We can not endorse Jeanette Mott Oxford for Missouri’s 5th Senatorial District. She is an experienced legislator, energetic campaigner and progressive battler with sensitivity to the concerns and needs of our community, but the other candidates in this race are not so lacking that we can recommend voters to deny any African-American representation from the City of St. Louis in the Missouri Senate. With Joe Keaveny representing Missouri’s 4th Senatorial District, we can not – since we have other reasonable options – endorse a vote for another white candidate from this region for Missouri’s 5th Senatorial District. We can not ask voters to turn back the clock on proportionate representation for African Americans by more than half a century.
We can not endorse the incumbent Robin Wright-Jones for Missouri’s 5th Senatorial District. Knowing she was the lone African-American voice for this city in the state Senate, she committed egregious errors in campaign finance filings, which are routinely scrutinized by journalists and opponents. These errors – and her weak, petulant response when they were reported – undermined her fundraising hopes for this crucial election cycle. Granted, she was a reliable vote on progressive issues, but her leadership and list of legislative accomplishments have not been impressive for a position of this stature, which she seems to recognize herself by now claiming the downsized Mississippi River Bridge project among her accomplishments, when she played no direct, significant role in the realization of a project that any official in her position would have supported with enabling legislation.
We also can not endorse Jamilah Nasheed for Missouri’s 5th Senatorial District. Nasheed is a battler with deep roots, personal and political, in many struggles that are central to our community. Her rise from street activist to state legislator with influential ties to the current playmakers in the Republican-dominated Legislature is impressive and commendable, even amazing. But we are made uneasy by these close ties, given the reactionary policy stands taken by the current Missouri Republican Party and its leaders, which wreak havoc on the health and well being of our community. Nasheed has a valid defense for why she voted with Republicans on each critical measure where her vote made a difference – for example, lifting voter-mandated fundraising ceilings and overriding Gov. Nixon’s veto of the new Republican redistricting maps – but we are uneasy with how her close ties to the Republican leadership would play out in the state Senate, where each of the badly outnumbered Democrat senators has much more leverage in an oppositional role than Nasheed has had in the state House. Particularly troubling was Nasheed’s support (lone among House Democrats) for a Republican bill that put Proposition C on the August 2010 ballot, giving Missouri voters a chance to vote against one of the most controversial – but essential – elements of President Obama’s health care reform in isolation: the individual mandate to purchase health insurance or face a penalty.
We ask that everyone in our community vote on August 7, and we ask that everyone in the 5th Senatorial District cast a vote in this contest, but we can not offer the name of this newspaper and what it represents to any of these candidates in this race. We also challenge the African-American political community to work together more closely in the future to avoid handing clear opportunities to white candidates to win contested primaries in majority-black districts. Particularly with the new district maps, African Americans are going to need to find strong consensus candidates if we hope to have any African-American political representation in Missouri at the state and federal levels.
Claire McCaskill for U.S. Senate
Claire McCaskill has no opposition in the August 7 Democratic primary, but we strongly encourage our community to get out and vote for her. McCaskill frequently has been criticized by progressive Democrats as too centrist, but we think she is as progressive a U.S. Senator as this state can hope to elect in 2012.
President Obama often has said he needs McCaskill’s vote in the Senate, and of course the Missouri Republican Party has bashed McCaskill for years for her support of the President and his policies. This relentless attack has had an effect, as we see in recent polls that show McCaskill trailing every Republican running in the Senate primary. This has been a bitter and expensive primary fight for the Republican candidates, but the winner can expect unlimited national resources to fund a Republican running against a vulnerable incumbent Democrat Senator in an increasingly red state in 2012.
What McCaskill will need in November to help boost her base is something she is not likely to get, for a number of reasons. She will need Obama to campaign hard in her urban base to boost voter participation and remind voters how badly he needs a Democrat – and this particular Senator – in the U.S. Senate for his second term. But Obama no longer views Missouri as a swing state, and McCaskill probably would judge that the President’s very public embrace of her would cost her as any votes out-state as it would generate for her in the urban Democratic strongholds.
Yet high voter turnout – especially by African Americans, her party’s most loyal base – will be essential to her victory. A targeted campaign to drive voter participation could be a critical benefit, particularly if the hotly contested Republican primary exacerbates divisions in an overconfident Missouri Republican Party. McCaskill also can count on a benefit from the Mitt Romney effect if, as expected, the religious right shows relatively damp enthusiasm for their party’s candidate and Republican voter turnout is diminished as a result.
Claire can’t lose on August 7, because she has no opponent, but we believe she can win in November, and we very much want our community to get into the habit of voting in 2012 – and of voting for her. We strongly endorse CLAIRE MCCASKILL FOR U.S. SENATE.
