Congressman Lacy Clay Files for Divorce and a Democratic Loyalist Does What He Can to Help

Congressman William Lacy Clay is filing for divorce.

The local law journal Missouri Lawyers Weekly first reported the news last week. Gossip columnist Deb Peterson then picked the item up for her stltoday.com blog.

Yesterday, Post-Dispatch reporter Jake Wagman went down to the courthouse to view the file where he was stonewalled by the over-reaching court clerk Mariano Favazza.

Instead of handing the file over to Wagman -- as is his job -- Favazza instead phoned Clay (a fellow Democrat several several notches up the food chain from Favazza) to make sure that the congressman's attorneys didn't want to have the file sealed.

Thus began Favazza's game of keep-away.

Lacy's attorney was in Russia yesterday, but that didn't stop him from responding to Favazza's inquiry with a long-distance call to the judge asking to seal the case. Permission granted.

What was in that divorce filing that Clay didn't want prying eyes to see? Rumors abound on stltoday.com's comment thread that he is leaving his wife, Ivie Clay, for another woman. The couple has two children.

Personally, I doubt such info was available in a divorce petition especially since it was Lacy Clay who supposedly filed the paperwork and not his wife. (It's extremely unlikely that he would mark "infidelity" as the reason for the divorce. My money is on "irreconcilable differences.")

Clay's attorney -- speaking by phone from Moscow -- told Wagman that he requested the file sealed in order to protect the couple's financial information. And because it's "best for the kids."

Yeah. Right.

While I'm on the topic, I have my own little Lacy Clay story to share. So, this past November -- the day of the general election -- I'm at a stoplight on Kingshighway when a passenger in a green BMW next to me rolls down the window and sends a cigarette butt bouncing off my car and into the street.

"Nice," I thought to myself. "Real classy."

But what most shocked me about the act was when I made eye contact with the cigarette tosser. It was none other than Lacy Clay!

I guess the congressman didn't need to worry about appearances that day. He was running for re-election against a Libertarian candidate and easily won 93 percent of the vote.