When Mayor Francis G. Slay endorsed Lyda Krewson to succeed him as mayor, he said Lyda is the right person to lead the city into the future. It’s what one says when making an endorsement – no one praises a candidate by saying she will lead us into the past or go nowhere – but it’s not very credible or persuasive. Krewson, first elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1997, is the only major candidate for mayor to have held elected office in St. Louis even longer than Slay, who will have been mayor for 16 years when he steps down (and he was aldermanic president and an alderman before that). We credit Krewson with making mostly forward-thinking statements throughout this campaign, and not openly resorting to the racially divisive politics we associate with the worst of the Slay administration, but in her many years as alderman of the 28th Ward, Krewson has not shown the appetite and vision for change that the city needs now.
We also consider it telling that Jeff Rainford is one of the people in Krewson’s inner circle named by former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce when she argued to her neighbors in a Next Door post why she did not think Krewson is the right person to lead the city into the future. If Rainford were to have any voice in the next mayoral administration, that would be a step back into the past, since we associate Rainford with the early years of the Slay administration, when the administration’s tactics of dividing by race were most pronounced and its style the most confrontational and abrasive. Rainford left the mayor’s office in February 2015 – though he was allowed to keep a key to the actual office and convene meetings there for an undisclosed period afterwards. Rainford’s official absence from Room 200 leaves a more collaborative and less obnoxious image of Slay’s final years in office, when Slay was advised by more progressive thinkers like Mary Ellen Ponder, Patrick Brown and Winston Calvert.
In the same news cycle that Slay endorsed Krewson, another high-profile endorsement in the mayor’s race was announced: Jason Kander for Tishaura O. Jones. Kander – the former Missouri secretary of state who nearly unseated incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Roy Blunt in November – votes in Kansas City, not St. Louis, but he is a rising national star in the Democratic Party and a new leader in fighting for voting rights. When he advances Tishaura Jones as a leader of the future, he speaks with as much credibility as any young Democrat in Missouri, perhaps in the nation. Interestingly, Kander did not praise Jones as an antidote to Slay, but rather as someone who can continue the “progress” the city made under Slay. We agree with Kander on this tactful nod to Slay only if we focus on the very tail end of Slay’s reign, the post-Rainford Slay, the Slay of relative compromise with adversaries and bold leadership on marriage equality, which Jones would certainly continue.
This city will need a comprehensive change of course if it is to reverse the damage done by the current administration. St. Louis will need fresh, aggressive leadership unencumbered by past failures in policy decisions and calculated racial divisiveness. The city needs a bold new leader able to forge consensus among the city’s varied interest groups to chart a new course – a new direction that enables a city faced with challenges to realize more of its considerable potential.
The Krewson campaign did not get a very lively response to its Facebook post of Slay’s endorsement. As we prepared this editorial on Wednesday, February 8, the post had been shared only 44 times and attracted only 17 comments in nearly a week. Here is one comment, by a man named Joel Sjerven: “Slay would love to see his legacy continued by you [Krewson]: no solution to the Delmar divide, continued wasted TIF in the most expensive neighborhoods in STL, and the forced closure of STL’s largest homeless shelter. STL needs to stand and intercept this handing down of the baton of ‘more of the same.’” We could not possibly agree more.
