Recently, I reported that The Columbus Dispatch’s management put the brakes on an article, which was scheduled for publication and was damaging to Mike Coleman’s campaign. Coincidentally, over the last few days, The Dispatch ran several stories mentioned in my reports culminating with the Sunday Front Page Metro Section story about the Mayor’s decade long relationship with a local drug dealer who is now a CONVICTED drug dealer. Shockingly, it appears that the arrogant Mayor used his influence and power to take care of his drug dealing buddy by helping his wife get a job in the city government…

From today’s Dispatch:

Mayor ’shocked’ by friend’s arrest

Coleman denies knowing of drug case or helping man’s wife improperly

When Mayor Michael B. Coleman launched a summer strike force a few years ago, he vowed to rid Columbus streets of drugs, guns and gangs. But until Friday, he said, he had no idea that one of his friends had been caught up in a sweep. Officers found Francisco Santana, 40, with a small baggie of cocaine, making him one of 700 arrested in the summer 2006 police raids.

But Coleman said he first learned of Santana’s drug dealing when federal agents picked him up in the fall of 2006 and charged him with possessing 5 kilograms of cocaine.

“I’m shocked. I had no idea, none,” Coleman said Friday of Santana, who owned a dry cleaning business on the East Side. “Why would he tell me? I hate drug dealers.”

The mayor also denied showing favoritism toward Santana’s wife. In June, after Santana pleaded to a lesser federal cocaine charge and was imprisoned, Santana’s wife was given a newly created $35,000-a-year city job.

The federal arrest in the fall of 2006 and the city strike force arrest that summer weren’t Santana’s first run-ins with narcotics officers.

Columbus police arrested him in March 2004 on charges of selling nearly a pound of marijuana to an undercover officer and possessing cocaine. A police report obtained Thursday by The Dispatch shows Santana asked to phone a friend: Coleman.

Tucked in Santana’s wallet, police reported finding the mayor’s unlisted home phone number and private cell-phone number written on his city business card.

The call didn’t take place, however, because the mayor was out of the country. Coleman, a Democrat seeking re-election Tuesday, said he never knew that his officers had arrested Santana or that he’d asked for the mayor during the arrest. Coleman said he learned of all this when he was asked about the arrest for this story.

Santana got probation for the 2004 marijuana charge. And Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, a Republican, said it wasn’t worth the expense of bringing Santana back from Texas to try him for the 2006 summer drug sting because federal agents had arrested him in the meantime on more-serious charges.

A federal judge sentenced Santana to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison in April. He had been charged with possessing with the intent to sell more than 5 kilos of cocaine and possessing with the intent to sell 500 grams of cocaine. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.

With her husband in prison and two children, Santana’s wife was “struggling,” Coleman said. Yanet Santana gave the mayor a resume that he passed along to Pam O’Grady, who is in charge of city hiring. She passed the resume on to Finance Director Joel Taylor, Coleman said.

“She had been looking for a job with the city. There hadn’t been anything that came up before that she qualified for,” Coleman said. “There was no special treatment. We didn’t create a job for her.

“Joel thought there was a need for her skills.”

Taylor wanted a second secretary, according to the Civil Service file, because the city’s facilities management division was folded into his Finance Department.

The job was never posted, city officials confirmed. Taylor said all city departments are allowed two unclassified secretaries to serve at the director’s discretion. Her $17-an-hour salary was never planned for in the city’s annual budget, her Civil Service file noted. A “projected surplus in the director’s office will cover the unbudgeted expense,” a note in her file states.[…]

According to the 2004 police report, obtained Thursday, an informant said he observed Santana acting “crazy” while with Coleman at a North Side bar in 2001. The informant thought it was obvious Santana was high.

Coleman said he recalls being at a bar with Santana alone only once and that he left after 15 minutes because he felt uncomfortable. Coleman said he did see Santana acting strangely at times, but that he thought Santana had a drinking problem.

Coleman said he learned of Santana’s involvement with drugs from a neighbor a few weeks after Santana’s November 2006 arrest by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

No special treatment? So is Coleman trying to claim that anyone could ask city hall to hire them and they will create a brand new job for them?

At the very least, taxpayers should be upset that they are paying $35,000/year to the drug dealer’s wife. And Coleman is lying out of his ass here… No one has a friend for 10 years who is this heavily into the drug culture and not know about it.

On TV, Mike Coleman says . . . “That’s Leadership that Works!” . . . But the Mayor is in charge of law enforcement in Columbus! So how did he only know about this situation once The Dispatch asked him about it? As the Church Lady once said, “How convenient!”

Mayor Coleman should prove me wrong and take an independent lie detector test to prove that he didn’t know about his convicted drug dealer friend who was living the high life from Mike’s campaign fund. But, of course, he would never do something like this, because Coleman is a lying sack of you know what.

Here should be a few questions to the Mayor from the residents of Columbus based on the Dispatch’s explosive story:

1. Why were you at bars with a drug dealer?
2. Why did your convicted drug dealer friend have your private home phone number and private cell phone number in his wallet?
3. Why did your convicted drug dealer friend try to call you with his one and only phone call when he was arrested?
4. Why did you apparently use your power and influence to get a tax payer funded job for your drug dealer friend’s wife?
5. Why didn’t your drug dealer friend’s wife go through the normal process to get a City job just like the rest of us would have to do?

And with Coleman’s close ties to this drug dealer, how likely is it that Coleman himself has used drugs in the past decade?

To the men, women and parents of children who reside in Columbus and who will hopefully vote on Tuesday: pause for one moment and ask yourself … is this the kind of leadership Columbus needs in the 21st Century? Surely you would agree that after 8 years of Mayor Coleman, Columbus is no better off than they were in 1999 especially when it comes to CRIME, DRUGS and lack of JOBS? Are you ALARMED about this breaking news, the conduct of the Mayor and his misdeeds?

And to the men and women who risk their lives every day serving in law enforcement: You, above anyone else, know what devastating effects drugs have in our community and sadly, within our schools. Drug dealers sell drugs to our children. And drugs lead to murder, and other violent crime in our neighborhoods. You put your lives on the line everyday trying to make Columbus safe. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for arresting Mayor Coleman’s drug dealing friend.

If you would like to do something about the mess at city hall, on Tuesday vote for Bill Todd for Columbus mayor. Bill Todd will clean Columbus up.