After hearing about a planned St. Louis aldermanic resolution opposing a Rams ownership bid including Rush Limbaugh, the chairman of the St. Charles County Council was preparing to rush to the bid’s defense with a resolution of his own.

“The most important thing was to keep (the team) in St. Louis,” Council Chairman Joe Brazil, a Republican from Defiance, said Thursday.  ”A conservative like Rush Limbaugh who is from this area would have been a vote for keeping the team in St. Louis.”

Brazil

The whole issue became moot Wednesday when Blues owner Dave Checketts dropped Limbaugh, the outspoken radio host who grew up in Cape Girardeau, from his proposed Rams ownership group.

Had St. Louis Alderman Antonio French convinced the Board of Aldermen to pass an anti-Limbaugh resolution at Friday’s meeting, Brazil said, he was going to respond by introducing a counter-resolution. The next council meeting is Oct. 26.

John Sonderegger, an aide to County Executive Steve Ehlmann, said Ehlmann first suggested the idea. Sonderegger then said he talked with Brazil about it. Ehlmann shares Brazil’s Republican party affiliation, as do a majority of County Council members. The St. Louis Board of Aldermen is heavily Democratic.

Sonderegger said the county resolution wouldn’t have referred to Limbaugh by name but would have said it’s better to have a well-known conservative owner committed to keeping the team in St. Louis than to have the Rams bought by a “liberal owner who would move it to another town.”

French’s resolution refers to Limbaugh as “a racially divisive figure” whose ownership of the Rams could damage race relations in the city.

Neither legislative body has any authority on who runs the Rams, Brazil acknowledged.

“The fact that St. Louis city was going to write a resolution opposing it is absolutely absurd,’ Brazil said. He added that ”it’s kind of absurd as well” for his body to pass one in support.

“We’d do it just to prove a point,” Brazil said.