When Tony Salvatore began campaigning on the sidewalk for a seat on the Wildwood City Council, he didn’t expect to be harassed by the police but that’s exactly what he says happened. According to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri, at least six police encounters allegedly had a chilling effect on Salvatore’s political speech and hindered his campaign to the point that the Air Force veteran lost his bid for city council.
“The police officers on the ground who responded to my client when he was holding his campaign sign outside were guys who were told to do their job by the politicians,” said Thomas Applewhite, partner of the Donner Applewhite law firm in St. Louis. “That’s the reason we didn’t sue the police.”
Instead, Salvatore sued the City of Wildwood, its mayor James Bowlin, former city administrator Ryan Thomas, and former councilman Raymond Manton, the incumbent whom Salvatore was running against.
“One of the named defendants was on the same political action committee as the incumbent who acted against my client,” Applewhite told the St. Louis Record.
Manton died in 2019 two months after Salvatore filed the lawsuit, according to media reports.
“What was my client accused of doing? Holding a campaign sign that said ‘Salvatore for Wildwood’ on a sidewalk and having the police called on him,” Applewhite said. “That's not something you expect to even see in America. So, to an extent, this was shocking behavior.”
At the time, the city of Wildwood had an ordinance in place prohibiting holding signs on any public property, including sidewalks and the lawsuit alleged the city’s ordinance and its actions were violations of the First Amendment right to campaign under the U.S. Constitution.
“I was happy to see that Wildwood actually amended their ordinance on this because of how broad it was,” Applewhite said.
Without admitting liability, Wildwood agreed to pay $295,000 to settle the lawsuit and part of the settlement requires training sessions about protecting the First Amendment and the Missouri Sunshine Law, which will be provided by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.
“What happened to my client is indicative of a trend towards bare-knuckle politics that’s happening nationwide of defeating your opponent at any cost where you may not use a knife but you’ll take actions such as calling the police on your opponent to try to make it so they will stop pushing their candidacy,” Applewhite said. “That’s not the kind of political hardball we want in our country.”
In a statement on its website, the City of Wildwood asserts its commitment to First Amendment rights:
“The City of Wildwood does not and will not regulate political speech based upon its content, provide resources to any candidate which are not made available to all candidates or interfere with expressions of free speech – including holding and carrying signs on one’s own property or on public property or walkways – except for reasonable time, place and manner restrictions which do not differentiate based upon the content of the speech.”