ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

And it’s a bank account that just got quite a bit bigger.

In November, a week after he won election to a second four-year term as St. Louis County executive, Stenger’s campaign wrote the candidate a check for $396,422.

The money, according to Missouri Ethics Commission records, is payback for loans Stenger started making to his candidate committee in 2007 when he ran his first race for St. Louis County Council.

He started small, writing one check in December that year for $10,000, and another for $15,000. He said he’d pay back the loans in two years, but instead, just kept lending himself more and more money as he moved from council to the executive’s office.

In short, he bet on himself.

Eventually, the records say, Stenger invested more than $400,000 in his campaign.

And it paid off.

If the folks — many of whom ran or contributed to his last campaign — get their way, Stenger will be the first mayor of a new merged St. Louis, serving two unelected years after the 2021 election is suspended.

Based on the of Stenger’s big donors ending up with county contracts, it’s not hard to imagine what those first couple of years under the megamayor might look like. Surely, one could surmise, developers David and Robert Glarner are hoping it comes to pass.

The brothers — who Stenger once told me are “friends of his� — have given the county executive about $365,000 in campaign donations in the past few years.

Now, through the payback of loans to his campaign, just a little more than that is back in Stenger’s pocket.

It’s legal, mind you.

But there’s no way of telling precisely which donors gave the money that paid back Stenger’s loans. Maybe the money came from other donors, like those who funnel their donations to Stenger through the Missouri Association of Career Fire Protection Districts, which makes it difficult to see the true source of who could be seeking to buy favor with the county executive. When of this propensity to hide the source of donations — some being developers with business interests in the county — by running them through the MACFPD account, Stenger’s spokesman was aghast.

“To suggest any impropriety over $36,000 in campaign contributions is reckless and irresponsible propaganda,� said Ed Rhode.

Rhode is now spokesman for Better Together. And Stenger’s campaign donations from MACFPD have risen to $228,501. That’s a little more than twice what another political action committee has donated to Stenger. The Regional Progress PAC, run by political consultant Mike Kelley, who is also involved in the Better Together effort, has passed $104,750 to Stenger’s campaign.

Some of that money came from Civic Progress type companies, such as Anheuser-Busch; some came from attorney Bob Blitz, whose law firm filed the Better Together petition; some came from Kelley’s company, Show-Me Victories, and other law firms, lobbyists and companies.

Now some of it, at least, is back in Stenger’s bank account.

But the paper trail raises many questions, and the first one is this:

Could the organizers of Better Together be suspending an election because they believe Stenger would be compliant for the two years he’s in control?

When the Glarners were looking for an anchor tenant to make their Crossings at Northwest development in St. Ann more financially viable, their friend Stenger came through. He moved county election offices on an expensive lease that, after Post-Dispatch and County Council investigations, has been found to have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in higher-than-expected charges. The council’s ethics committee issued a report that suggested conduct “full and complete investigations.�

When another donor, John Rallo, wanted or a sweet land deal, the negotiations were coordinated through the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and the St. Louis County Port Authority, under the watchful eye of Stenger loyalist Sheila Sweeney.

When the owners of the St. Louis Blues wanted a facility in a federally protected park, Stenger’s foil, Sweeney, got caught in to squander public resources.

All of those deals have been exposed, , the economic development partnership is bleeding staff, the port authority is in legal limbo, Stenger rarely bothers to show up to discuss public business with the council, and voters recently changed the charter as a check to his power.

Stenger has consistently denied any wrongdoing in each of these instances. His staff told me last year he would decline all interview requests from me.

So here we are. Those same voters gave Stenger another four years. Better Together wants to give him , as well as significant control over the new charter. And his wallet just got almost $400,000 thicker.

It’s good to be king.