterly unsuccessful.

While it's true that I live in Southwest Missouri and I know this area pretty well, Marionville is more than an hour away from where I live and I know nothing about this mayor. I would have to make some phone calls to get specifics about his town, but what I do know indicates it's a typical small rural town in the Ozarks.

What I do know is he needs to publicly apologize and then resign as mayor. His anti-Jewish comments, if they have been reported correctly, are **WAY** out of line.

Oliviaforever's comment that most small-town mayors are Democrats might very well have been true in rural southwest Missouri a generation or two ago — the Ozarks shared the sociopolitical dynamics of the rest of the rural South, dominated by conservative Democrats — but it most emphatically is **NOT** true today. In this man's county, not a single one of more than a dozen elected county officials are Democrats; it's an overwhelmingly Republican county.

I know nothing about this man's politics; Missouri has no party registration system and Missouri city officials almost always are elected on nonpartisan ballots, so they don't need to formally declare a party affiliation. He could be an active Democrat, though it's not likely considering the political leanings of his county. However, as Impy and other Freepers have pointed out, some Democrats do run for nonpartisan municipal offices because they know they can't get elected if they have to identify as Democrats.

If this guy is active in Republican politics, I hope the Lawrence County Republican Central Committee publicly attacks him and demands he resign from any position he may hold in local Republican politics. We don't need anti-Jewish bigotry in the Republican Party.

It's unlikely, but if this guy is active in Democratic politics, let's find it out and force the Democrats to disown him. Give them some of their own medicine for a change.

Yep... in this part of the state, in a lot of races the Democrats don't even bother to put up a candidate, and when they do, they often lose by huge margins unless the person is a long-term incumbent who dates back to the days when the Democrats in the rural South were a very different type of party.

If I remember correctly, the Democratic congressional candidate had about 30 percent of the vote in Lawrence County, one of the state legislative races was won by the Republican by a 4-to-1 margin, and in most other state races the Democrats did not bother to put up a candidate.

I'll do some checking on this mayor's political affiliation but I'm not optimistic.

Here's why.

I could find out pretty much anything I want to know about an elected official in my own county, if not through official channels than through back channels, and to some extent in nearby areas where I can make use of friends of friends, but “outsiders” asking questions are not likely to be received well.

On the other hand, I do have contacts in the Springfield and Branson area who may be able to get better information about this man. That may work. But I'm not holding my breath.

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