Protesting Santa Gives Coal To Iowa Town Council, Gets Kicked Out

MUSCATINE, IA — A protesting Santa ended up on the city council’s naughty list in Muscatine, Iowa, and was escorted out of the council chambers by police after he handed out lumps of coal to council members Thursday. Santa — Muscatine resident Max Coffman in real life — gave the city's embattled mayor Hershey’s Kisses for all the “grief and aggravation” she’s endured from her colleagues over the past year.

The protest by Coffman, who wore a red Santa suit and carried a red bag full of presents, went over like the large brick of coal he handed City Administrator Gregg Mandsager, who he said deserved it for “suing the city” to remove Mayor Diana Broderson from office.

To Broderson, he doled out the aluminum-foil wrapped chocolate “for the way you’ve handled everything … the way you’ve done it with grace and beauty.” It has been a tumultuous year for Broderson, who was impeached and removed from office until a court tossed out the ruling, and was re-elected to anther two-year term in November.

The ruckus that preceded the council’s decision to unceremoniously boot the Santa impersonator illustrates the power wielded in town halls and how bitter partisan divides seep into what in Iowa and many other areas areas of the country are nonpartisan elections and pit neighbors against neighbors.

Broderson, a 58-year-old social worker born into a family of labor-union Democrats, took office in January 2016. Her liberal leanings were cause enough for a culture clash, given that local government in Muscatine is traditionally conservative and led by business executives who emphasize economic developments efforts. But when Broderson started making good on a campaign pledge to use her appointment power to diversify boards and commission by race, gender, income level and party affiliation, tensions with much of the rest of City Hall went from simmering to a full boil.

“She tried to load the guns with Democrats,” the city’s former mayor, DeWayne Hopkins, told the Des Moines Register last winter.

For years in Muscatine, appointed officials hand-picked their successors, who were rubber-stamped by the mayor. As City Council began codifying a process that stripped the mayor of appointment powers, Broderson looked outside of Muscatine for allies, including a Democratic state senator from Mount Pleasant who asked for a formal opinion from Iowa’s Democratic attorney general on the mayor’s power to appoint to the Civil Service Commission. She also asked for a new state audit of the city books in the most recent fiscal year.

In a public letter in June 2016, she said the “good old boys are trying to ruin the office of mayor” by “stripping away all of the mayor’s power and giving it an unelected bureaucrat.”

“Muscatine’s people deserve more than a “DC-style-closed-door-backroom government.”

The City Council voted unanimously in May to remove Broderson from office. In general, she was accused of misconduct in office and of using her office for personal gain. Specifically, retired judge John Nahra, appointed by the city oversee the impeachment case, wrote in a brief that Broderson sought criminal charges against City Council members, the city administrator, the city attorney and members of the media. Nahra claimed the mayor had spread lies about them “that not only tarnished their good names, but attempted to destroy various facets of their lives.”

At worst, Nahra wrote, Broderson’s allegations were “made maliciously with the intent to besmirch her political opponents.” At best, they were recklessly thoughtless, without consideration of their potential harm, he argued.

In the end, a ruling by a District Court judge reduced the kerfuffle to something of a kangaroo court proceeding where a single person — Nahra — acted as investigator, prosecutor and judge. In his October ruling vacating the removal from office order,Muscatine District Court Judge Mark Cleve said the process violated Broderson’s due process rights and pointed out council members voted to remove Broderson from office before filing charges or even holding the removal hearings, which included 20 hours of testimony.

Cleve wrote that the record is clear that “the city council believed that the mayor had damaged the council’s reputation in the community” when she accused them of being “bullies” and “good ol’ boys. Broderson had also claimed discrimination based on gender and had spoken with the city attorney about criminal charges against a city council member.

Cleve didn’t weigh in on the accuracy of the mayor’s allegations, but said council members who voted to remove the mayor had a “strong interest in shielding themselves from potential personal liability, in preventing the council from being the focus of further accusations, and in restoring its image in the community while negatively impacting the mayor's image."

In the video above, a protester dressed as Santa enters at about the 15-minute mark. Several members of the audience can be heard admonishing Coffman for tarnishing “Santa Claus’ memory,” and Broderson also called him out. As Coffman was escorted from the council chambers, Mandsager can be heard saying the man will be kicked out of city hall for six months.

Photo and video via City of Muscatine YouTube channel