KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 26 (UPI) -- Kansas City election officials are trying to determine if a citizens group has presented enough signatures to trigger a recall vote on Mayor Mark Funkhouser.
The group submitted petitions Monday with 13,000 signatures to City Clerk Vickie Thompson, who made a trip to the office on the Memorial Day holiday to receive them, The Kansas City Star reported. Officials have already certified 7,459 signatures, and another 9,491 valid ones are needed for a recall.
Harris Wilder, a spokesman for the recall effort, said the group had little funding or support from the news media.
"The people of Kansas City have spoken loudly and clearly and with a very firm voice that this mayor has to go," Wilder said.
Funkhouser ran for mayor as a reformer and was elected two years ago after almost 20 years as Kansas City auditor.
"The problem is being mayor is different than being auditor," Warren Erdman, an executive vice president at a local company, Kansas City Southern, told The New York Times. "Being mayor at its most central essence is about forging consensus. That requires a personality and a skill set very different from one who just comes forward with the unvarnished truth."
