U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay has been showing up at public places in anticipation of a rumored election contest with state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-St Louis County). He appears highly fearful that Maria is going to run against him in the Democratic primary in August 2016 – and rightfully so.
Clay has angered many elected officials in the city, in one way or the other, and many of them will support Maria if she runs for Congress next year. Moreover, for the most part, the county elected officials and political operatives have absolutely no loyalty to the Clay family, and thus will be easily persuaded to endorse Maria for Congress.
Plus, 50 years of a Clay in the U.S. Congress is more than too long. As was said when Lacy’s dad, Bill Clay, first ran for Congress some 50 years ago: “It is time for a change!”
Lacy has been living off of his father’s civil rights legacy, but those voters are now mostly deceased and thus he has to stand on his own. He does have a track record of his own, by now, but it is not anything that will inspire voters to vote for him like the Civil Rights Movement inspired voters to vote for his dad. When I first ran for office in the city, in the mid-1970s, the voters made it clear that they were for Bill Clay. That is not true of Lacy Clay in the year 2015.
Lacy’s only real challenge to date was from Charlie Dooley, but Dooley did not have any base in the city. Plus, Lacy was running for the seat that was being vacated by his dad, thus he ran as “Bill Clay,” not “Lacy Clay,” so that voters might think they are still voting for his father.
Because Lacy Clay has interfered in several city ward’s political business, such as his usurping the Carter family’s state rep seat, he will not be endorsed by those wards. They will endorse Maria, something that Dooley was unable to accomplish.
Lacy has gone against several Democratic committeepeople in St. Louis County, such as Yolonda Fountain Henderson, when she ran successfully for mayor of Jennings, and Tony Weaver, when he tried to get the Democratic nomination in the special election to succeed Steve Webb.
These are actions that his dad declared as taboo. “You don’t publicly go against committeepeople, unless they are going against you,” his dad once told me, when I was a fledgling politician. Lacy has violated that rule on numerous occasions, going against committeepeople who have supported him over the years in favor of people who had not been among his supporters. That will come back to bite him in 2016.
When a sizeable number of black voters, but most of all black activists, came out against Steve Stenger for St. Louis County executive, Lacy publicly went against that constituency and endorsed Stenger.
Moreover, Lacy was visibly absent from the frontlines in the Ferguson protests, unlike his dad, who was a leader of the Jefferson Bank sit-ins of the 1960s. Bill Clay, as a city alderman, personally sat in to protest employment discrimination at Jefferson Bank – and spent 105 days in jail as a protestor. Those 105 days in jail made Clay Sr. invincible when he decided to seek election to Congress – and reelection every two years thereafter, until he retired – as far as the black community was concerned.
Maria is sitting on almost $200,000 in her state Senate campaign fund. This cannot be directly used to fund a congressional race; however, under the Citizens’ United ruling, she can probably put it in a non-profit or spend it indirectly in such a manner as to boost her candidacy.
Add the fact that Maria is a female, that females are the majority of voters, and that females have been voting for females, and Lacy will have a hell of a race on his hand. Can Maria beat Lacy Clay for Congress? She certainly can!
Elbert Walton Jr. is an attorney and political strategist in St. Louis County.
