In a Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013 photo, Jerry R. Foxhoven, executive director, Drake Legal Clinic, speaks at a meeting of the governor's task force at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa. Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven routinely sent messages to employees lauding Shakur's music and lyrics even after at least one complained to lawmakers. Then in June 2019 he sent another such email to all 4,300 agency employees. He was abruptly ousted from his job the next work day. (Charlie Litchfield/Des Moines Register via AP)

IOWA CITY, Iowa | A spokesman for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds now says a mass email praising rapper Tupac Shakur wasn’t the reason Reynolds ousted an agency director.

Reynolds spokesman Pat Garrett was asked last week whether the June 14 agency-wide email from Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven was tied to the governor’s request that Foxhoven immediately resign the next work day.

In a Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013 photo, Jerry R. Foxhoven, executive director, Drake Legal Clinic, speaks at a meeting of the governor’s task force at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa. Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven routinely sent messages to employees lauding Shakur’s music and lyrics even after at least one complained to lawmakers. Then in June 2019 he sent another such email to all 4,300 agency employees. He was abruptly ousted from his job the next work day. (Charlie Litchfield/Des Moines Register via AP)
In a Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013 photo, Jerry R. Foxhoven, executive director, Drake Legal Clinic, speaks at a meeting of the governor’s task force at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa. Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven routinely sent messages to employees lauding Shakur’s music and lyrics even after at least one complained to lawmakers. Then in June 2019 he sent another such email to all 4,300 agency employees. He was abruptly ousted from his job the next work day. (Charlie Litchfield/Des Moines Register via AP)

Garrett said only that a “number of factors” prompted the governor’s decision, and that she wanted to take the agency in a new direction.

On Thursday, he told the Des Moines Register that “of course” Foxhoven’s love for the rapper didn’t factor into his dismissal.

Foxhoven’s practice of listening to the rapper’s music in his office on “Tupac Fridays,” marking the artist’s birthday and quoting lyrics had won him praise from some employees. But at least one also had previously complained to lawmakers.

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