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At his door was Ballwin Mayor Tim Pogue. Redinger had never met him.

“I thought he was the maintenance man,� Redinger recalls about first opening the door.

It turns out the mayor of this city of 30,000 residents had a question about the upcoming April election.

About six months earlier, Redinger, who is 25, had moved to Ballwin from Cape Girardeau. He wanted to serve his new community, so he filed to run for the Board of Aldermen. That’s what sparked the mayor’s unannounced visit.

The West County municipality has an ordinance that says aldermen must live in the city for a full year before their election. Redinger didn’t qualify for the ballot, the mayor told him. He’d have to withdraw his candidacy.

The next day, Pogue followed up with an email, letting Redinger know the deadline to withdraw had passed. He’d have to file a lawsuit to get his name removed from the ballot, the mayor told him.

Three days later, Pogue sent another email: “I just wanted to follow up with you about the importance of this.�

Two days after that, Redinger walked into Ballwin City Hall and signed a form withdrawing his candidacy. But because it was after the date to get dropped from the ballot, the form was meaningless. Without a court order, Redinger would still appear on the ballot as an opponent of incumbent Alderman Michael Finley.

A lawsuit to obtain that court order was filed Feb. 2. The attorneys on the case were Robert E. Jones and Katherine E. Henry. They are part of the Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe law firm. They filed on behalf of Redinger, according to court records. Jones happens to also be the city attorney for Ballwin, which means he works for Pogue and the Board of Aldermen.

The lawsuit was filed against the St. Louis County Board of Elections. The board’s attorneys, Steven W. Garrett and Andrew R. Bramman, work for the same law firm as Jones.

On Feb. 4, a judge signed the order removing Redinger from the Ballwin election ballot.

There was one problem.

Redinger didn’t know about the lawsuit filed in his name. He had nothing to do with it.

“I’ve never met any of these people,� he says of the attorneys who filed a lawsuit claiming he was their client. “I had no idea it was happening.�

The lawsuit was paid for by Ballwin taxpayers. That’s who Jones and Henry billed for their work on the case.

Redinger says he didn’t find out about the lawsuit until months later, when two different lawyers — hired by an alderman to investigate the matter — asked him about it.

The alderman, Kevin Roach, hired the investigators because he wanted to get answers to the questions swirling in his head. Why would the mayor make an in-person visit to push out a candidate who filed for office? How could the city’s law firm file a lawsuit in a case in which it represented both sides?

And how could that law firm file a lawsuit on behalf of a citizen who claims he didn’t know anything about it?

“Mr. Redinger was unaware of and did not consent to representation,� Roach would later write in a complaint he filed with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

The mayor and city attorney say they did nothing wrong.

“It was in the city’s best interest to take action,� Pogue said, “to do what it takes to make the ballot as legal as possible.�

But the details of Roach’s complaint offer a roadmap into some political and legal intrigue that Roach believes the residents of Ballwin deserve to see for themselves.

‘I knew there was more to this’

There’s a good chance nobody would have thought twice about the Redinger matter if Roach hadn’t been curious about a note sent in February by Ballwin city administrator Eric Sterman.

It informed aldermen of the various people who would be on the city’s April ballot. “Brennan Redinger withdrew and was granted a court order to be removed from the ballot,� Sterman wrote.

That meant all four incumbent aldermen — Finley, Roach, Frank Fleming and David Siegel — would run unopposed.

Early in the process, Roach, too, had earned an opponent. At the time, Roach recalled, Finley approached him and suggested that the alderman talk to the potential opponent and see if he would drop out of the race.

“I thought that was odd,� Roach says. He introduced himself to the man on filing day and helped him with his paperwork. The way to win elections is at the ballot box, Roach argues.

So when Redinger needed a court order to get out of the race, Roach wondered what was up.

“At first glance, I knew there was more to this,� Roach says.

In part, that’s because he saw the January invoice — $5,705 — from the city’s law firm, Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe. Several hundred dollars of that bill was related to the work on Redinger’s case. The invoice specifically referenced work on a case in which the city wasn’t a party. Why would the city taxpayers pay for a lawsuit filed by a private citizen? That’s what Roach wanted to find out.

He took the step of hiring outside attorneys, on his own, to investigate. It’s not the first time in his short political career that he went to unusual measures to make a point. Four years ago, in part to help his run in the Republican primary for state auditor, Roach walked 193 miles — from Ballwin to the Warrensburg campus of Central Missouri University — to highlight the fact that he couldn’t obtain online budget documents for the university.

This time, Roach hired Tim Garrison and Salvadore Hernandez to investigate. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ work out of the Springfield, Missouri, office of the Husch Blackwell law firm. Garrison is a former U.S. attorney and was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. He is on the short list to be the state’s next attorney general, now that Republican Eric Schmitt has been elected to the U.S. Senate. Hernandez worked for the FBI for 25 years and specializes in ethics and government compliance.

On May 16, they met with Redinger at The Lou Eats, a restaurant in the Laclede’s Landing area of St. Louis. Redinger told them he didn’t know about the lawsuit and that he never met the city’s attorneys or gave them permission to represent him. He shared text messages and emails.

In their report to Roach, the lawyers suggested multiple possible ethics violations of Supreme Court rules for attorneys. Among those possible violations of the rules of professional conduct: it is a conflict of interest to represent both sides of a lawsuit or bill a third party for a client without the client’s knowledge.

After getting the report, Roach filed a complaint with Ashcroft’s office, alleging possible election fraud. On June 23, Garrison met in Jefferson City with Ashcroft and some of his staff members.

A month later, an elections specialist in Ashcroft’s office emailed Roach and told him the office would not be acting on the complaint.

“We have reviewed this information and determined there will be no further action and are closing this matter,� she wrote.

Roach also shared his report with Schmitt’s office and with the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. Neither has indicated to him they plan to pursue the matter.

A spokesman for Ashcroft’s office said there was not “probable cause� to pursue an election law violation.

But there are potentially ethical issues for the lawyers involved, says Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University and an expert in legal ethics.

“Even if they had met with Redinger and he had agreed to let them represent him, the same law firm cannot represent parties suing each other in a lawsuit,� Joy says. “They can’t do that. There’s no wiggle room.�

Joy also said that there is a problem with Ballwin taxpayers paying for a lawsuit filed in another person’s name.

“If a third party is paying a lawyer to represent someone else, he would have to give informed, signed consent,� he said.

‘I never saw it’

In an interview, Jones acknowledged he never met or talked to Redinger before filing the lawsuit.

“The petition was sent to him by email,� Jones said. “I did not speak to him. I did not see a response to that email.�

A series of emails from Ballwin city officials, and invoices from Jones and his law firm, show how the process to remove Redinger from the ballot played out. The Post-Dispatch obtained the records through a public records request.

The process started in late December with a request from Finley, the Ward 1 alderman, to Sterman, the city administrator, asking him for Redinger’s candidate filing paperwork.

On the morning of Dec. 29, Sterman emailed the paperwork to Finley. That afternoon, Sterman sent a second email; he had made a mistake in the original message, failing to redact Redinger’s Social Security number and other personal information. “Please delete the previous version,� Sterman wrote Finley.

A couple of weeks after Finley received that information, Pogue, the mayor, made the unannounced visit to Redinger’s apartment.

Pogue says Finley had nothing to do with the visit.

“Usually, after filing closes, if there’s a candidate that I don’t know, I contact them to see if they have questions,� Pogue said. “Most of the time we know the candidates beforehand.�

Finley did not respond to requests for comment.

There are many cities that have residency requirements for running for office, but often those cases are debated in court when an opponent files a lawsuit. In this case, Redinger took the mayor at his word and signed a form to back out.

Jones, while working for the city, then filed a lawsuit on behalf of the candidate. The timeline of how it got filed left Roach and his investigators questioning the ethics of the process.

• The work on Redinger’s case began on Jan. 27 — the same day Redinger filed his withdrawal. Jones and fellow lawyer Henry made phone calls and reviewed the law on candidate withdrawals.

• On the afternoon of Jan. 27, Sterman, the city administrator, emailed Jones to explain that he had the withdrawal but that a court order would be needed to get Redinger’s name off the ballot. “I am not sure what is appropriate in this case,� Sterman wrote to Jones.

“I will have someone in my office file the lawsuit,� Jones replied in an email.

• By Jan. 31, the attorneys had drawn up Redinger’s lawsuit.

• On Feb. 1, before they filed the lawsuit, Jones and Henry had already talked to the Board of Election attorneys about the case. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ work for the same law firm.

• Also that day, Henry emailed Sterman and asked him to send her Redinger’s address and Social Security number. She needed both items in order to file a lawsuit in his name.

• Late in the day on Feb. 1, Henry sent a copy of the lawsuit to Redinger’s Gmail account.

“Please be advised that this firm represents the City of Ballwin,� Henry wrote, adding that “my office will be filing the following petition with the St. Louis County Circuit Court to withdraw your candidacy.�

The email ended up in Redinger’s spam folder, stuck between emails from a Nextdoor account and an email from Amazon’s BookBub club.

“I never saw it,� Redinger said.

Jones acknowledged that no other efforts were made to contact Redinger.

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 2. The order to drop Redinger from the ballot was signed by St. Louis County Presiding Circuit Judge Mary Ott. And the attorneys from the Curtis Heinz law firm exchanged emails with the order, and then billed each of their respective public bodies for the work they did on the case. Nobody sent the order to Redinger, the alleged client.

Jones insists that neither he nor his law firm did anything wrong.

“I thought we had an agreement here,� Jones said. “It’s essentially a perfunctory action. I was authorized by the city administrator to do so on his behalf.�

Roach, the alderman, sees things differently.

“The citizens want to know that elected officials are looking out for their interests,� he says. “In this case, government officials were seemingly looking out for the incumbents, to set up another uncontested election. And it was done at taxpayer expense. There’s a lot of explaining to do.�

Go-to law firm

Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe is one of the region’s go-to law firms for representing municipal clients. Its lawyers serve as city attorneys, prosecuting attorneys and municipal judges in dozens of municipalities in St. Louis County.

This is not the first time Jones, his law firm or municipal clients they represent have been associated with questionable behavior. Just last month, St. Louis County Circuit Judge John Borbonus ordered the city of Sunset Hills to pay more than $500,000 to a local landowner because of “spiteful� actions by the city in a long zoning dispute. The attorney representing the city in the case was Jones.

In 2018, taxpayers in Des Peres paid $75,000 in a settlement after one of Jones’ partners, Kevin O’Keefe, declined to turn over a transcript of a court case in response to an open records request. Des Peres later switched law firms and hired a special counsel to conduct an investigation into the matter. The city has declined to provide a copy of the special counsel’s report, calling it a closed record.

For Roach, the entire affair is symbolic of what he sometimes sees in Ballwin government. Dissent, he says, is frowned upon. Unlike most cities, for instance, Ballwin allows bills to move through first and second readings at the same meeting, meaning bills can become ordinances very quickly. Roach sometimes finds himself voting no on second readings just to delay the process so citizens can participate in their government.

That’s what Redinger said he wanted to do. He’s moved away from Ballwin, now working for a marketing firm. But he still hopes to serve in elected office someday.

“I think it’s our civic duty to be involved,� he says. “I wish I would have known more of what was happening at the time.�