St. Louis’s Political Silly Season Has Begun

The past week brought the municipal election season’s chaos to a frenzied peak. With tomorrow’s primary election rapidly approaching, candidates and campaigns are having a hard time keeping things from spinning out of control. Much of this is driven by candidates’ social media accounts, many of which are demanding voters keep track of wild claims that seem to be rapidly multiplying. Let’s take a deep breath and examine some of these.

We’ll begin with David Jackson, current SLPS school board candidate, taking to social media to claim that Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler was running as a spoiler. He claimed that Butler is secretly working to elect Ald. Cara Spencer as our next mayor. This is despite the city’s current runoff system, which effectively relegated “stalking horse” tactics in mayoral races to history’s dustbin. One would think that a candidate whose April election date coincides with the runoff election would be aware of this fact. One would be wrong. Additionally, Butler has publicly said he supports Mayor Jones’ reelection effort, in the event he doesn’t make the runoff. The attack simply doesn’t make sense on multiple levels.

Also in SLPS school board news, we saw competing forums held on the same evening. In this strange situation, most school board candidates attended a forum that was held at Vashon High School in north St. Louis. This forum featured Mr. Jackson saying that he wouldn’t send his own kids to schools in the district he wants control over. At the same time, three candidates associated with charter school activist group Coalition with STL Kids met at a south St. Louis coffeehouse with a little over a dozen people in the audience. The group is led by a former charter school principal, who was forced out of his last job leading a school. Reporting shows this smaller group discussed numerous issues, including one candidate’s affinity for the TIFs and tax abatements that continue to divert dollars from public education and into the pockets of wealthy developers.

This was followed by Mayor Jones’ campaign sharing a video from a fraudulent, since-deleted website with an address that was similar to A Brighter Day For St. Louis PAC’s actual site. This PAC exists for the purpose of supporting Ald. Spencer’s mayoral candidacy. The video made it seem like the PAC was attempting to court Trump voters for Ald. Spencer. From the start, there were obvious red flags, including the fact that the website address on the video shared by the Jones campaign didn’t match the PAC’s actual site. The two websites don’t even seem to have been visually similar. It is also worth noting that the PAC’s real page remained online throughout the episode. This means that the Jones campaign could have easily checked to make sure they were on the real page. At this time, it is unknown who created the now-deleted copycat page. The Spencer campaign has demanded that the Jones campaign retract their claim that her supporters’ PAC was actively seeking the MAGA vote.

Taken together, we can safely say that our city’s political silly season has begun. While the general election is still a month out, it feels like the wheels are already coming off the electoral bus. This accounting of strange happenings doesn’t even include non-election political matters, such as the multiple scandals enveloping our new Sheriff. Sadly, this is basically all on purpose, at least to a certain extent. Over the next few weeks, we will likely see more bizarre behavior from our city’s political class. Lacking policy differences to polarize voters into candidates’ various camps, voters are expected to make their choice based on something akin to reality television. The narrative building you often see in local political coverage demands drama. Needing clicks to generate revenue, commercial media dutifully serves it all up to the public.

Let me offer a different narrative for the likely homestretch scenario. It’s a story about two ambitious, accomplished women vying for the city’s executive position. While they are from different racial backgrounds, these women actually have a lot in common. Both are fairly similar in age. Both are single mothers. Both candidates give full-throated support to the city’s first responders, though they have each criticized portions of the criminal justice system at times. Both have raised lots of money from wealthy supporters, and each have a PAC that allows those supporters to give even more money to their electoral efforts. They both opposed the privatization of the city’s airport. Both live in neighborhoods that sit on the edge of gentrification. Both generally support the city’s system of giving out subsidies to developers. To be fair, they’ve both espoused these tax breaks being given with more strings attached, compared to the past two mayors. Both are fans of “traffic calming” solutions to pedestrian and cyclist safety issues. The list of similarities goes on. There are certainly differences in style, but, when it comes to policy, the truth is that the candidates mostly differ at the edges. In fact, the incredible number of policy preference similarities are why this election has seen so much messaging focused on candidates’ perceived effectiveness, or lack thereof. This is not to say that they are exactly the same. They have shown some substantive differences over the years. Just not a lot. It is also important to recognize that much of the mayor’s job is focused on personnel. The truth is that policy work isn’t everything, and we’ve seen personnel issues addressed in very public ways during the primary. These personnel issues also directly feed into questions around candidates’ relative effectiveness.

If the past week’s shenanigans are a preview, then we will all be well-served by exercising our critical thinking skills in coming weeks. When the next dramatic story appears on your social media feed, take a breath before reading it. After you read it, ask yourself: is it really important or is it mostly just clickbait? There are certainly important considerations in tomorrow’s election, but city voters will be well-served to remember that Jones and Spencer really do have a lot in common. We don’t have to give into the purposefully distracting rage of today’s politics.

Disclosure: Author has worked for both Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler and Alderman Cara Spencer on past campaigns.