No Excuses, No Results

By DAVID MARTIN

Voters in Kansas City, Missouri, chose a new mayor more than a year ago. Yet a billboard promoting a candidate who failed to make it out of the primary looms over midtown.

Nearly 14 months since her name appeared on a ballot, Janice Ellis continues to ask for support from a billboard near 36th and Main. Ellis, it turns out, is not forgetful or a sore loser. She says she’s talked to the the billboard owner about papering over her face and her campaign slogan of “No excuses. Just results.”

But, as Ellis tells it, Phil Goode, the president of Emerald House Convention Center, to which the billboard is attached, is unwilling to send someone up the ladder until a new client wants to rent the space.

“He said, ‘It’s my billboard, my property.’” Ellis says.

Before I spoke with Ellis, I called a phone number on a second billboard affixed to Emerald House. “Yeah, what’s your point?” a man barked when the Ellis ad was described. A follow-up question met with a similar response: “Maybe you ought to call her [Ellis] and talk to her about it.”

I assume the charmer was Goode, but the man on the phone refused to give his name, calling it “not important.”