Once there was a Ferguson crisis, there was going to be a Ferguson Commission. The first player to push for the idea was the office of Mayor Francis Slay. The Slay administration has been the White House’s primary on-the-ground contact in the St. Louis region since August, despite the fact that the first and worst blowups in the ongoing crisis have been in St. Louis County. A Ferguson Commission idea was shopped to the Obama White House by Slay operatives fairly early on.
In a détente between the Slay administration and The St. Louis American brought about by the crisis in Ferguson, this newspaper was included early on the invite list to get behind the commission idea. Virvus Jones, the most cynical member of a deeply skeptical editorial board, said a commission is just a “pacification effort,” and we agreed at that point (late August) that it was still too early to be talking in the stentorian tones of a commission.
The EYE is not certain what happened next with the Slay administration, but they seem to have downgraded their proposed commission to gubernatorial rather than presidential level and signed up the Post-Dispatch as allies when we could not be had. But it’s just as likely that Slay and the Post editorial board met halfway on the road to the Governor’s Mansion after Slay’s failed bid to get Obama’s imprimatur for a commission.
Why Obama didn’t bite on a Ferguson Commission may come out in senior staff memoirs one day, but it followed the administration’s trend of withholding major federal support in advance of a St. Louis County grand jury decision on the Darren Wilson case, since it was widely expected that Wilson would walk and this would result in a worse round of arson and vandalism (and perhaps bloodshed). And, of course, all of that happened, exactly as expected – it felt, at times, exactly as scripted. “They would rather come in and fix it after it’s completely broken,” a Slay operative surmised of the Obama White House strategy, “than come in now and get part of the blame when it falls completely apart.”
The Bob Woodward-esque, imbiber of confidential government source page-turner on Ferguson could well play senior Slay staffer Jeff Rainford as a one-man Camelot, who tried valiantly to pull together resources and put together deals in the oceanic void left by the St. Louis County Executive. Lame-duck Exec Charlie Dooley eventually came right out and said he did nothing to lead during the crisis – and then went back to doing nothing much to lead during the crisis. Exec-elect Steve Stenger said it was Dooley’s problem and Dooley’s problem alone until Stenger is sworn into office next year. This might be a savvy strategy for a jailhouse lawyer trying to minimize liability to a favorite client (himself), but an appalling response to an acute political crisis in a county where a majority of voters told you they want you to lead their county government.
Since nobody was in the office at Clayton, Room 200 at City Hall went to work. The EYE expects there will be a crescendo of federal support for the St. Louis region, now that the arson and vandalism have come and gone, and if so the Slay administration’s wrangling of federal resources starting in August will deserve to be credited. However, in a smaller political tragedy – within the greater tragedy of dead young men, killer cops and contentious prosecutors – is the failure of Rainford to make good on his Camelot act, however well-intentioned. When he was the person in the region best positioned to marshal resources behind a series of complex deals that might have moved the community forward at a critical time, he did not have the political credibility to get it done. All those years of over-reaching authority, knocking heads and poisoning the media against adversaries (real or projected) made too many people hesitant to trust his leadership at a moment when snap decisions were needed. After all those years of demanding unwarranted snap decisions, Rainford called for snap decisions when they actually needed to be made. Those decisions were not made, and the moment passed, leaving behind a long trail of broken deals and torched businesses along West Florissant Avenue.
Another politico sifting regretfully through the ashes of those broken deals and burnt out businesses is Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, Rainford’s co-dealmaker on noble, ambitious efforts to convince the City of Ferguson to make some dramatic changes to its police department in advance of the grand jury decision. Koster, who wants to be Governor, has his own credibility issues, and they were made way worse by his appearing as the featured player in a New York Times take-out piece on state attorneys general fundraising for their campaigns from companies with cases before their offices. Koster – who might have been directing his considerable intelligence and influence at Ferguson inside players – suddenly was forced into a more personal damage control mode and compelled to morph himself overnight into the universe’s most fierce (and most quickly assembled) hawk over campaign fundraising improprieties.
Before leaving behind these broken deals to consider a deal that, finally, did get done, the Ferguson Commission established by Gov. Jay Nixon at the repeated urging of the Post-Dispatch, here is another commission footnote. The American was queried about a foundation commission, as well as the White House one that didn’t happen. A national civil rights figure approached The American with foundation support and a think tank’s conceptual resources. It looked like we might move forward with the commission and even started asking potential commissioners, but then the grand jury decision kept being delayed, making it difficult to schedule, and the Post kept hammering at Nixon, making it more and more likely Nixon would cave. We held back, Nixon caved, and now we have the Ferguson Commission he called into being.
This Ferguson Commission has now hosted two public meetings, one during the day in the county, the other during the evening in the city. Neither meeting was protested outright, but both were eventually disrupted by some members of the public, who demanded to be heard. Some protestors also demanded that other speakers not be heard. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson was protested into silence at the commission meeting on Monday, December 8. Dotson’s department has two fatal police shootings under investigation, the shootings of Kajieme Powell and VonDerrit Myers Jr. It’s especially difficult to see Dotson speaking at public meetings in St. Louis about police work while those investigations are active.
This is part of the reality that the Ferguson movement has metastasized. Ferguson was always also about St. Louis, and was understood locally that way, but the shootings of Powell and especially Myers really brought the movement home to City Hall and its locally controlled police department – which will be the focus of much future attention and pressure for reform. Further, the EYE understands that the foiled one-man Camelot that is Jeff Rainford will be stepping down from the castle early next year, leaving (the EYE is told) Mary Ellen Ponder at Slay’s right hand.
It’s fascinating to imagine Slay running the city without his longtime head knocker and political strategist, especially as the Mayor nurses a string of stinging local political surrogate defeats – so many consecutive defeats that Slay haters lose count, not being sure which failed ballot initiatives the Mayor shadow-supported should be counted. The early indications are not good for Francis. Several aldermen told the EYE the Mayor tried to personally whip votes for the Civilian Review bill he introduced at the Board of Aldermen, where a senior South Side alderman told the Mayor (in so many words) to go back to his office and stay there – unless Slay wants some formidable South Side competition for that office the next time he is on the ballot. It’s a new St. Louis, in so many more ways than one.
