Mayor Slay, having won his party’s primary on March 8 with a whopping 65 percent of the vote, really hasn’t accomplished much except virtually to assure himself a second term as St. Louis mayor. However, the election has some indirect racial consequences.
For those of you that don’t know, St. Louis is essentially a one-party city, Democrat through-and-through. This means that we have a situation not unlike most Southern states in the pre-Civil Rights era, where the Democratic primary is the election. But still, that doesn’t mean that there is total harmony at City Hall. While everyone’s a Democrat, the reality is that there are two parties in St. Louis: The “White” Democrats (in reality, mainstream liberals, heavily but not exclusively white) and the “Black” Democrats (i.e. Negro militants and fanatics.)
The last several mayoral primaries have been close affairs, fought along the virtual party lines just described, which are essentially racial lines. In 1993, Freeman Bosley, Jr. was able to ride monolithic black support, Tony Ribaudo in the ballot siphoning votes away from Tom Villa, and some black vote fraud, to a narrow victory over Villa to become the city’s first black mayor.
In 1997, Bosley was defeated by Clarence Harmon, who at that point was a couple years removed from being the Police Chief for St. Louis City. Bosley once again identified with the “Black Democrat” Party, while Harmon, a light-skinned black, was interpreted as the “White Democrat” candidate. Fraud was virtually non-existent, and Bosley and Harmon were the only two legitimate candidates on the ballot. Harmon went on to win by a narrow margin.
In 2001, then-Mayor Harmon got crowded out by current Mayor Francis Slay, the “White Democrat,” and Bosley again, the “Black Democrat.” Even though Harmon was on the ballot, he got only a few percent of the vote, while Slay and Bosley duked it out along racial lines. Again, fraud was virtually a no-show, and Slay had no competing whites, and Slay beat Bosley by a narrow margin.
So now we come to this past March 8. Slay’s only credible opposition was Alderwoman Irene J. Smith. Frequent readers of this website and followers of St. Louis City politics will remember her as “Wee Wee” Smith, who feigned urinating in a trash can next to her desk to protest a city ward redistricting plan in 2001 that would have put her and another obsessive big-mouth black woman, one Sharon Tyus, in the same ward. Most of the mainstream black aldermen and organizations supported the redistricting, but the militant-obsessive wing of St. Louis black politics, radio talk show hosts Onion Horton, Lizz Brown, and a few other black aldermen, opposed the plan.
One would think that the Slay-Smith race would have been another nail-biter divided along racial lines, but Slay had several things going for him.
First, his relations with the “black community” and black politicians have been decent, so much so that this year, a majority of the ward organizations in black neighborhoods endorsed Slay over Smith. Slay’s appointment of Earl Nance to be his ombusdman to the City School Board, his removal of Georgia and Mississippi State Flags from City Hall for their Confederateness, and his opposition to Conceal-Carry helped his image among blacks.
Second, neither Irene Smith nor the militant-obsessive wing she represents is universally loved among St. Louis blacks or the black political power structure, though the links between Irene Smith and Lizz Brown were clear. The Lizz Brown radio show was one of the few where Miss Smith actually fielded media ads for her campaign, not only ad spots, but buying up hour-long blocks of time to sub for Lizz Brown. Also, the Official Irene Smith for Mayor website did not have its own URL, but was simply an appendage of Lizz Brown’s personal website.
Remember the three ingredients that Bosley used to beat Villa in 1993: Universal support among black voters and politicos, a white distraction to Villa, and black vote fraud. Miss Smith started out without the first, and Mariano Favazza’s decision not to throw his hat in the ring meant she was without the second. As for vote fraud, there has been so much hootin’ and hollerin’ about “voter corruption” from black bigmouth talking heads that the Feds have had no choice but to increase scruitiny of “voting irregularities” in black precints on voting days, in order to try to catch those evil right wing whites in the act of disenfrancising black voters. Ironically, this is what has squelched black vote fraud; after all, street thugs don’t shoot out street lamps for no reason at all; they need the darkness.
So as it turns out, a majority of the black politicos were able to leverage a third of the black vote to Slay, and adding this on to his almost universal support among whites, Slay crossed the finish line with 65 percent of the vote, compared to 31 percent for Miss Smith, the biggest landslide in a St. Louis mayoral primary in quite a long time.
As you know, the Council of Conservative Citizens, or any of its chapters, cannot endorse candidates for public office. It’s just as well, because there was somewhat of a disagreement among our people who live in the City about what we should do. On the one hand, Slay is such a left-wing rat on the MS and GA flags, on opposing right-to-carry, and on being a suck-up panderer to blacks that some of our people thought that he and Smith were so similar politically that it didn’t matter who won.
On the other hand, others said that despite all of Slay’s political evils, our side, the real right-wing side, should tend to vote for the least liberal of multiple legitimate choices. After all, George Wallace wasn’t on the ballot, and since the best is the enemy of the good, waiting around for the best would allow the worst to beat the mediocre. In addition, the bigger a margin Slay won by, the more emotionally distraught the miltiant-obsessive blacks would be, and a Slay landslide would serve to “box out” the Lizz Brown mindset away from the actual policy-making mechanisms of city government for quite a long time.
Furthermore, if nothing else, Francis Slay is a pretty face that can charm various corporate executives and corporate boards and keep some investment money flowing through the veins of the City, which in turn can help sustain or even raise residential real estate values in the City, something that the City property owners among our people are very happy about. Someone like Bosley Jr., or Irene Smith, and their militant-obsessive fanaticism and associations sitting in Room 200 of City Hall would tend to scare off corporate investment dollars. As it is, the first Slay term has done just that, and combined with a minor yuppification/gentrification of a few select city neighborhoods, have served to stabilize the population loss, and low home mortgage interest rates thrown on top of this have driven property values in certain city neighborhoos sky high.
In the end, I personally settled with the hold-thy-nose argument and voted for Slay. If my one vote marginally resulted in that much more emotional despair for Lizz Brown, Onion Horton and their minions and goons, then it was worth it.
