Democrats who have been watching Chris Koster imitate Jay Nixon in preparing his run for the Democratic endorsement for governor by serving as a tightlipped, right-of-center attorney general must have been surprised, impressed and heartened by his remarks Saturday at the Missouri Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in downtown St. Louis.
Knowing how loud money speaks, Koster pledged to put his own campaign money where his mouth is by promising to give $400,000 of his own campaign funds over the next four years to help Democrats win seats in the Missouri legislature. This is very un-Nixon. Nixon runs for office as a party unto himself, letting other Democrats – from presidential nominees all the way down to struggling state rep candidates – swim (or, more often, sink) on their own.
Koster, in a departure from Nixon’s self-serving politics, was promising his colleagues that he will take a more proactive stance as party leader and not simply pander to Republicans. Nixon has seldom taken on the Republicans directly in a state that is more purple than red.
“In November 2012, our party lost five state House races by less than 500 votes and nine House races by less than a thousand votes,” Koster said, in Jason Rosenbaum’s crisp report for The Beacon. “As all of us know, these handful of races represent the difference between a legislature that is veto-proof and one that is not.”
Koster did a good job expressing what this means in terms of the core Democratic values that need to be sounded if the Democrats hope to motivate their base and compete at the polls.
“Someday, if we cannot turn this trend, then someday races like these will be the difference between a Missouri that maintains quality schools and one that does not,” Koster said. “A Missouri that provides women with reproductive rights and one does that not. The difference between a Missouri that shoulders the strength to resist right to work and one that does not.”
Koster framed his remarks in a way that made it clear to his fellow Democrats that he plans to run an aggressive, assertive campaign for governor as one of them, rather than as a politically self-absorbed Nixon.
“While our party’s individual statewide victories are significant, they cannot be enough without a legislature to support us,” Koster said. “Our individual victories cannot improve the education of a single child or land a single cargo plane at Lambert Field or bring health care to a single unemployed auto worker. Individual success is just that – it’s individual.”
We agree strongly with Koster on each and every one of these points and commend him for speaking – albeit on a friendly home court – in such bold, progressive terms. We also thank Koster for making that “cargo plane” reference in his list of implied legislative priorities. He was pointing to the legislature’s damaging failure to pass the Midwest China Hub incentives – a promising economic development proposal for St. Louis, the region and Missouri that enjoyed considerable bipartisan support and arguably could have been passed with determined support from the governor.
Nixon failed to provide that firm support when it was needed, settling for scattered, smaller China trade deals of his own making. Koster is suggesting that, given his chance, he would use the political capital of the Governor’s Office to back transformative change for St. Louis and Missouri. We are looking forward to hearing about the style and leadership being offered by this newly directed Chris Koster as 2016 – when the Governor’s Mansion comes open – approaches. At this early date, he is proclaiming a new strategy to achieve a more vibrant Missouri prepared to compete and win on the global stage of the 21st century.
