Courts documents raise questions about the residency of State Rep. Connie Johnson, who is also running for State Senate.
Johnson had been staying with her ailing mother in a house in the city’s West End neighborhood.
During that time, Johnson was renting out her own home in the North Point neighborhood to a pair of tenants she later sued, accusing them of not paying the rent.
In a sworn affidavit submitted in that case on Feb. 7, Johnson lists her address as being in the 5800 Block of Maple Avenue - which is outside both the House district she represents, and the Senate district she is seeking to represent.
Johnson said she was taking care of her 63-year-old mother, who suffers from lupus. She said she was only using the Maple Avenue address for a corporation she owns that was the official plaintiff in the rent dispute.
City records show that, at the Maple address, at least some of the utilities were in Johnson’s name.
Johnson provided letters that she says she wrote to the tenants saying she would “not be at home very often” and would only be at the house “mainly on the weekends, sometimes, not even then.”
Senate candidates are required to live in the district they want to represent at least a year prior to the elections. Johnson’s election would be in November.
The director of the city Elections Board, Scott Leiendecker, confirmed that the agency has begun an inquiry into Johnson’s residency, which will be forwarded later this week to state election officials.
Johnson, meanwhile, insists that she “doesn’t owe anybody an explanation.”
“This is about petty personal politics,” Johnson said in an interview. “This is not about the issues facing the 5th Senatorial District.”
Read more about this in tomorrow’s Post-Dispatch.
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