Miller

Summary

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A POLITICAL

GADFLY

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Extract

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Miller

With a sharp tongue, rapier wit, and slash and burn style, he is both revered and vilified

Vic Miller is the Jekyll and Hyde of Shawnee County politics.

The former Kansas legislator, Topeka city councilman and now chairman of the county commission has inspired love and hate in his 30-year career. In the political arena, where he feels most at home, Miller is an incandescent presence capable of grace and charm, but also of bellicose confrontation and callous manipulation.

Evidence of the contradiction isn't difficult to find.

County Commissioner Ted Ensley felt Miller's embrace during a tender speech Miller delivered last year in honor of Ensley's induction into the state park and recreation association's hall of fame.

Ensley says Miller has a "deep-down caring that goes to the core of what he is."

"I see Ted as a good friend and as one of the finest public servants that I've ever dealt with," Miller said. "He's the most humble politician I know."

Ensley wept as he listened to the angel of Miller's being.

Another prominent local politician, Joan Wagnon, experienced Miller's dark side as he toasted her greatest political humiliation. On the night in 2001 when Wagnon lost her re-election bid as Topeka mayor, Miller and Tope...

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