Mark Seabrook attended the mayoral forum at the Southern Indiana Realtors Association. Jeff Gahan skipped it. Remember that, voters.

Seabrook?

He shows up.

The ironic part?

Democrats seem to think that whispering malice about Seabrook's health will make people forget that Gahan's a serial shun-meister of public discourse, forever unwilling to answer for his actions as paymaster of the city's political patronage machine.

Jeff "No Debates" Gahan ecstatic as League of Women Voters ditches the candidate debate format.

Next: Consider this photo.

Donnie Blevins knows better than most about the Bully Gahan. In case you missed it in April ...

ON THE AVENUES: Donnie Blevins tells his story.

 ... For Blevins the end came in February, 2018. He was working nights on snow removal, out on a run after 9:00 p.m., when Gahan made a visit to the street department office.

When Blevins returned, his supervisor called him inside to deliver the ultimatum he'd just been given. According to the supervisor, who said he had no idea why any of it was happening, Gahan had gone “berserk” about Blevins, referring to him as “that son-of-a-bitch” and promising to “fire his (Blevins’) ass the first chance I get.”

ON THE AVENUES: Donnie Blevins tells his story.

Donnie Blevins is a purposeful man with little time for wasted motions or words. He puts his brain into gear before putting his mouth into motion. Blevins’ personal page at Facebook is characteristically concise and to the point.

“I'm a Christian, a fair, honest and hard-working man.”

When Blevins was a child, disaster struck the family. One night he awoke to smoke and chaos. The bunk bed he shared with his twin brother caught fire, the spark from a faulty wall socket igniting the curtain and spreading flames to where the boys slept, unaware.

As Blevins’ father pulled his brother from the bottom bunk, his brother grasped Blevins’ hand to yank him down off the top. They made it outside and watched in shock as the house and all their possessions were reduced to smoldering debris within minutes, the blaze so intense there was nothing left except ashes when the fire department arrived.

“All I had on was my underwear,” Blevins recounts. “We didn’t have anything, and we didn’t have anywhere to go. We were homeless – no insurance, because dad was renting the house.”

Luckily their father’s boss from the sheet metal factory knew someone at the New Albany Public Housing Authority, and so the family found a place to stay. Even 45 years later, Blevins hasn’t forgotten this feeling of rootless vulnerability.

“I remember when we first got into the housing authority, mom and dad took us over to the old Lillian Emory School. Mom went inside to sign us up for first grade.

“But we didn’t know it was a school, and I remember me and my brother sitting in the car out in the parking lot, crying our eyes out.

“We thought it was an orphanage. We thought mom and dad couldn’t afford us. We still didn’t have any other clothes except the ones we had on. Mom finally came back outside and we drove off, and this made us feel a little better, so we asked her: ‘Why are you giving us away?’

“What are you talking about, giving you away? I’m putting you into school!”

At first the Blevins twins slept on the apartment floor atop a blanket. One day a neighbor gave the family a baby bed for their young sister, then other neighbors brought clothes. Someone donated a mattress for Blevins and his brother to use. “That floor sure was hard,” he says.

Slowly things got better. Blevins’ dad got a second job, and his mom found work, too. Only then could the family afford a babysitter at night to look after seven children. When the twins were in the fifth grade their parents had saved enough money to leave public housing and move to a home in Sellersburg.

When Blevins was 12 he got his first job working in a hay field for a Clark County farmer, then started cutting grass. At 16 he applied at his father’s workplace, where the minimum age for employment was 18. They hired him anyway. Other jobs followed, and after high school Blevins got on at the Sellersburg water company.

Blevins minces no words. “I never had any handouts,” he says. “No rich uncle, no rich grandpa. I had to work hard for everything I had.”

And he did. In 2000 Blevins accepted a position with the city of New Albany, eventually working in four different municipal departments: street, sanitation, stormwater and wastewater. He wanted to get more involved with his community and ran for an at-large city council seat in 2003, garnering the highest vote total among Democrats during the primary, then winning a council seat outright in the fall.

Blevins became one of eight Democrats on the council, with only a single Republican. One of his rookie council colleagues from the 2003 Democratic landslide was Jeff Gahan, the future mayor, who won the first of two consecutive 6th district council terms alongside Blevins, who says he had no significant disagreements with Gahan during this period.

Unfortunately the Democrat-dominated council was prone to internal factionalism, resulting in frequent four-versus-four power alignments. Blevins became an unlikely (and uneasy) swing vote among warring Democrats. His discomfort often was palpable. Seeking re-election in 2007, Blevins was defeated in the May primary and seemed almost relieved to be shedding a burden.

As always, Blevins got on with his life. He’d come a very long way from the scared little boy in underwear watching his family’s house burn to the ground. Blevins was a husband and a father with an unblemished record as a city employee. Conscientious and thoughtful, Blevins also served as pastor in his church (he still does).

What’s more, Blevins had a fledgling business to nurture. His NA City Boys Sanitation company began operations in February of 2006. Disillusioned by then-mayor James Garner’s privatization of the city’s sanitation department (Blevins was transferred from sanitation to the sewer utility and wasn’t part of the move to eventual sanitation contractor EcoTech), he started his own private sanitation company. It has been growing ever since.

“NA City Boys can’t do residential pick-up here in New Albany because of the city ordinance, but we can do commercial, and we can work in the fringe area in the county.”

From its inception NA City Boys has competed for contracts against EcoTech. Did this fact rub people the wrong way, and more importantly, was it ever an issue between Blevins and his fellow elected officials during the time of his council tenure?

He says no.

What about Gahan? Was there ever any friction with him?

“No,” says Blevins. “Jeff congratulated me (for starting NA City Boys), and nothing was negative, not at all.”

According to Blevins, neither he personally nor NA City Boys experienced problems during the remainder of Garner’s lone term or Doug England’s final mayoral stint. The entirely of Gahan’s first term passed uneventfully as well. Blevins’ city job and his side project remained separate, and life was good.

It all changed after the Democratic Party primary in 2015.

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Businessman David White announced his candidacy for mayor of New Albany, challenging the incumbent Gahan. Blevins and White were good friends, having met for the first time in 2003 at a Democratic Party picnic. They hit it off, and naturally Blevins volunteered to help White with his campaign.

White lost in the primary and Gahan was re-elected. For Blevins, this was the end of it. It never occurred to him that helping a friend would result in retribution. However, the ramifications were immediate and irrevocable.

“After the primary election it went downhill fast,” he states.

The polls hadn’t been closed for long when Blevins felt an arctic breeze. He was cited for improper cell phone use by his street department supervisor, who left no doubt that this directive to “write up” Blevins came straight from the higher-ups.

Specifically, after ten years of peaceful co-existence, suddenly NA City Boys had become a problem. Was Blevins doing NA City Boys business by phone while on the city’s time clock?

“No I wasn’t,” he replies firmly. “Other guys used their phones for Facebook or to play games, but I only answered when my wife and kids called me. Then they said those were business calls -- but everyone knows you can’t run a business over the phone.”

The harassment became noticeable and quickly escalated.

Blevins had been parking NA City Boy trucks at his house since the company was founded, but suddenly in early 2016 he received a certified letter from the city referencing an ordinance against parking commercial vehicles on residential property. He chose not to fight the decree and began parking the company’s trucks at a commercial property he owned on South Street.

Then in the spring of 2017, while working to clean up flooding damage on the riverfront, Blevins was openly snubbed in front of witnesses by the second-in-command to flood control director Chris Gardner – the mayor’s son-in-law, who assumed the position in 2012 with no other qualifications than a university marketing degree.

Several city workers had been cleaning all morning, and when it came time to break for lunch everyone at the site had transportation except Blevins and one other employee. Blevins asked the flood control supervisor if he’d mind running them to the store.

“He told me, ‘Donnie, I can take anybody up to the store but you. Nothing personal.’ ”

The supervisor confided that Gardner had ordered him “not to do anything for Donnie,” and said he couldn’t help Blevins because he “didn’t want to get himself into trouble.”

According to Blevins, throughout 2016 and 2017 he received frequent hints from Gahan supporters that he was a pariah and needed to make amends. One such messenger was Terry Ginkins, owner of TA Ginkins Company, recently revealed by NA Confidential as one of Gahan’s most reliable pay-to-play campaign finance donors.

One day on a job site Ginkins arrived and sidled up to Blevins, making small talk before saying, “Donnie, you need to get on board with Gahan.”

Blevins adds that when Ginkins’ company was remodeling the firehouse at Community Park in 2017, street department employees were sent with heavy equipment to dig and install a drain – something already included in Ginkins’ bid, presumably saving the contractor money.

This rankled Blevins, then Ginkins paused one day to taunt Blevins about “getting behind” Gahan, boasting that “I (Ginkins) don’t have a problem with Jeff.”

This time Blevins didn’t hesitate.

“I don’t imagine you do, because Gahan built your company.”

Ginkins bristled. “What do you mean?”

Blevins told him: “You know exactly what I mean. You get all these handouts and jobs, get all that money and then kick some back.”

“He got really mad,” Blevins remembers, “and he said I had no right to say those things.”

Blevins bit his lip, thinking to himself: Terry, you and Jeff are two peas in a pod.

---

For Blevins the end came in February, 2018. He was working nights on snow removal, out on a run after 9:00 p.m., when Gahan made a visit to the street department office.

When Blevins returned, his supervisor called him inside to deliver the ultimatum he'd just been given. According to the supervisor, who said he had no idea why any of it was happening, Gahan had gone “berserk” about Blevins, referring to him as “that son-of-a-bitch” and promising to “fire his (Blevins’) ass the first chance I get.”

The supervisor, himself nearing full retirement, was shaken by the mayor’s attitude. He also was determined to look out for number one, interpreting Gahan’s obscenity-laden tantrum as a clear warning to Blevins to get out while the getting was good – or the supervisor would do as needed to protect himself.

Weary of mistreatment, Blevins did just that, opting to avoid the looming ax by opting for early retirement at a sizable disadvantage in terms of potential retirement benefits.

"I needed to retire because I was going to lose my job. I told him go ahead, schedule my days, and that's when I started taking my vacation and sick time."

At 50 years old with 19 years in, Blevins needed another 10 years for a full pension, so the ordeal ended up costing him 75% of his optimum monthly pension check. Thanks to his union membership Blevins kept his health insurance, although his monthly insurance premium now costs 50% more than the benefit check.

It’s a very good thing Blevins retained the health insurance.

Tragedy struck a few months ago when his wife suffered a massive stroke.* She remains comatose. Blevins brought her home after a stint at a nursing facility, and how his primary job is caring for her, devoting himself to his stricken wife’s needs as his adult sons manage NA City Boys in his absence.

Gahan? Characteristically, he isn’t finished yet.

Six weeks ago Blevins received another certified letter from the same city functionary, this time citing a vague complaint from an unnamed neighbor about truck noise in the morning, and ordering NA City Boys to cease and desist. There’s a machine shop opposite Blevins’ commercial property, with other industrial users nearby.

There’s also a church where a chief political ally of Gahan’s preaches.

In spite of it all, Blevins tells his story calmly and factually, betraying no outward signs of anger, bitterness or self-pity. He concedes there are times when it’s hard being a Christian and maintaining his composure. But as has always been the case with Blevins, there’s plenty of work to do, and he just does it.

Blevins’ own conclusion about Jeff Gahan is sweeping and comprehensive in its brevity.

“Jeff is a bully.”

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* An update: Carmen Blevins died on August 18, 2019. 

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Recent columns:

March 26: ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany's future.

March 19: ON THE AVENUES: In 1989, six months of traveling fabulously in Europe.

March 12: ON THE AVENUES: Tender mercies, or why Democratic Party luminaries didn't want to be seen at the "Protect Hoosiers from Hate" rally.

March 5: ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

Like Grandpa Jones always said, truth is stranger than fact.

Can words begin to describe "surreal" to this magnitude?

What Blevins, Coffey, Price, Kochert, and Schmidt rejected in choosing to go to trial

In order to avoid any public confusion, the actual and final consent decree proposed in conjunction by the plaintiffs and a Council committee as a means to settle the current redistricting lawsuit is presented below, as offered to the Common Council of New Albany.

As you can see, the first page begins with the Council being asked to take responsibility for violating the right of citizens to equal representation as mandated by law.



The second page continues with language noting involvement in the lawsuit, specifying that the parties wish to settle it prior to trial, and expressing the desire to establish new districts to ensure that future elections are fair.

The next three numbered points are the conditions which, if agreed to by Council, would have settled the case and avoided having taxpayers foot the bill for the Council to defend a lawsuit, the facts of which Council President Larry Kochert doesn't even dispute.

Condition number one states that the Council will, sometime after January 1, 2008, establish an Advisory Committee on Redistricting made up of three at-large council members and three people chosen by the Council from a list provided by the plaintiffs. The committee's purpose would be to help explore options for lawful redistricting. Readers will note that the language in the agreement neither requires payment for committee members nor otherwise obligates this or future councils in any way. It's simply a mechanism to begin discussions and keep the process moving in a public manner.

Condition number two states that the Council will pay the plaintiffs' attorney's fees and expenses incurred thus far, as the Council had to be legally prodded to take seriously its public obligation after failing to do so since at least 2002. The proper amount would be determined by the court rather than the plaintiffs or defendants, again to ensure fairness.

Condition three states that, although the lawsuit would be settled, the court would maintain the authority to monitor the process, making certain that both plaintiffs and defendants follow through on the agreement in a legal manner.

The signature section begins after that and continues on the third page.





The gist of it is this: In the interest of reaching settlement and avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of additional public funds, the plaintiffs worked in good faith with a council committee to remove language from prior settlement drafts reported as objectionable to a majority of council members.

We produced a bare bones document that as simply as possible required three essential items:

That the Council be accountable for its wrongdoing; that the Council pay for the expenses incurred in addressing its ongoing refusal to correct that wrongdoing; and that the Council agree to start a legitimate discussion about creating fair voting districts.

Plaintiff Lloyd Wimp made it very clear during the meeting that the above was the final of several settlement offers. But, rather than agreeing with the plaintiffs to honor one of the most basic of civic principles-- a belief in fair and equal representation-- Council Members Donnie Blevins, Dan Coffey, Larry Kochert, Steve Price, and Bill Schmidt chose to defend a lawsuit at taxpayer expense. What they're defending remains to be determined.

What's it gonna be, CM Blevins?

As four cacophonous years have passed, with at-large councilman Donnie Blevins forever dangling in the legislative wind, unable to settle on a core set of beliefs that might assist him in sorting through the pressures that come with being recognized as the perpetual swing vote, I’ve nonetheless defended him more often than not – and emphasized with him almost always.

I’d sit out there in the gallery during those nights when Blevins would be forced to make a decision, and you could see the contradictory cartoon figures, an angel and a devil, one on each of the councilman’s shoulders, and watch him almost visibly buckle beneath the responsibility of casting his vote for the Gang of Four on one side or the mostly reasonable group on the other, and I always knew it couldn’t be easy for him.

There were times when it was hard to watch. Sometimes Blevins would muster heroic oratory during the course of seemingly "getting it," while other times, he'd arrive in the council chambers like a schoolboy who'd just been taken to the woodshed ... and with Dan Coffey's belt marks shadowing his face. We'd nod, and think yep -- this time the Gang got to him last, and he rolled over.

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There is much about Monday’s last night’s city council meeting that deserves comment, and Bluegill is working on it, but before I retire for the night, something must be written – perhaps gently, perhaps still with much empathy on my part – about Blevins’s performance.

It was as bad a job of acting as I’ve witnessed in four years, and it bodes ill as we approach a period when the Gang of Four, itself about to be dissolved after the November elections, might still be able to kneecap the city for a generation to come.

The Gang's rancor is elevated, and it is increasingly rabid, and the Luddites on the council seemingly are ready to make the whole community pay for its own inability to comprehend a modern world that no longer will permit ward-heelers to conduct balloting in their garages, tell tremendous whopping lies without audience members calling them on it, or being able to avoid howling laughter when they cowardly abstain on crucial votes.

Two weeks ago, the council determined to form a committee, made up of the body’s three at-large councilmen, for the purpose of communicating with the plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit (the author is one of them) so as to avoid trial. The merits of this case have been discussed at some length here, but what is relevant at the moment is that the council approved this measure, after which the lame duck Blevins promptly let it be known that he had no interest in participating alongside fellow at-large councilmen Jack Messer and Kevin Zurschmiede.

Not unexpectedly, Blevins did not attend Monday’s 6:00 p.m. fact-finding hearing, which concluded shortly before 6:30 p.m., at which time four of us descended the steps in route to a quick dinner at the Speakeasy, only to find Blevins chatting with workers in one of the offices downstairs.

Hours later, at the conclusion of the regular meeting, and as CM Messer presented his committee’s report to the remainder of the council, Blevins – who confessed to having read only a small bit of the plaintiff’s document as discussed at the committee meeting – erupted in indignation at the suggestions presented by the plaintiffs during a gathering that Blevins scoffed at attending even though he was two floors down by the time it ended, and almost certainly was there before that.

As I said, I’ve defended Blevins before, but his ineffectual performance tonight revealed a odiferous and disingenuous hypocrisy that approaches the level of that practiced routinely by Larry Kochert and Dan Coffey. You've no idea how depressing this is for me, because I always have retained hope that Blevins would be able to move beyond it.

Blevins, after all, was named to the redistricting committee. Perhaps – just perhaps – he might accept the assignment with the seriousness it deserves rather than play the Gang of Four’s brinksmanship game without contemplating first that he is their most dispensable pawn.

That's because blatant political sociopaths like Dan Coffey are interested in congenitally indecisive people like Donnie Blevins for one reason, and one reason only, and it’s the same reason that Coffey’s second reading of an ordinance that seeks to cripple the city’s ability to lawfully assist economic development passed last night on the strength of Blevins’s veritable coin-flip of a swing vote: To keep the string of power wrapped tightly around Coffey’s own pudgy, bullying knuckle, and if Blevins thinks that after all of this is over that Coffey will be inviting him to the Wizard’s Westside dirt-floor hovel for ice-cold barbecued bologna on a stale shingle, then all my theories about the ability of humans to adapt for the best interest of their own survival can be thrown out the window.

Too bad, Donnie. You coulda been someone, really. You’ve shown those glimmers, and I know you’ve felt them, too. But when you let people like Larry Kochert and Dan Coffey twist your arm, and when you find out that they’re not really laughing with you … well, it’s just sad, and all you’ve accomplished is to keep quite a few people poor, ignorant and without hope of redemption -- and I know that really isn't your intent.

Dan Coffey cares neither about you nor about them. He must perpetuate the civic rot in order to have people like you – and people like them – looking toward him as the instrument of their salvation. They're bound to be disappointed. So are you, Donnie.

Sorry, but someone had to say it. I understand that you believe in a higher power, and I'll readily confess that I don't, but I just wish there were some way that I could make you see the power that this city ideally possesses if the doers and the capable can shake free of the shackles imposed on them by the likes of Coffey and Steve Price.

Donnie, they're not helping people to become free. They're ensuring failure by promising gullible, desperate people that the hands of time can somehow be frozen. It's only an illusion, and at times, you've seemed to grasp that, although you've not been able to shake it for long enough to offer hope of a positive legacy. Right now, your legacy is mixed. There are five meetings left, and your term will then be over. However, you're lucky, because time remains for you to be a part of the solution and not the problem.

And I mean that sincerely. Perhaps Dan Coffey will print this off for you to read. He doesn't follow the blogs, you know. But he detests us just the same, and you -- Donnie Blevins -- know that he's wrong in feeling that way.

The question, then: What do you intend to do about it?

NAC’s Primary Primer: At-large council (D) endorsements.

The year 2007 is shaping up as pivotal for the city of New Albany, and not coincidentally, a primary election comes to us on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. NAC is considering the five contested city council races in the Democratic Party primary and the entertaining three-way Democratic mayor’s race.

The format will be consistent throughout, continuing here with the at-large council race.

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Council (D) At-Large

The New Albanian (NA):
You are asked to pick three of six … but I see only one and a half.

(NA) - Endorsement:
John Gonder truly thinks globally and acts locally, and his ability to grasp larger issues and trends and to apply them to the grassroots level of local affairs is an excellent recommendation to serve on a city where presently, ideas go to die slow and very painful deaths.

(NA) – Endorsement with an asterisk:
Lately I’ve not comprehended incumbent Jack Messer’s council stances, but perhaps these recent inexplicabilities can be chalked up to the vagaries of election year political maneuvering. I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, because during his first three years in office, a stellar progressive voting record and unquestioned leadership on important projects like Scribner Place were vital for progress in this community.

(NA) - The rest of the pack, not endorsed:
Incumbent Donnie Blevins is correct in pointing to the pressures he has experienced as the council’s “swing vote,” but although he has managed to swing the correct way perhaps slightly more than half the time, an apparently non-existent pattern of core political beliefs might have assisted him in more reliable decision-making at other times.

Shirley Baird is to be credited for taking a far higher road than those with whom she is customarily seen keeping company at council meetings, and yet if maintaining a once-a-week posting schedule on a blog is too time-consuming, it’s simply a bad omen for the effort it will require to keep abreast of breaking events while on the council.

Lagging far to the rear are Jim Hollis, a fossilized relic and ex-functionary pushing 80 who has yet to divulge a solitary platform plank, and Vicki Denhart, the cowardly and trognonymous progenitor of the Freedom to Screech smear blog, who has offered numerous platform planks – any of them suitable for her to walk at rapier point, but none useful to the city in general except as components of bilious and vendetta-driven decay management.

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Bluegill (BG):

While I, too, give Jack Messer much credit for early and necessary action in wiping the spittle from the cheeks of anyone of reasonable intelligence who had to face the Council in the past few years and voting for something, at-large election strategy dictates that informed voters cast only one vote in the race. My vote's going to John Gonder.

John has handily demonstrated core principles, an understanding of local redevelopment issues, a well-developed worldview, and a willingness and ability to apply and communicate them in a political sphere in which the lack of the aforementioned is a hallmark.