Scandal-Plagued Kevin Johnson's Fixers Are Just Making Things Worse
Kevin Johnson’s bizarre campaign to carry out a “coup” against the National Conference of Black Mayors, or NCBM, is looking more and more like his Waterloo.
The former NBA All-Star and perpetually scandal-plagued Sacramento mayor, whose enthusiasms include charter schools and a variety of improprieties, launched a bid to take over the Atlanta-based NCBM in 2013. It was a disaster from the start: Johnson was bounced out of the organization’s presidency after just two weeks on the job, and has been in litigation ever since. Recently, the foray has finally begun to impact Johnson’s standing in his hometown, where he’s been in charge since 2008.
It’s starting to hurt badly; in fact, fallout from the misguided affair has dominated the news cycle in Sacramento for a week. Deadspin’s reporting on the NCBM fiasco caused those who know Johnson best to start looking into it. The local ABC affiliate, KXTV-10, put a package on Johnson’s NCBM troubles (which included an interview with this reporter) atop an evening newscast earlier this week. Even the Sacramento Bee, the local daily with a reputation for having what one media critic in town described as a “soft spot for K.J.,” went long in rehashing the tale of Johnson’s NCBM foibles.
The light shined on the failed campaign allowed folks back home to see that Johnson was using public employees in an attempt to expand his brand beyond the capital city, and to see how he attempted to hide their roles from public examination by setting up private email accounts for the civil servants. Johnson is now facing a level of scrutiny from the local media that he’s never Scandal-Plagued Kevin Johnson's Fixers Are Just Making Things Worse:
