Fouts’ strange ways catch up with him

Has the real Jim Fouts finally stood up?

The profanity-laced  threats by Fouts that were caught on tape, now the subject of a state police investigation, seem out of character with the professorial tone the Warren mayor displays when the TV news cameras are rolling.

But insiders say that Fouts routinely berates his employees and instills fear in fellow elected officials. One Fouts supporter I’ve talked to said he believes the mayor began coming “unglued” in 2011 when questions about Fouts possibly lying about his age became front page news.

At one point, he reportedly threw a chair in anger at the city Clerk’s Office when he didn’t get the answers he was looking for on ways to make the age issue go away. He even resorted to giving up driving for several months rather than renew his driver license and publicly submit a date of birth.

All of this because of documents that proved the eccentric Fouts was, at the time, 69 years old, not 67 as he had claimed.

In media circles it’s well known that Fouts is paranoid about the news coverage he receives. I’m told he has a list of more than 100 news segments broadcast by WDIV-TV Channel 4 that he insists were intentionally unfair toward him. He has made it clear that he believes certain Macomb Daily writers conspire to destroy him on a regular basis.

He also keeps close tabs on the website message boards where some of the Internet vermin routinely post hateful messages.

And then there’s this: The quirky mayor, a lifelong bachelor, has apparently created a trust fund that, upon his death, will finance an ongoing campaign against his political enemies. One official calls it Fouts’ “revenge fund.”

Nonetheless, the tapes of phone conversations that are under investigation are particularly jarring. In case you missed it, here’s the mafia-style flavor of conversations Fouts had with one of his appointees about a critic:

“If I saw him in the (expletive) street and had a baseball bat I would beat the (expletive) down to the (expletive) ground," Fouts is recorded saying.” It would take me just a little bit to find a (expletive) gun and blow his (expletive) head off. That's how pissed off I am."

This behavior may or may not constitute a violation of state law, which prevents the use of obscene or threatening language by phone. But it’s certainly not new in Macomb County political circles, particularly in Warren.
After all, this is the town where a hurled toilet seat crashed through the window of a mayoral candidate’s campaign headquarters a few elections ago. I can imagine the chuckles that arose from the good ‘ol boys of local politics when they heard that Fouts faces potential arrest for having a tantrum aimed at his perceived enemies.

In fact, the decision whether to prosecute the mayor will be made by Eric Smith, the county prosecutor who in 2010 dodged charges for allegedly violating the same law. In the days before the ’10 election, Smith infamously unloaded on Jim Perna, a Republican candidate for county commissioner. Perna was running against Smith’s brother, Democratic Commissioner Bob Smith, and a GOP mailer was sent to voters that criticized the Smith family for a long line of government jobs.

The brief remarks by the prosecutor were captured on Perna’s answering machine, including: “You mother f******. I am going to f****** bury you.”

Of course, Smith’s outburst was probably matched on many past occasions, away from a tape recorder, by former Macomb officials such as Dave Jaye and Kirby Holmes.

But, when recalling some of Michigan’s most obnoxious, grating politicians, it’s important to note that Macomb featured the king of Cro-Magnon behavior.

The late state Sen. Gil DiNello, an Eastpointe Democrat-turned-Republican, was perhaps best known for years for a fistfight he engaged in on the Senate floor. Until the campaign of 1994. That year DiNello faced a tough re-election and in a radio interview the puganicious senator had a meltdown, targeting his longtime nemesis, Detroit Free Press columnist Hugh McDiarmid, who practically invented the version of political snark that is so common on today’s blogs and Twitter.

Here’s what DiNello said: “You throw acid in his eyes. You pull his brain out of his head. You cut off his hands so he can’t write. You pull his tongue out of his mouth and if that’s not enough you put this guy in an electric chair and execute him.”

After a tape of that outburst was replayed in countless Democratic radio ads, DiNello went down to defeat and his career was essentially over.

What some political observers find intriguing, given the events of the past few days, is that DiNello was unapologetically a bully. But Fouts, aging and frail, almost ghostly, certainly does not exude the same presence as did the barrel-chested, foul-mouthed senator. So, the coarse language on tape coming from Fouts, a retired civics teacher, is far nastier than the mayor’s typically eccentric ways of getting his digs in.

At his annual State of the City Addresses, the mayor’s ego cannot be held in check. Over the past two years, he has criticized the governor, the judiciary, the attorney general, fellow mayors,  and surrounding cities in general.  

All of this is delivered in deadpan (for Fouts, there is no other way). This is not Democrats vs. Republicans. This is Fouts against the world.

Perhaps the strangest example of Foutsian behavior came last October when the remnants of Hurricane Sandy were blowing toward Michigan as Halloween approached. With less than 24 hours’ notice, the almighty mayor moved Halloween on the calendar, declaring that trick-or-treating in the city of Warren would take place on Nov. 2. Though many parents ignored Fouts, those who thought his words were an edict kept their kids home though the Oct. 31 weather was uneventful.

In the wake of last year’s Fourth of July celebrations, Fouts publicly eviscerated a colleague, state Rep. Harold Haugh, the former Roseville mayor. In response to a Haugh bill that legalized powerful fireworks in Michigan, Fouts said Haugh was essentially an enemy of war veterans, dogs and small children.

While Fouts was known as a bomb thrower back in the day, targeting mayor after mayor during his many years on the city council, he has demonstrated a remarkably thin skin now that he’s the city’s CEO.

When he gave a speech in 2012 that was broadcast on Warren’s public access cable TV channel, he noticed on tape that a woman in the audience was sarcastically laughing at a portion of his remarks. He tracked down the woman’s employer, berated her and demanded that the woman who laughed at him be fired from her job. She had not shown proper respect for his honor.

If the real Jim Fouts has revealed himself on the newest tape that’s become public, and if he is charged, and he is convicted of a crime, and his political career is ruined, someone should keep a close eye on him. 

Fouts without a political spotlight is more than just a man in the dark.

While many chuckle about Fouts’ misfortune, in all seriousness and with all due respect it should be remembered that Warren also has a history of politicians who have chosen death over disgrace.