The firing and demotion of the four senior members of the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners staff is being seen by some politicos as the first step by the newly appointed election board to establish some credibility and integrity in the city’s electoral process. And not a minute too soon. It has been baffling to the EYE, given all of the scandals and goofiness that has permeated the electoral process in St. Louis for the past 8 years, that not one election supervisor had been disciplined for mismanagement.
This head-in-sand attitude was especially evident in the situation surrounding the fraud trial of Nona Montgomery. In this case, Keena Carter – one of the election supervisors who was just fired by the board – testified (under the protection of prosecutorial immunity) that she met with certain people to discuss the destruction of evidence – namely, bogus voter registration postcards. It is hard to believe that a person who had made such a confession was allowed to keep her job supervising the counting of votes.
It is equally puzzling why Carter and another lower-level manager were fired, yet their supervisors were merely demoted. The decision to demote but retain the Republican supervisor Gary Stoff and the Democratic supervisor Jim O’Toole makes the EYE think that a deal was cut which taints the entire process. If the managers who were disciplined were truly creating an atmosphere that was “hazardous to the health of election commission employees,” then why not clean out the entire house and dump everyone? In his novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a classic study of political corruption, Ghanaian writer A.K. Armah talks about stitching “the nets that catch only the small, dispensable fish.” You can see that in play here.
Keeping O’Toole and Stoff smacks of a political deal, especially given the friendship between O’Toole and Mayor Francis Slay and the prominence of Stoff in the city’s Republican Party. One can only wonder if O’Toole and Stoff benefitted from a deal struck between Slay and his new political friend, Governor Matt Blunt. That would certainly explain the absence of logic in the pattern of firings and retentions.
As for small, dispensable fish, the EYE heard several months ago that Blunt told certain members of the Legislative Black Caucus that Carter was going to be the first person his new city board of elections would send packing. Blunt seems to be true to his word when it comes to rolling heads (and slashing social programs).
The EYE can only hope that the Board of Election Commissioners Chairman Ed Martin will use this opportunity to upgrade professionalism at the board by hiring someone who is committed to a fair and professionally managed electoral process. It is, after all, a defining element in a democracy, that political system our youth are dying to establish (or so we are told) over in Iraq.