Next Tuesday, voters nationwide will travel to their polling places to cast their ballots and make their voices heard. Locally, the EYE is watching four races that stand to make the biggest impact on St. Louis
Board of Aldermen President
In the battle between “a progressive” and “maintaining the status quo,” Alderwoman Megan Green (Ward 15) faces Alderman Jack Coatar (Ward 7) to replace the now-disgraced former aldermanic president, Lewis Reed, as leader of the Board of Aldermen. Reed resigned from the seat he held for a record-setting 15 years after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in May. He will be sentenced next month for taking bribes related to property tax abatements, essentially exchanging some depletion of St. Louis Public Schools funding for a few thousand dollars. Historically speaking, Reed and Coatar have endorsed each other and in practice, Coatar will be merely an extension of Reed’s reign. Green handily won the non-partisan primary in September, defeating Coatar in North and most of South City, though there has been no further (public) polling since that no-stakes special election.
Green’s campaign has benefitted from the momentum of Mayor Tishaura Jones’ 2021 campaign, even adopting Jones’ unifying message of “a St. Louis for everyone.” While Green’s platform aligns most closely with Jones’ – all but assuring advancement of the Mayor’s pro-working class policies – there has been some gentrification of Tower Grove South under Green’s leadership. But where Green does shine is by showing up for the community and following through with her promises – she is an activist, after all.
Coatar, on the other hand, can’t be bothered to show up to vote on legislation. Maybe he’s been too busy meeting with millionaire slumlords or collecting checks from corrupt PACs, but his 46% voting rate should stand out to voters as another reason to reject his candidacy. But even Coatar’s strongest claim – his experience in development – is questionable at best, and that experience should be examined more broadly. Every dollar contributed to his campaign by wealthy, white developers who don’t live in our city should be closely scrutinized.
While downtown and Soulard neighborhoods have experienced positive population growth across the last two decades, the harsh reality has seen population stagnation in the North and South neighborhoods of the city. Coatar’s development experience has been limited to the central corridor, and as such, that experience cannot be replicated elsewhere. Market demand in Carondelet or the Academy neighborhood does not reflect demand in downtown.
More recently, Coatar lost much of his remaining shred of credibility across the city when, in the wake of the tragic school shooting at Central VPA, the former prosecutor ghoulishly sought political advantage from that horrific situation to call for more cops. This tragedy ensued despite the fact that CVPA had seven SLMPD-trained security officers on-campus and SLMPD’s response within four minutes. Probably one of the very few examples where SLMPD followed every protocol and procedure appropriately. A politician through and through, Coatar failed to read the room on whether those pro-police talking points were raised in the immediate moment after the killings. Never one to miss a dog whistle, Coatar didn’t bother to address Missouri’s rejection of “red flag” laws or the weak gun laws that allowed the shooter to buy an AR-15 from a private seller after an FBI background check rejected his application for purchase.
U.S. Senate
The race to replace outgoing U.S. Senator Roy Blunt is a bit more akin to a struggle between evil and, well, less experience. Most recently, Republican candidate and current Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt was exposed for using his elected state office to “investigate” (read: harass) a woman who appeared in a political ad to discuss being denied a medically-necessary abortion. Just days after Democratic candidate Trudy Busch Valentine aired a political ad featuring the woman and the hospital that denied her medical care, a group of “investigators” from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services appeared at the hospital. Schmitt, who gleefully signed the nation’s first “trigger ban” following the repeal of Roe v. Wade, is believed to have initiated the state’s “investigation,” primarily because Schmitt’s campaign sent cease-and-desist letters to television stations across the state, demanding that they stop airing the campaign ad. Democratic state lawmakers apparently are investigating Schmitt’s abuse of his elected office, although realistically, we don’t expect that to go anywhere in this state.
Missouri’s legislative Democrats’ bark is much worse than their toothless bite.
Nevertheless Valentine has gained some momentum in the last few weeks, at one point Schmitt’s statewide lead was almost reduced to single digits. A mostly self-funded candidate, Valentine has invested more than $10 million of her own money into the campaign for U.S. Senate compared to Schmitt’s $5.2 million, but she has yet to break Schmitt’s average lead of 10 points. From a bird’s eye view, still, Valentine’s candidacy might be seen as more of a principled effort that may boost down-ballot Democratic campaigns at the local or state level.
Valentine’s inexperience, however, may be seen as a plus compared to Schmitt’s abuse-of-power while he was “serving” as attorney general. She has no record to scrutinize, and she has no history of doing political favors for campaign donors like her opponent. In fact, one of Schmitt’s first acts as the state’s top appointed lawyer was to settle a $2.6 million tax credit fraud case against a major political donor, controversial developer Paul McKee, for less than $325,000. Prior to the favorable settlement with McKee, Schmitt had taken nearly $170,000 in campaign contributions from McKee and his affiliates in less than a decade.
Yes, that was a massive conflict of interest. Yes, Schmitt should have recused himself and his office from touching the case. And yes – the Department of Justice should be investigating this, just as they investigated former aldermen Reed, Jeffrey Boyd, and John Collins Muhammad, because frankly, this is the same type of behavior.
This type of political corruption should be unacceptable for all elected leaders – especially those charged with enforcing state law.
Amendment 3
The St. Louis American was one of the first statewide voices to call attention to the very real dangers of Amendment 3, which has been called misleadingly the “marijuana legalization” bill. Months later, we remain firmly in the same position. To be clear, legislation cannot “legalize” something if it simultaneously criminalizes that same thing in the state constitution.
Amendment 3 has a concerning amount of support from groups that should be opposed to the petition, likely distracted by the petition’s expungement provisions for persons with convictions for non-violent marijuana offenses. The expungement component of Amendment 3 is perhaps the only positive part of this 39-page bill; the remaining 38 pages either create or perpetuate problems for those with and without cannabis convictions.
Persons who are currently incarcerated for non-violent marijuana offenses will not be automatically released – their freedom will depend on the sole discretion of a judge from the same county court that sentenced them. If a person is serving probation or parole for a non-violent marijuana offense, the remainder of that sentence must be served – unless, again, a judge decides otherwise. Lobbyists for Legal MO have stated that automatic release of persons currently incarcerated for non-violent marijuana offenses was “not possible,” apparently according to a Mel Carnahan-era lawyer, but another citizen petition, Fair Access Missouri, was able to find a loophole for automatic release. The Fair Access petition did not collect enough signatures to be on this year’s ballot, although to be fair – neither did Amendment 3. State Senator Shamed Dogan sponsored legislation for a constitutional amendment that included the automatic release of persons currently incarcerated on marijuana-related offenses, leaving us to wonder why Legal MO left out this vital component.
Supporters of Amendment 3 are a little too comfortable waving off the problems of this petition, which are likely to remain permanent if the Missouri legislature is successful in repealing the citizen initiative petition process this upcoming session. Legal MO also drafted the 2018 medical marijuana citizen petition, and despite having the opportunity to fix the problems created in that legislation with Amendment 3, Legal MO failed to do so. Not only would Amendment 3 amend the Missouri Constitution to make cannabis possession illegal, the bill is also written to remain in full force and effect in the event of federal legalization and/or decriminalization.
While we agree that the citizen initiative petition is the most effective way for Missourians to enact laws that the state legislature refuses (see medicaid expansion), we do not believe that Amendment 3 offers more good than harm. To the contrary, Amendment 3 stands to create further inequities, favoring white, wealthy industry veterans over Black and Latino entrepreneurs. Of the 338 licenses issued under the medical marijuana bill, only 3 went to Black applicants – that’s less than 1%, and that’s not a good thing. Amendment 3’s answer to this is to create a “separate-but-equal” system that limits operations for “microbusiness” licenses, which are distributed equally among congressional districts. St. Louis will only get 18 of these new licenses, leaving us to wonder who really stands to benefit from the passage of Amendment 3. It certainly doesn’t seem like consumers or minority business owners will.
Amendment 4
Last but not least, we will be hoping and praying for the failure of Amendment 4, which would force the only city in the state without local control of its police department – Kansas City – to increase its annual budget for its police department.
You read that right: the entirety of the state of Missouri will be asked to decide a budgetary issue for a police department in a single city.
Can you imagine the outcry if urban voters got to weigh in on the police budget for Poplar Bluff or Moberly? The state legislature would never find that appropriate, so we struggle to understand why Kansas City taxpayers would be beholden to a vote by millions who do not live or work there.
The bigger question is, when will local control of its police department be returned to Kansas City? It is not lost on us that the second-largest city in the state is still subject to a Civil War-era law, enacted by a pro-slavery governor who didn’t want urban police departments to fend off the Confederates. For what reason does the State of Missouri have to continue this form of oppression?
Just as St. Louisans have no business meddling in the affairs of Rolla or Jefferson City’s police departments, Missouri voters outside of Kansas City, too, have no business determining the funding allocation for police there.
For more information on how to vote locally by November 8, 2022, 7pm, see Are you ready to vote?