Also, all, this whole thing proves why we made such a big deal about shadowy PACs that don't file and report on time. Every cycle people make fun of us for putting so much emphasis on campaign filings, including PACs, but situations like this prove how important they are and perhaps could be avoided if the city, state and citizens held donors, companies, contractors and elected officials more accountable for being transparent.

OH, and can we possibly ask the TV stations, who are making huge money off these ads, to help reveal who is behind them? To be good community stewards?

Also, if anyone got election flyers on cars or such at church today or through other means, please take a picture of them and email them to: [email protected]. We will post them all and look into who did the the best we can. Last year, we managed to figure out the source of some nasty flyers, and may be able to again this year. We will do our best.

Sunday update: Overnight, a Yarber supporter sent me the link to a website that this still-mysterious Citizens for Decency is promoting at http://www.reallytony.com. The site contains copies of videos and the audio of what sounds like two ads (perhaps robocalls). We checked the URL registration and it's registered through a service that masks who purchased the domain.

To us, two things are important here. Regardless of what one thinks of the content of the site/ads, a shadowy group that has not registered or reported its contributions should not be doing this without being transparent. It flies in the face of transparent elections and government.

Second, there is NO evidence that the Lumumba campaign or the candidate is involved with any of this or knows anything about it -- in fact, the opposite seems to be true. I can also say, for the record, that the Lumumba campaign has never shared these videos and such with us, although previous campaigns did. We have observed over the years, sadly, that there are political operatives who do these things for various reasons, including personal agendas against candidates' supporters. And it is even possible that someone is doing it to make both campaigns look bad. So my advice is to not jump to conclusions about it. We will continue investigating this and other shadowy PAC activity we discover after the election.

Also, now that the videos are this public (through TV and robocalls), I've extended an invitation to Mr. Yarber through his campaign manager today to do an interview Monday about the interviews and address and explain them publicly. We hope that he takes us up on that invitation, and we will post a video of his full response online immediately, as well as offer Mr. Lumumba a chance to comment and respond.

Plus, he didn't even go to Ole Miss.

Justjess, you are way out of line and trying to put words in my mouth I never said or even implied. I'm sorry your candidate lost, but you don't get to come here and do that anymore than the right-wing nuts you and I have both dodged over the years.

I voted to endorse Johnson three times (to much louder moans and belittlement than from you now) both because of his ability to balance a very difficult city dynamic (and keep a lot of vultures at bay) and because I knew a little too much about his opponents, some reportable and some not. Last year, we liked Lumumba, but were concerned about him being divisive. The opposite of that proved to be true, and I believe that will continue with his son, who is very intelligent and dynamic and, we believe, less indebted to his supporters than many who run for Jackson office. An endorsement is a mixture of voting-for and voting-against, and Johnson won those balancing acts for us until this election.

None of that means I respect him any less, or need anyone to shuck or jive for my endorsement vote. How patently offensive.

I saw someone say on Twitter, Meredith, that Yarber didn't include his in-kind. I don't know if that's true, but it could help close that gap.

It could also be that at least one of the PACs is spending money to help one of the candidates but isn't providing enough information so we really know.

Justjess, we've never said that Lumumba was no longer an "activist." Of course he was. It was the preconceptions that people overcame, and we believe that is a good thing.

We fully realize that you're a huge fan of Mayor Johnson, and we have supported him until this last election. And we've said nice things about him since he lost the election and believe he got a raw deal over the years. We've never asked anyone to "forget" that -- actually to remember it.

But here's the thing: In this election, Mayor Johnson did not show us an enthusiastic candidate as we've seen him be before. I personally was not a fan of his choices or some of the people closest to him in his campaign. I can understand why he's tired and frustrated, but it showed too much in our dealings with him for us to support him. I respect him, but could not support him again for mayor. I make no apologies for that.

AND, why is a PAC set up, according to its paperwork, to raise money for the mayor's election then (perhaps) sending thousands of dollars to out-of-town consultants with vague names that they don't list contact information for??? I'm not saying this is shady, but they need to list all the information so citizens know what is going on.

Why is the ENI PAC so un-transparent? They just decided not to fill out the information for those vague consultants!? I hate that crap.

msu-scrappy, you are entitled to your opinion, of course. But R.L. and I exercise the news judgment in this building (which is 13 floors up now, thank you very much!), and we put only so much credence into posts such as yours that you don't believe in enough to sign your name to them.

The issue in our reporting on this has never really been over the question of whether the mural was (a) art, (b) permitted or (c) should come down, even though we're having to report on that, too, including the letter by Mayor Lumumba's daughter, Rukia, who was upset by it. That is news, whether you want it to be or not.

It is even more important when sitting city council people warn, as Mr. Stamps did, that candidates could be threatening to challenge the election due to a mural dedicated to our mayor who just died painted in a park. Whether it was permitted correctly was/is irrelevant to that conversation.

Whether you like it or not, our readers have the right to know if such strong-arming is occurring, and it is our responsibility to investigate it, which has not exactly pulled us away from the various other reporting we're doing at the same time. To borrow from your post, I sit in a corner office on the 13th floor of Capital Towers looking down on City Hall, and I don't want someone who engages in trivial trickery and strong-arming to run it (should that turn out to be the case).

So complain all you want, but it will not keep us from doing our jobs and seeking as much information and context as needed to report the story well -- which is *exactly* what Ronni's story that you hated so much called for.