Rick Stream, the Republican nominee for St. Louis County Executive, thanked a coalition of black Democrats in a phrase made famous by John F. Kennedy when conceding defeat to Steve Stenger, the Democratic nominee, late on the election night of Tuesday, November 4.
Stream thanked St. Louis County Councilwoman Hazel Erby and a coalition of black Democrats she led in support of Stream (and opposition to Stenger), calling Erby “a profile in courage.”
It was a narrow victory for Stenger, the Democratic nominee, to prevent him from surrendering the top county seat to a Republican for the first time in decades. The margin – 137,638 votes (47.7 percent) to 135,870 votes (47.1 percent) – was within the 1 percent margin that mandates a recount, so Stream surprised many commentators by conceding defeat the moment the final tally was reported by the St. Louis County election board.
The previous report from the election board, with 72 percent of precincts reporting, had Stream ahead of Stenger. The election board struggled all night with a shortage of ballots, dysfunctional machines and resulting long lines at a number of polling places. The delay before the final tally was long enough to set off premature celebrations. State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, the Ferguson activist who also opposed Stenger and endorsed Stream, even declared the night “historic” for her candidate, before history turned against Stream with the final tally.
Mike Jones, one of the architects of the coalition that Erby led against Stenger, declared victory for the Fannie Lou Hamer Democratic Coalition. Jones said the goal was never to deliver a victory to a Republican but rather to get the attention of the Missouri Democratic Party. The message was delivered. As the night dragged out due to slow vote reporting, the role of the coalition in the outcome was the dominant local narrative on an election night when a mid-term Republican surge that took back the U.S. Senate was the national story.
Stream watched vote returns with a party at the Frontenac Hilton, near a tony mall targeted by Ferguson protestors during Ferguson October direct actions. Perhaps Chappelle-Nadal was right that history had been made with the message sent, because for the first time in modern political memory St. Louis County Republicans were anxiously waiting for their candidate’s votes to come in from North County precincts that normally are majority-black Democratic enclaves.
Stream’s watch party made for strange groupings. State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, who protested in Ferguson, talked to James Knowles, Ferguson’s Republican mayor. Asked if she thought the Ferguson Police Department should be disbanded and its police chief dismissed, Nasheed said yes to both. Knowles disagreed and quickly disappeared.
The insurgency against Stenger’s campaign was sparked most immediately by his handling of the Ferguson protests and the fatal Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. on August 9, just days after the primary election when Stenger devastated incumbent Charlie Dooley, a black Democrat. The police shooting case is being handled by St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch, who was the chief political sponsor of Stenger’s campaign.
McCulloch was a center of attention at Stenger’s election watch party at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel. He repeated his latest revised timeline for a grand jury decision in the case (“mid- to late-November”), defended his fitness to prosecute the police shooting of an unarmed black teen, and continued to praise Stenger.
McCulloch himself was on the November 4 ballot but with no opposition, having trounced his black Democratic primary challenger, Leslie Broadnax, who later joined McCulloch to campaign for Stenger against Stream. However, McCulloch’s opposition from the Ferguson movement was reflected in a large number of write-in votes against him – 10,870 votes, nearly 5 percent of the vote in his race. By comparison, there were 3,665 write-ins for County Executive – where there actually was a write-in campaign – and only 399 in the County Assessor race.
Jake Zimmerman, the incumbent County Assessor who was endorsed by the Fannie Lou Hamer coalition, won handily over a Republican who didn’t campaign, Andrew Ostrowski, 167,067 votes (59 percent) to 114,911 votes (40 percent).
Tom Schweich, the Republican incumbent State Auditor, was reelected with no Democratic challenger.
Chappelle-Nadal defended her 14th Senate District on Tuesday. She easily defeated a write-in opponent who was sponsored by supporters of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Brown six times, including twice in the head.
Democrats prevailed in two other closely-watched Senate districts. In the 24th District, Jill Schupp defeated Jay Ashcroft, son of right-wing Republican John Ashcroft, the former U.S. Attorney General, 27,662 votes (50 percent) to 26,030 (47 percent). In the 4th Senate District once represented by Jeff Smith, Joseph Keaveny defeated Republican challenger Courtney Blunt, 28,969 votes (72.2 percent) to 11,173 votes (27.8 percent).
Erby was reelected to her 1st District seat on the County Council with no opposition.
Many black Democrat state representatives were elected or reelected with little or no opposition: Tommy Pierson (66th), Alan Green (67th), Courtney Curtis (73rd), Sharon Pace (74th), Rochelle Walton Gray (75th), Clem Smith (85th), Joe Adams (86th).
One black Republican was elected as state representative, Shamed Dogan (98th).
U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, who campaigned for Stenger and celebrated with him on Tuesday night, was reelected in the 1st Congressional District.
Ferguson protestors were not silent on election night. They interrupted Stenger’s celebration with chanting. Their protest ended in a number of arrests by Clayton police, including Montague Simmons, lead organizer for Organization for Black Struggle. #FreeMontague was a hashtag in social media before the Stenger partyers – a mostly white crowd, with many visibly offended by the protestors – had finished clinking drinks in Clayton.
Ferguson protestors across the nation also celebrated the defeat of Jeff Roorda, the business agent for the St. Louis police union whose public remarks on the fatal St. Louis police shooting of VonDerrit Myers Jr. made him a national poster boy for bad cops. Despite an endorsement by Governor Jay Nixon, Roorda, a Democrat from Jefferson County, was defeated in the 22nd Senate District by Republican Paul Wieland, 22,208 votes (54 percent) to 18,773 votes (46 percent).
Mike Jones also claims a local victory for black Democrats on November 4.
“This was never about Steve Stenger and certainly not about Rick Stream,” Jones said. “This was about getting the attention of Claire McCaskill and Chris Koster for 2016. The name of this story is: ‘Now that we got your attention …’”
Full disclosure: Mike Jones is senior policy advisor for Charlie Dooley, the now-lame duck County Executive defeated by Stenger in the August primary.
Follow this reporter on twitter @chriskingstl.
