Given the chance to gloat, Steve Clark instead pleads for detente.

        The Villa Hills mayor — recently cleared by a grand jury — says he wants to work with the same council members that wanted to see him convicted of criminal charges if not sent to jail.

        “I really wish council would make a serious effort to work together,” Mr. Clark said during a Monday morning breakfast.

        “It's not about seven people” on City Council, he said. “It's about the residents.”

        Three days after the Nov. 7 election, a Kenton County Grand Jury refused to indict Mr. Clark for failing to obtain a bid for proposed sidewalk work. Thus ended a six-month ordeal that was hell for Mr. Clark, his family and his growing number of supporters in that Kenton County city of 7,700.
       

Angry mob
               Council members, who have clashed with Mr. Clark since he took office two years ago, were the major instigators of what the mayor often characterized as a witch hunt.

        Plenty of others piled on during the investigation, a mob that included that the KentuckyAttorney General's Office, the Kenton County Commonwealth Attorney's Office and me.

        Everybody wanted a piece of Mr. Clark's butt. Nobody got one.

        In April a check was cut to a Florence concrete company at Mr. Clark's behest. He wanted the dough set aside so sidewalk work could be completed. He did not intend for the check to be mailed.

        But it was. It wasn't cashed. The concrete company returned the check to the city. And Mr. Clark has spent much of this year as Public Enemy No. 1 in Villa Hills.

        The mayor believes his problems started because he whipped former Mayor Denny Stein in 1998 and thus ended the liberal use of city credit cards, which had been used to pay for bar bills at Hooters and other restaurants. “I stopped the illegal spending,” the mayor said. “I broke up the party.”

        So he believes that when he did make a mistake — like having the check cut without telling council — his opponents jumped all over him with accusations of breaking the law.
       

Ready to pounce
               “I said that would happen, and it did,” Mr. Clark said.

        From the very beginning he vowed to fight.

        “It was a mistake,” Mr. Clark, a military veteran, said about cutting the check after council voted to have him investigated. “But they want to make this a witch hunt. Well, they want a game, they've got one. They are bringing out the Marine in me.”

        That comment was portrayed here and by others as arrogance. But it turned out to be prophetic.

        Mr. Clark did fight. He never backed down, even turning down deals offered by the prosecutor.

        Throughout the ordeal Mr. Clark said he put his faith in God, often relying on a Bible verse in Jeremiah 15: “I will save you from the hands of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the cruel.”

        “(Councilman) Mike Sadouskas called me and said he works together now,” Mr. Clark said as he finished his breakfast. “I told him, "I'll see what your actions say. I'm tired of listening to your words. Show me.'”

       Patrick Crowley covers Kentucky politics for The Kentucky Enquirer. He can be reached at 578-5581, or by e-mail at Pcrowley9 @home.com.

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