Secret recording reveals political infighting, struggle to market MS Coast amphitheater

A concert promoter and Gautier’s city manager both pressed for a council member’s wife to reconsider filing public drunk charges against Mayor Casey Vaughan, fearing bad publicity would dim prospects for the city’s new, multi-million amphitheater, a recording provided to the Sun Herald reveals.

The concert promoter, Nathan Baugh, told several city leaders that he already has enough “uphill battles” drawing major artists to the venue — no beach like Orange Beach, no beautiful downtown like Ocean Springs.

“It’s not Ocean Springs when it comes to cool,” he said, adding that he is “questioning his investment.”

Baugh’s remarks came during a meeting on Sept. 16 that Councilman Rusty Anderson secretly recorded. He later provided the Sun Herald a copy because he was frustrated that city leaders and, later, a Justice Court judge were willing to dismiss Vaughan’s behavior.

“If they had just heard the evidence and found him not guilty, that would have been fine,” Rusty Anderson said. “I could have lived with it... “

Linda Anderson and her husband did not get to testify at the hearing, even though the prosecutor told the judge they had a right to be heard. Rusty Anderson feels the court decided to dismiss the charges before “we even got there.”

The recording provides a candid, unfiltered glimpse into the challenges Baugh faces in marketing the $8 million amphitheater and the hopes city leaders have pinned on its success.

They are counting on the venue to drive development in a city struggling to establish a town center amid a hodge-podge of businesses spread along U.S. 90.

The meeting also detailed problems with the amphitheater that were never discussed in public: Namely, the planned “town center” that has failed to materialize nearby — leaving instead a parking lot where weeds grow through asphalt cracks — and a backstage area that needs to be expanded.

In addition to Anderson and Baugh, City Manager Paula Yancey and City Attorney Josh Danos attended the meeting, which lasted almost an hour. It was held at the amphitheater so Anderson and Vaughan would not run into one another.

Friction between the mayor and councilman was discussed at length.

“At the end of the day,” Baugh said during the meeting, “the only impact this is going to have is to put another black eye on the city of Gautier . . . We have to change the conversation about the city, and infighting from the City Council and the mayor is stupid — at a Sam Hunt show.”

Anderson responded plaintively: “It’s not our fault, Nathan. It’s not my wife’s fault.”

End city drama, politicians say

Baugh stressed, during the recorded meeting, that his sole concern is projecting a positive image of Gautier so the amphitheater will succeed.

During the meeting, both Yancey and Baugh agreed that Vaughan needed to check his behavior in the venue. But they’ve since concluded Anderson is the main problem.

They didn’t realize Anderson had taped the meeting and now believe it was “a setup,” Baugh said.

“I believe we just have one random pissed off council member that’s just angry and resentful,” Baugh told the Sun Herald, “and he’s trying to do everything he can to destroy any positive energy that’s going on in the city of Gautier.”

In response, Anderson said, “I didn’t set anybody up. They coerced me to go to that meeting, in which they influenced me to influence Linda (his wife) to hold off on the charges or drop them.”

Two council members — Adam Colledge and Cameron George also have weighed in through emails to the Sun Herald after news of the tape surfaced.

Colledge decried Anderson’s “disruptive behavior,” while George wrote, “I condemn any and all negative actions or cunning behavior by any councilman.”

George said his comments apply to ”any and all” council members who create “unnecessary drama.”

Both Baugh and Yancey believe Anderson’s behavior is politically motivated. He supported his friend Phil Torjusen for mayor in 2021, but Vaughan won the race.

Anderson also has been distressed about a racist post on his Facebook page that brought negative attention to Gautier. Anderson says he did not write the post, but that he was pressured for a year to resign by both Vaughan and Yancey.

Councilman’s wife, mayor argue

Anderson’s wife, Linda Anderson, went to Municipal Court to file an incident report Sept. 9, a Monday, against Vaughan for disturbing the peace the previous Friday evening at the concert. Linda Anderson and the mayor encountered one another in the city box, where each council member has two free tickets for concerts.

In the police report, she described Vaughan as “severely intoxicated.” He was talking to her about her “expired” business license, and then about a church water bill that she said she knew nothing about, she wrote in the report. Spit was flying from the mayor’s mouth as he yelled at her, she said.

“ . . . And he could hardly talk,” she wrote. “Casey still continued harassing me verbally about my business again and he had no right to discuss that with me at this event, the concert.”

When Linda Anderson filed the police report, an officer told her she could come in later to sign charges, if she wanted.

During the meeting, both Yancey and Baugh urged Anderson to talk his wife out of moving forward with charges. City Attorney Danos advised how the charges could be dismissed and brought back up at a later date, if the Andersons felt they needed to do so.

“She is dead set on not dropping these charges,” Anderson told the group at one point.

But Yancey and Baugh continued the conversation.

“Your whole point is you want to go to the concert in peace and enjoy yourself,” Yancey said. “All I’m telling you is — you talk about how stressful all that mess has been on you. All you’re doing is creating more stress.”

She encouraged the councilman to let the concert promoter handle Vaughan because Baugh is in charge of the events that he hosts.

“It’s Nathan Baugh’s venue,” she said. “He controls it. He can remove (Vaughan). He can tell him what he can and can’t do. He can refuse to allow him in here drunk. He’s the one that has all the power. You are going to enjoy that concert a whole lot more and council meetings a whole lot more if Nathan takes care of it.”

Baugh said, “He’s not going to drink in here ever again.”

Promoter wants focus on concert venue, Gautier

Baugh said he had also received a complaint about Vaughan’s behavior in a survey that a concert patron filled out after the Sam Hunt concert. Also, the concert promoter said, one of his employees had to deal with the mayor yelling at Swetman Security personnel in the parking lot. Baugh said more than once that Vaughan’s behavior is “embarrassing.”

Baugh told Anderson:

“We’re not saying his behavior is good . . . Let’s handle it the way that actually has repercussions that we can control instead of some bulls - - - misdemeanor warrant that’s going to do nothing but embarrass the city of Gautier even worse and make my job exponentially harder,” Baugh told Anderson.

Baugh stressed, during the recorded meeting, that his sole concern is projecting a positive image of Gautier so the amphitheater will succeed. Vaughan’s behavior, he made clear, has been intolerable.

At one point, he said of Vaughan: “I’ll march his fat a - - right outside the back door and leave him out on Vancleave Boulevard for all I care. I don’t give a s - - -.

“My vested interest is amplifying the city of Gautier and The Sound amphitheater.”

The concert promoter and city manager softened their stances after meeting in the afternoon, on the same day, with Vaughan.

In the afternoon meeting, Baugh said, Vaughan apologized for his behavior and promised to tone it down. “He’s done everything correctly since then,” Baugh said.

Vaughan said the only complaints against him that he knows of came from the Andersons or former mayor Torjusen.

“As my attorney stated, I’ve had issues with the current elected official and his spouse and the former predecessor, but I have continued to move this city forward, and I will continue to,” Vaughan told the Sun Herald.

In the Sept. 16 meeting, Vaughan said he told Baugh and Yancey that if Anderson was complaining about his drinking, then “I would not do it.”

However, he later said he was not banned from drinking at The Sound during concerts. Vaughan did move to separate seating outside the city box, he said.

After they met with the mayor, Baugh and Yancey grew suspicious about who had filled out the survey complaining about Vaughan’s behavior. His version of what happened at the concert didn’t match Anderson’s, they said.

Baugh’s staff looked up the survey complaint and found that Rusty Anderson had filed it, listing his name and telephone number. While he did file the complaint, Anderson said there had been “many others” regarding Vaughan’s behavior.

Vaughan texted an apology to Linda Anderson after his meeting with Yancey and Baugh. He shared the text with the Sun Herald.

The mayor’s text said: “Mrs. Linda, I am truly sorry if I offended you at the concert last Friday. That was not my intention. My apologies to you for my choices of words in front of guests. Please accept my sincere apology.

“I want us all to have an enjoyable experience at The Sound and work together to move Gautier forward. I will do my best for us to all get along and be of one accord. Again, I am sorry. I hope you have a phenomenal and blessed week.”

She did not respond to his text or answer the telephone when he called. Her husband said: “She wasn’t going to take a coerced apology. If he wanted to make one, he should have within the first few days of the incident.”

Public drunk, disturbing peace charges dismissed

The upshot of the meeting with Anderson was that he did convince his wife to delay filing charges against Vaughan. Baugh wanted to show Anderson that, after talking with the mayor, the city could get through a couple of concerts without any misbehavior or negative publicity.

While the next concerts went smoothly, Linda Anderson pressed forward with her misdemeanor case.

“My 69-year-old wife signed the charges,” Anderson told the Sun Herald. “She is a grown woman with her own convictions.”

She accused Vaughan of public drunk and disturbing the peace. On Oct. 30, Jackson County Justice Court Judge Danny Guice III found the evidence insufficient to support Anderson’s accusations and dismissed the case without hearing any testimony.

Yancey still wishes the case had never gone to court. “If I filed a charge every time somebody offended me, I’d live at the police station,” she said.

Vaughan has put the court case behind him. “All I know is what was handled and what was done, and it went through the court system and it is over with,” the mayor said.

“What people say about Mayor Vaughan, they are going to say, but I am going to continue to work with my fellow colleagues and the administration in moving Gautier forward and growing Gautier together.”

When Vaughan learned Anderson had recorded his meeting with Baugh, Yancey and Danos, Vaughan said, “if that did happen, that is just sad.”

Now, the mayor wonders how potential investors might feel about meeting with city officials privately to discuss potential development for fear of being secretly recorded.

“That is not a good sign for developers that might want to come to our city to meet with us,” he said.

Concert promoter’s losses mount at amphitheater

Baugh said he just wants everyone to act like “respectful adults.”

Baugh has a contract with the city, through his Nashville company 46 Entertainment, to book major entertainers at the amphitheater. Under the contract, 46 Entertainment pays the artists and expenses for concerts, including security, and collects a surcharge on tickets that go to the city.

He said during the recorded meeting that financial losses have been bigger than anticipated for the first year — $500,000 to $600,000 so far. The Sam Hunt concert alone, he said, resulted in a $140,000 loss. While he can live with those losses as the venue gets established, he said, his bottom line — and the city’s — will suffer unless the public disagreements end.

The city is guaranteed $600,000 in annual income from the concerts and has not lost any money on them, Yancey said.

The city has a lot riding on the venue’s success, too. The Mississippi Legislature over several years gave the city a total of $6.5 million to build the amphitheater and related infrastructure, while the city spent more than $1.8 million.

The city spent another $5 million, also supplied by the state Legislature, on the old Singing River Mall property on U.S. 90, minus the parcel owned by Belk Stores of Mississippi LLC.

The mall closed in 2013 and was demolished by 2014, leaving Belk as an island surrounded by 55 acres the city bought in 2021. The city has hired a consultant to find a developer or developers for the mall property. Hopes are that the amphitheater and a Songwriters Performing Arts Center about to be built will help attract shops, restaurants, a hotel or other businesses, creating a town center of sorts.

“We don’t need any drama, you know?” Yancey said. “I mean, we’re trying to build something here that the city can be proud of, that its residents can be proud of.”