After Donald Trump was elected U.S. president on November 8, U.S. President Barack Obama recorded and released a video in which he said, “The sun will rise in the morning.” It wasn’t much to promise a stunned, panic-stricken nation, but at least he was right, unlike almost everyone who predicted the outcome of that election.
Filing opened for the office of St. Louis mayor on Monday, November 28. The seat will be open, because incumbent Mayor Francis G. Slay, a Democrat, said he will not seek reelection, and indeed he did not file on Monday and has made no signs of changing his mind (not even after Hillary Clinton was defeated and, with it, any hope for his federal judicial appointment in the foreseeable future). The municipal primary election is March 7.
So, we can say this much at this point: On March 8, we will have a new Democratic nominee for St. Louis mayor. Given that St. Louis is a Democratic stronghold and the Democratic nominee has always been a shoo-in for mayor, it’s almost certain that the Democratic winner on March 7 will be elected mayor in the April 4 general election. But, in the bizarre year of Trump – and with rampant rumors about a heavily funded independent candidate poised to take on the Democratic nominee in the general election – let’s not go that far yet.
Filing for the March 7 primary election closes on January 6, and the candidates who file have until January 26 to withdraw and stay off the ballot. Since some of the candidates who filed on Monday must know they have little chance to win, but considerable potential to spoil the bid of a candidate with a better chance to win, it will not be possible to handicap this election with confidence until close of business on January 26. It’s entirely possible that one or more of the candidates who file for mayor will lose heart – or be incentivized to withdraw – before the ballots are printed.
That said, we can begin to survey the field based on who filed on day one.
It must be said that the possibly electable white candidates who had filed campaign committees cut deals – or, at any rate, decided to stay out of each other’s way – before filing opened. Police Chief Sam Dotson announced that he would rather stay police chief, and Collector of Revenue Gregg F.X. Daly announced that he would not run because “attacking others is just not my style.” The EYE did not get the memo that this was going to be a negative campaign, but that’s probably as safe a bet as that the sun will rise in the morning.
That leaves, among white candidates, Lyda Krewson, alderwoman of the 28th Ward in the city’s diverse, bustling central corridor. Dotson and Daly’s announcements that they would not file were followed, fast, by an email blast from J. Kim Tucci, the grizzled political operative serving as finance chairman for Lyda for Mayor. Local political professionals instantly recognized this as the “only one white mayoral candidate” email.
This “only one white mayoral candidate” business leaves out one William C. “Bill” Haas, who is indeed white and did indeed file for mayor on Monday. Haas does that a lot, file for elected office. Most recently he filed for U.S. representative in the 1st Congressional District in the August 2 Democratic primary. Running against a black incumbent, U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, and an upstart black challenger in state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Haas got 9,422 votes, or 10.5 percent of the vote, which seems about ten times as many votes he can expect in the current mayoral contest. (Chief Wana Dube, a man with a pot leaf tattooed on his face – admittedly running statewide for U.S. senator – got 30,432 votes on August 2, which was three-times as many votes as Haas.)
If we accept the historic racial split in St. Louis politics – an increasingly big “if,” with the emergence of a white millennial political clique that has adopted racial equity as its mantra – then Krewson must be rejoicing to face a black political house that is so divided. She faces two black candidates who already have been elected to citywide office (Lewis Reed, president of the Board of Aldermen, and Tishaura O. Jones, St. Louis treasurer), one extremely visible elected official with wide regional name recognition and a national presence (Antonio French, 21st Ward alderman), an elected official who has lost two citywide races in 2012 and 2014 (Jeffrey Boyd, 22nd Ward alderman) and a perennial candidate in the Bill Haas category, Jimmie Matthews, who most recently lost a citywide race (for sheriff) in 2016.
Reed has told St. Louis Public Radio that he considers himself the “front-runner,” which is the sort of thing that candidates say, but he has one point in his favor. He is the most recent person to run for mayor. In the March 2013 primary against Slay, he got 44.3 percent of the vote, losing by about 4,500 votes. (Well, Jimmie Mathews ran for mayor then, too, but only got 576 votes; given the hefty filing fee, Jimmie paid about $2.25 to file for each vote he tallied.)
It takes money to run for mayor, and Reed had about $227,000 in his campaign account as of the October filing. That’s less than Krewson, who had more than $403,000 in October, but probably more than anyone else who has filed. As St. Louis Public Radio noted, Jones was not required to file an October campaign ethics report, but she has received at least $196,000 in large donations since October 25, the largest sum being a transfer from her campaign account for treasurer.
Boyd had about $48,000 in a campaign account as of the October. St. Louis Public Radio noted that he raised more than $161,000 for his losing treasurer race in 2012. He lost that race to Jones by almost 10 percent and almost 4,000 votes, coming in third in a four-person race. (A major delight in that race was seeing Brian Wahby, longtime Slay operative who manipulated the city Democratic committee to his bosses’ benefit for so many years, coming in dead last with only half as many votes as even Boyd.) Since 2012, Jones has been a highly visible citywide elected official, and Boyd has been a scarcely visible North City alderman who lost another citywide race (for license collector) in 2014. He can’t rationally expect to beat Jones – or Reed – or Krewson – in 2017, so his reasons for running are best known to himself.
That leaves Antonio French, who emerged nationally in the early days of the Ferguson unrest, issuing eloquent reports from the front lines on CNN and social media and racking up Twitter followers (up to more than 138,000 by the time he filed for mayor). With that kind of national reach, he must be disappointed in his early attempts to crowd-fund his mayoral bid. By press time he had been pledged just $8,243 towards his $20,000 goal from 173 donors but was not yet eligible to collect even that money. He had less than $35 in his campaign account as of his October filing.
