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Caldwell

While the national media tries to figure out why the governor of South Carolina — a prominent Republican whispered as a 2012 contender — took a mystery holiday to South America ^[2], Post-Dispatch reporter Paul Hampel has the story of a local pol whose whereabouts are also in question. ^[3]

Specifically, the question is just where Pine Lawn Mayor Sylvester Caldwell lays his head at night. Hampel talked to neighbors of the mayor’s nominal home in Pine Lawn who say they don’t see him much, if at all.

Hampel did find some Caldwell kin at a second home he owns a dozen miles away on Avacado Lane in north St. Louis County.

Pine Lawn’s city attorney, Donnell Smith, offered this explanation:

Where you sleep does not determine your residency. Personally, I don’t know where (Caldwell) sleeps. I suspect he sleeps in Pine Lawn. .. But if he sleeps someplace else, that does not make him a resident of that address. You see, he has no control of where his family takes residence at, only where he takes residency.

Huh.

Smith — who himself briefly was a candidate for mayor of St. Louis several years ago — is correct in that residency laws are complicated.

State law defines residence as a “person’s true, fixed, principal, and permanent home, to which a person intends to return and remain, even though currently residing elsewhere.”

That’s why Kit Bond was able to start his political career in his native Missouri after returning from a clerkship in Atlanta and practicing law in Washington.

However, that does not give license to politicians to live where they chose without giving up office. Just ask former Missouri State Rep. Connie Johnson — she was tossed off the State Senate ballot last year after moving in her with mother across district boundaries.

Caldwell has already survived one legal challenge to his residency. Voters don’t seem to mind either — Caldwell was re-elected with 56 percent of the vote in April.