Why We Need Non-Partisan Elections in St. Louis
Except one, all the elected officials from the City of St. Louis are Democrats. Local, state, or federal — if their district is in the city they are a Democrat. I firmly believe we need to break up the political machine in the city. Why? Corruption:
Another state politician from St. Louis pleads guilty to a corruption charges — revealing new details about allegations involving other local government officials.
State Representative T.D. El-Amin entered a guilty plea in U-S federal court to one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe.  El-Amin admitted he received $2,100 from a northside gas station owner, in exchange for helping the man get city hall to stop a series of “nuisance inspections.” (Source: KMOX)
Of course State Reps would still be partisan even if our municipal elections were non-partisan. It should be noted that the City of St. Louis is rare in having partisan municipal elections. Cities such as Springfield & Kansas City appear to be non-partisan. We should remember that Democrats are not the only ones that have issues.
Take former Republican State Rep T. Scott Muschany of Frontenac as an example:
On August 6, 2008, Muschany was indicted by a Cole County grand jury for the alleged sexual assault on May 17, 2008 of a 14-year-old daughter of a woman with whom Muschany had an admitted 2 year long extramarital affair. Muschany resigned from the Missouri House of Representatives on September 9, 2008.
Muschany was acquitted of all charges March 20, 2009 after a jury deliberated for four hours. “Standing naked next to a 14-year-old girl in bed is not a crime,” defense lawyer Robert Haar told jurors who held the legal fate of Muschany in their hands. (Source: Wikipedia)
We all need to remember that the majority of all elected officials, from a major party or not, are honest hard working public servants. But I think the partisan machine in the City of St. Louis creates a closed system that can breed corruption. Partisan elections for out local offices serves no purpose for the City. In fact, it may work against the it.
We all know Missouri’s previous Governor, Republican Matt Blunt, made disparaging remarks about the city — something like a place where nobody would want to live. Conversely, out-state Republican’s might wonder if a Democrat Governor is paying too much attention to St. Louis to earn party favors.
Partisan elections for local offices doesn’t help the city or its citizens, we need to go non-partisan. This is the subject of the poll this week (upper right sidebar) so please vote.
– Steve Patterson
Sorry, but a stagnant political class in a small ‘d’ democratic system is the result of complacency of the citizenry. Not too be too cliched here, but democracy isn’t easy. It just doesn’t work as well when people either don’t show up or aren’t engaged. We don’t have a “closed” system, it’s only governed by those who show up.
The problems of St. Louis politics have little to do with ideological factions of the Democratic party, but instead it’s just a prolonged battle between the south-side political establishment and the north-side political establishment. I don’t see how that would change under a non-partisan system. The machines would move the date of their battles from the date of the primary to the date of the general election.
In terms of state politics, the reason St. Louis is, and has always been, disadvantaged is because the state legislature is dominated by rural and small town legislators who don’t care one iota about urban issues.
Corruption is everywhere. The U.S. Congress has been both majority right and majority left, but it is mostly a balanced mix of both and has never been more or less corrupt than it is right now.
Non-partisan elections in a city like St. Louis wouldn’t do much. Even though KC is nominally non-partisan, the huge Democratic majority in the city means that we virtually all of the City Council is Democratic. We rarely, if ever, have more than one Republican on the City Council at the same time.
I supposed going non-partisan would remove a lot of the party funding and committees, but I don’t see how it would change the outcome much. A majority Democratic city is going to elect a majority of politicians with Democratic platforms, even if they can’t run on party affiliation.
My experience, in Denver, with non-partisan elections is that, like most major cities, most candidates were and continue to be Democrats. The difference is that they’re elected on their own merits, not because “the party” decides which one that should win. Endorsements and campaign contributions seem to be handed out based more on positions and experience, and not so much on being “deserved” for being the “good soldier” and waiting one’s turn. In the last ward election here, I was amazed to see one candidate (and the ultimate winner) having 30+ union endorsements the day they announced, before the endorsing entities had had ANY opportunity to know who might be running against them! It’s not that the winner isn’t a good person or hasn’t done a good job since taking office, it’s the assumption (and the reality) that the 1% of the voters that makes up the “leadership” of the local Democratic Party can and do decide many of the elections in St. Louis.
The big difference with non-partisan is that the barriers to compete are much smaller, with the only and biggest being incumbency (and that can be addressed with term limits). When an incumbent chooses to run again, whether it’s in a partisan or a non-partisan structure, they have the big advantage of both name recognition and a history of some level of success. It’s when there’s an open seat that non-partisan system becomes a big advantage for more potential candidates.
The challenge here, with the current partisan structure, isn’t that there isn’t nominal competition, it’s that the Democratic Party seems to be able to designate a preferred winner in the primary, neutering both the primary and the general election process. If the ward establishment and/or the central committee is the real decider, we don’t have a real democracy – the people going to the polls (in lock step?) are simply there for show. And it’s not so much that, under either system, that “A majority Democratic city is going to elect a majority of politicians with Democratic platforms,” it’s that a smaller, explicitly-partisan group tends to be less willing to take risks. There’s a lot of safety in not “rocking the boat”, in continuing to do things the same way just because it’s always worked in the past.
People who aren’t a part of the establishment tend to question things more and, many times, are more focused on the bigger picture. The question then boils down to whether one thinks consistency is better than change? Is it better to have similar attitudes and agendas, for decades, where the names and the faces change, but the outcomes don’t? Or, is it better to have a few more “free-thinkers”, “nut cases”, single-issue candidates” and “non-conformists” to shake things up and to pursue some different agendas? My experience is that democracy works, that the extremes get heard but rarely succeed in their wackiest ideas, and that the process of considering them results in better solutions in the long run.
“We all need to remember that the majority of all elected officials, from a major party or not, are honest hard working public servants.” Hmm, I’m not so sure about that. I would say rather that a majority of public officials pass out unethical favors, or, like El-Amin, are out and out crooks. That goes for all but two of our aldermen, Mr. French and Mr. Cohn. Those that we don’t know about for certain simply haven’t been investigated. This goes for Repukes and Wimpocrats. The name of the game today is get in office (power), and stay there. At all costs, no matter how much of a whore you become. Matter of fact, it seems that the bigger the whore you become, the more everyone wants to play with you. Congress is, in my opinion, almost completely corrupt, including both of our Senators.