On August 14 the St. Louis Business Journal published a story about what it characterized as a growing rift between Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay. Though ostensibly a reported piece, it could be mistaken for an editorial in praise of the mayor, who is serving his third term. It presents Slay as a tireless and blameless defender of the city’s interests and Nixon as an out-state rube who doesn’t understand the economic importance of Missouri’s largest metropolitan area.
True, as a Democrat in a state that seesaws between the two major parties in gubernatorial races, Nixon apparently feels he doesn’t need to fight for the urban vote as hard as he has to campaign out-state. As the Business Journal points out, Nixon won nearly 85 percent of voters in the city of St. Louis and slightly more than 65 percent of St. Louis County voters in his 2008 contest against Republican Kenny Hulshof – and his advisors no doubt tell him he can expect similar margins when he runs for reelection.
The Business Journal notes that Nixon did not endorse Slay in his own reelection bid this year. However, it fails to consider the crucial question of why not? It does point out that Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder made robo-calls on Slay’s behalf, perhaps hinting that Nixon ignored Slay out of spite for Slay’s accepting this active support from a Republican veteran of the very administration Nixon was attempting to unseat. To be sure, Slay’s loyalty to the Missouri Democratic Party and Democrats vying for statewide office is notoriously weak.
There is, however, a more important ingredient to Nixon’s spurning Slay, which is important to any statewide Democratic candidate: the mayor’s toxic image among African Americans.
Despite campaign resources that dwarfed those of his challengers, Slay failed to carry one single majority-black ward in 2009. The urban blacks who voted by large margins against Slay were the very voters Nixon needed to bank on as he concentrated his energies out-state, where voters were more likely to be motivated by their own economic situation than party loyalty. While Nixon may be correct in his calculation that he doesn’t need to work for the urban vote as hard as he needs to fight for the ex-urban or rural vote, he also is correct in judging that an enthusiastic public embrace of Francis Slay would hurt him among blacks in St. Louis city and county – a crucial Democratic base, and one where Nixon himself is weak, given his controversial past stands on school desegregation issues.
We join the Business Journal in pressuring the governor to pay more attention to the needs of St. Louis and this region, the most economically productive area of the state. But it is a mistake that will only worsen the situation if the mayor’s share in the blame is not taken into account. Any rift between the governor and the mayor may, as the Business Journal says, have “a negative impact on St. Louis.” What that paper fails to point out is that this negative economic impact is yet another way Slay’s insensitive and divisive racial politics is costing this city and its citizens.