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Progressives win key St. Louis aldermanic races, securing agenda [1]
['Austin Huguelet', 'Laurie Skrivan']
Date: 2023-05
ST. LOUIS — Progressive Democrats looking to tighten their grip on the Board of Aldermen this spring mostly delivered Tuesday.
Just before 10 p.m., results showed candidates backed by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and Aldermanic President Megan Green winning in all but one battleground race.
The progressive candidates held off stiff challenges from moderate challengers in far south city and on the near North Side. They also toppled one of the progressives’ most vocal critics at the board in Alderman Joe Vaccaro. And they likely gave leaders a working majority on the new, 15-member board as they continue pushing policy aimed at fighting crime with social services, tackling racial inequities and lifting up the poor.
Proposition C, which proposes the creation of a commission to recommend changes to the city charter, also passed with 60% of the vote.
“It was a good night,” said Green, who ran unopposed Tuesday. “The future of the city is progressive.”
Here’s how it went down:
4th Ward
Alderman Bret Narayan, of Dogtown, scored perhaps the biggest victory Tuesday.
He defeated Vaccaro, the progressive nemesis from Lindenwood Park, 54.6%-45.1%, overturning a narrow loss in the March primary.
The result ended Vaccaro’s tenure on the board at 14 years, the last few of which he spent opposing progressive efforts to divert money from the police department to social workers, close the city’s old Workhouse jail on the far north side and send more infrastructure money to the North Side at the expense of his area.
It also lends credence to the idea that today’s voters want aldermen to do more than their traditional functions of fielding neighborhood complaints about potholes and trash and nagging city bureaucrats to fix them. Vaccaro made his campaign all about those things, boasting of answering phone calls at 1 a.m. and picking up trash in his own truck when the city wouldn’t.
But Narayan, who Green endorsed, said modern aldermen should focus less on putting out fires and more on making citywide policy. He talked about his work legislating repeal of penalties for marijuana possession and plans for lead and asbestos remediation. And he said the city also needed legislation to make it easier for the city to hire workers and shore up city services.
“We don’t want a dumpster czar,” he memorably told voters at one forum. “We want someone who’s going to carry St. Louis into the 21st century.”
1st Ward
Progressives also held on in far south city, where current 13th Ward Alderman Anne Schweitzer, of Boulevard Heights, defeated Tony Kirchner, a city sheriff’s deputy from Bevo Mill, by 4.5 percentage points.
Endorsed by the St. Louis Police Officers Association and moderate aldermen, Kirchner entered the race looking to reverse recent progressive gains in an area with a history of old-school, conservative politics. He cast his opponent and her progressive allies as too busy working on reparations and north St. Louis to pick up the trash, trim trees, pave streets and fight crime. And he said he was the antidote: a no-nonsense, law-and-order candidate with the know-how needed to repair a shrunken police department, combat a growing sense of lawlessness and get the train back on the tracks.
But Schweitzer, a public relations consultant, blended her support for studying reparations and revitalizing north St. Louis with promises to do just as much work on the basics in her own ward.
She talked about how she already caught paperwork errors that were delaying sidewalk repairs. She touted a resolution she got passed calling for increased pay and benefits for city employees to resolve staff shortages hobbling city services.
“I tried to share a positive message about getting things done,” she said.
14th Ward
State Rep. Rasheen Aldridge, of Old North St. Louis, notched the third important victory here, in a ward covering part of downtown and the near northeast side.
He bested realtor Ebony Washington, a member of the influential Hubbard family from Carr Square, 51.6% to 47.2%, capping one of the more bruising races of the cycle.
At one point, Aldridge sued Washington, alleging she hadn’t paid taxes on her car and shouldn’t be on the ballot. She resolved the suit by paying up, and then fired right back, pointing out he’d didn’t pay his car taxes in 2022 either and had missed a number of sessions in the Missouri House during the campaign. Then this past weekend, Aldridge accused Washington’s campaign of sending texts criticizing him for being gay, which she denied.
After three years of playing defense as a Democrat in GOP-dominated Jefferson City, Aldridge wanted to come home and work on progressive policy with Jones and Green, whose chief of staff is Aldridge’s partner.
He also promised to lead a new generation of Black aldermen that would be less parochial and more willing to work with left-leaning whites to get things done for the North Side. He said his first act as an alderman would be reviving Green’s effort to distribute more of a special pot of infrastructure money to North Side wards, which several Black aldermen rejected in February.
Washington, on the other hand, came from one of those old-school families, brushed off progressives’ promises of help to Black areas as “all talk,” and promised to oppose efforts to divert money away from the police department.
12th Ward
The only setback for progressives came here, where Alderman Sharon Tyus, perhaps the most vocal critic of the administration, beat back a challenge from Baden businesswoman Tashara Earl for a sixth four-year term.
She took 55.3% of the vote in the new ward, running from the northern border of the Central West End to just north of Calvary Cemetery. Earl had 44.2%.
Jones, Green and their allies backed Earl hoping to silence Tyus after years of acrimony. She had claimed Jones’ signature effort to send $500 checks to struggling families during the pandemic left out her ward. She had loudly criticized the administration’s struggles with trash pickup. And shortly after Green took up the presidency at the board, Tyus proposed extraordinary restrictions on Green’s power to control the flow of legislation.
Earl had promised to move past all that and work alongside progressives to get more money and resources for her part of the North Side.
But it wasn’t enough. And Tyus said she wasn’t surprised. The people know her and trust her, she said. She got endorsements, too, she said: from former Congressman Bill Clay, Comptroller Darlene Green, and State Sen. Karla May.
“If the mayor wants to sit down and talk, we can get things done,” Tyus said. “If she doesn’t, I’ll fight her to the end.”
Other results
2nd Ward: Alderman Tom Oldenburg, 60%. Phill Menendez, 39%.
3rd Ward: Alderman Shane Cohn, unopposed.
5th Ward: Alderman Joe Vollmer, 58%. Helen Petty, 42%.
6th Ward: Daniela Velázquez, 65%. Jennifer Florida, 34%.
7th Ward: Alisha Sonnier, 61%. Jon-Pierre Mitchom, 38%.
8th Ward: Alderman Cara Spencer, 77%. Ken Ortmann, 22%.
9th Ward: Michael Browning, 63%. Alderman Tina Pihl, 36%.
10th Ward: Alderman Shameem Clark Hubbard, 53%. Emmett Coleman, 47%.
11th Ward: Alderman Laura Keys, 69%. Carla “Coffee” Wright, 30%.
13th Ward: Alderman Pam Boyd, 54%. Alderman Norma Walker, 46%.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated the number of terms Alderman Sharon Tyus has served.
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