‘DISAPPOINTING’

Kansas Official Scolded by Colleagues for ‘Disturbing’ Bar Behavior

Lacey Cruse was thrown out of the gay bar and dance club XY Club—the third time she was booted from the premises, according to the owner.

A commissioner in Sedgwick County, Kansas, was publicly scolded by her colleague’s Friday after getting thrown out of a bar last weekend for what they described as “disturbing” behavior. In a letter signed by the commission's leadership, Lacey Cruse was accused of possibly violating the ethics code while out in public, The Wichita Eagle reports. Cruse, a Democrat running for re-election, was kicked out of the XY Club, a gay bar and dance club in Old Town, after a Black bartender accused her of making racist comments that included calling her “Shaquetta.” Cruse claimed she had actually called the bartender “Sheena,” for the “Queen of the Jungle, a leopard-skin-bikini-clad white woman comic book character from the 1930s.” Cruse has since apologized. But the owner of the bar reported that this was the third time she has been kicked out of XY Club. “This demonstrates to us, as elected officials that we must be ever-present and ever-vigilant to always have positive interactions with our community,” Cruse's colleagues wrote in their letter, calling the incident “disappointing and disturbing.”