Missouri Politician’s Husband Accused Of Harassing High School Students
A group of Missouri high school students have filed a police report claiming that the husband of the school board candidate they were protesting verbally harassed them, KPLR-TV (St. Louis) is reporting.
On Tuesday morning, a small group of students at Parkway High School in suburban St. Louis held signs and told passersby about their feelings on Jeanie Ames, whose candidacy for a vacant school board seat was to be decided in an election that day.
As The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, Ames’ candidacy had been described as “controversial.” Specifically, she had called herself a “Confederate,” and according to an earlier St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, had called Michelle Obama a “giant rat” and had retweeted a tweet calling for Islam to be banned in the United States.
She made no apologies for and did not try to refute any of those claims. She did, however, claim that she had been the victim of a “vile smear campaign,” and that she was unfairly targeted because she was a conservative, pro-life candidate for a spot on a traditionally liberal school board.
“I am not a xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Islam, anti-Semitic racist.”
On Election Day, where a handful of students were protesting Ames’ candidacy, Ames’ husband, Eric Ames, became involved in the story.
The teens say that as Eric Ames dropped his son off at school, he became verbally aggressive with them. Senior Hannah Maurer describes what happened.
“He came over and was about spitting distance away from my face and was yelling at us and he called us idiots and said we were effing despicable.”
Student Mali Seigel described the incident similarly.
“He came in and he got really close to our faces and he called us F-ing despicable and he was spitting and he got so close to us that I was like physically scared and started crying I was so uncomfortable.”
Ames, for his part, claims that he didn’t appreciate the fact that his son had to walk past the teens who were protesting his mother. He also claimed the teens turned their signs towards his son as he walked into school, something the teens deny.
“I told them I thought they were despicable for doing what they are doing,” he said. “I walked up to them and told them in a stern voice I said I just dropped off my son and he had to walk by you three idiots with your signs calling his mother a racist, how does that make him feel?”
#Missouri students file POLICE REPORT after RIGHT-WING school board candidate’s husband comes after them
The students were protesting candidate JEANIE AMES and ACCUSING HER of HATE SPEECH and RACISM#MAGA https://t.co/luq8sAbxws
— Michael O’Grady (@mog7546) April 4, 2018
In a tweet that has since been deleted (in fact, it appears that Ames has completely deleted her Twitter account), Jeanie Ames called the students “loonies.”
“When ANYONE [sic] not allowed to refer to my family in a tongue-and-cheek manner,that is no longer political correctness. It’s intolerance. You have neither the the right,nor the power to decide how someone acknowledges their own family heritage. In this case,you also lack knowledge.”
Of course, nothing ever posted on social media ever goes away, and unless you’re lightning fast, someone will take a screenshot of your tweet, as did Twitter user Grayson Jostes.
Here’s another proof that Jeanie Ames is horrible and ignorant human being pic.twitter.com/oJ1S87Iw6E
— Grayson Jostes (Gray Bow-Tie) (@BroadwayJostes) April 3, 2018
As it turns out, Ames wound up losing the race, coming in last among the five candidates vying for two open seats, with 12 percent of the vote.
