The Unity PAC, which fostered Henderson’s candidacy, had many wins to celebrate along with cursing her loss:
* Yolonda Austin, City Council, Ward 2, Jennings
* Tamara Thomas, School Board, Jennings
* Harold Austin, School Board, Jennings
* Edward Haynie, School Board, Normandy
* Robert Edwards, Fire District, Normandy
* Bose Bradford, Fire District, Florissant Valley.
Only Austin was an incumbent; thus, thus Unity added five elected officials to their ranks.
Edwards joins Unity PAC member Joe Washington to take control of the three-member Normandy Fire Protection District Board.
Austin joins Henderson on the eight-member Jennings City Council. There are two other black council members who are not members of Unity, Rodney Epps and Anthony Jones. The mayor breaks the tie, so that council is still white-controlled.
Thomas joins Austin and Henderson on the all-black, seven-member Jennings School board.
Haynie, though supported by Unity PAC, was also supported by three of the incumbents on the Normandy School Board and thus gives them a four-vote majority on that seven-member board.
Finally, Bradford’s victory was a complete surprise, probably attributable to the fact that his opponent, a black female, had a black-sounding name, Dashawna, in a predominantly white fire protection district. Thus, white voters, not knowing that both candidates were black, may have cast their vote for Bradford thinking he may be white.
The moral of the story? The white voters in Florissant voted white. The white voters in Jennings voted white. The black voters stayed home.