Remember Brian Herron? Just three summers ago, the former Minneapolis City Council member was the poster boy for political graft after the FBI videotaped him accepting a $10,000 bribe. This very public crash-and-burn earned him a year in prison and spawned an investigation of the entire Minneapolis City Council. Political wags claim that Sharon Sayles-Belton still blames Herron for fueling the political firestorm that blew her out of City Hall.
Today, Herron describes himself as “better, not bitter.” He is out of prison and working for the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. He has returned to the same house and the same wife he had “back in the day,” when he was a comer in Minneapolis politics. Reflecting on the past three years, he thanks God for leading him on what he calls his “spiritual journey.”
This is not the same Brian Herron I talked with in June 2001, forty-eight hours before he publicly acknowledged the charges against him. He stopped by my office for what I thought was a casual visit. We bantered for a few minutes about his upcoming reelection and then he grabbed me as if on the verge of physical collapse and said, “Clinton, I’m in real trouble. The FBI videotaped me accepting a $10,000 bribe.”
For the next hour, I listened to his story, which was punctuated by heart-wrenching sobs. The FBI had told him bad things would happen if he told anyone, even his wife, about its investigation; I advised him to tell his wife immediately. Two days later, with his wife and father standing beside him, Herron publicly announced his resignation from the Minneapolis City Council. Eight months later, he began serving a yearlong sentence at the federal penitentiary in Duluth.
For most Minnesotans, that was the ignominious end of Brian Herron. Nearly everyone—from the formerly ardent sycophants to the City Hall establishment running for cover—wanted the man, now a the convicted felon, simply to go away. Most did not consider him worthy of forgiveness, if they considered him at all. And, politically speaking, he might as well have been dead.
There is a popular narrative pattern in literature called “absence, devastation, return.” In this pattern, the hero leaves the scene. In his absence, all sorts of bad things happen. He ultimately returns and restores order to the world. The hero’s absence can be emotional, spiritual, or physical.
Herron now admits that he was absent—from his family, his friends, and most important, his own spiritual values—long before the FBI came calling. This absence devastated his political career and very nearly destroyed him. “Over the years, I had become too busy for God,” he said. “I got lost, caught up in being everything to everybody, all things to all people. My ego and my pride twisted my moral compass. I was raised by a black Baptist preacher. I knew right from wrong. And I was doing wrong.”
Herron is grateful for his stint in prison, which he calls a yearlong spiritual retreat. “By the time I arrived at the federal prison camp in Duluth, I was empty,” Herron admitted. “For the first several days, I just read my Bible and kept to myself. Even though I knew I had messed up, I viewed myself as somehow different from the other inmates. On the third day, one of the brothers confronted me. He said, ‘We know who you are and why you are here. Maybe you don’t belong here, but you are here. Many of the cats here can learn from you and you can learn from us. Why did you want to be a councilman?’ I told him, ‘To help people.’ ‘Well, you can help us. God sent you here to be a light to us.’” Those words saved Herron. “Through them, God taught me a lot. Humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and the power of unconditional love.”
Our culture revels in watching people be brought down. From our perch in the grocery store checkout line, we tsk-tsk the human implosions displayed on the front pages of tabloids, much like gawkers at an auto accident. Our morbid curiosity leaves little, if any, room for compassion. Herron realizes that many believe he got what he deserved. But having been through his ordeal, he says he is stronger, wiser, and better equipped than ever for community service. “I am ready to serve in whatever way God has planned for me,” he says. In fact, he does not rule out a return to politics, “if that is God’s will.” Continues Herron, “People have approached me and asked me to get back into the game. The other day, an older white guy kept looking at me and I thought, oh boy, here we go. Instead, he broke into a big grin and said to me, ‘The cream always rises to the top.’”
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