Influential St. Paul labor leader faces pressure to step down

A month after quitting a panel formed to help select St. Paul's next police chief, Bobby Kasper, president of the influential St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, is being pressured by at least one former labor ally to step down.

The actions come after it was revealed Kasper had been arrested a year ago in a St. Paul "john" sting -- an arrest during which alleged attempts at small talk found him repeatedly asking a prostitution decoy whether he looked like "one of those boys" -- a mob boss, police records show.

In an unusual move, police later asked that the prostitution charge against Kasper be dropped.

But publicity about the arrest has rankled several union officials, one of whom, Bernie Hesse of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, asked Kasper "face to face" about a month ago to resign. When he refused, the 7,000-member local withdrew from the regional group.

"This has just put us in such a bad light," Hesse said Friday. "We no longer believe he can be effective."

Kasper could not be reached for comment.

Political candidates have valued the support of the 50,000-member organization, which along with the UFCW, also includes AFSCME, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers and United Steelworkers, among others.

"We're going to work on some political activism in those (other) areas," he said during a January interview with a representative of the AFL-CIO Retiree Council. "It's long overdue."

During the same appearance, viewable on YouTube, Kasper, 51, recounted in soft-spoken fashion his rise through Laborers Union locals both here and in his native New York. He also expressed pride in the fact that his father, mother and both grandfathers all were union members.

"It's in my blood," he said. "And I believe in it."

Caught in a trap

During 2009, St. Paul police vice officers conducted undercover prostitution stings at St. Paul hotels on at least five occasions. Johns were lured by Internet ads offering sex, and arrested after they arrived and negotiated deals.

Three additional phone calls to the decoy later, he entered the hotel, hugged her, walked to a room and asked her if he looked like "one of those boys."

The two agreed to an $80 transaction.

Kasper, reluctant to hand over the money directly, showed the decoy four $20 bills, the decoy's report says, and he then put the money on the bathroom counter. He was arrested after the decoy gave a predetermined bust signal. Kasper had managed to take off his shoes.

A month after the arrest, Kasper's case was dismissed at police request -- the only case out of 54 john arrests reviewed by the Star Tribune in which the police department initiated the dismissal.

Asked recently about the move, police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell said investigators cited an "investigative rationale" for the decision. But he said he was prohibited from saying anything more due to a provision of the state's data practices law. Schnell emphasized that the request was part of a public district court file, and as such, police were being open about their actions.

News of the arrest went unreported until a St. Paul Pioneer Press article last month. The newspaper said then that it had "confronted" Kasper about the arrest, prompting him to say he'd resign from the 23-member chief advisory panel. If the newspaper published a report about his criminal record, he added, he'd be "finished."

As of this weekend, Kasper remained at the helm of the labor federation.

Hesse was the only local labor leader to speak with the Star Tribune about fallout from the publicity. He said he was reticent to do so because he didn't like seeing "those of us who do good work" getting "beat up" by such press reports.

Shar Knutson, the former St. Paul Regional Labor Federation president who now leads the Minnesota AFL-CIO, declined to comment, saying only: "This is a local issue."