First, as a result of the City election, an era dating back to before the Civil War has come to an end. Fred Heitert, the last remaining GOP alderman and who had served for a record 32 years, was defeated by a Democrat newcomer. There are no more Republican elected officials in any office in the City of St. Louis.

Second, in the same election, the City’s earning tax was retained, largely due to a massive PR blitz touting near Armageddon levels of governmental disaster (the only thing from the “Ghostbusters” list they missed was cats and dogs living together). However, the cost of the campaign was equally massive, causing Mayor Francis Slay to opine that there probably wouldn’t be a similar campaign in five years time, when the tax is up for a retention vote again. So, the hand-wringing by the Democrats and other City big government types continues.

Third, barring some the congressional redistricting plan going to a really creative federal judge to be redrawn, the entire City of St. Louis will be included in the 1^st Congressional District (currently represented by Democrat William “Lacy” Clay, Jr.), along with expanded areas in north St. Louis County. This means that current 3^rd District Congressman Russ Carnahan has three options: (1) run against Clay; (2) move to St. Louis County to run in the redrawn 2^nd District, either against current Congressman Todd Akin or the survivor of an all-star GOP primary; or (3) retire from Congress.

A common thread running through all of these items is that the Missouri Republican Party is absent from any form of influence on the decision making process for some major issues facing St. Louis City. With Alderman Heitert’s defeat, the abandonment of the City by the state GOP leadership is complete. Despite regularly providing anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 Republican votes in statewide elections (as much as several entire counties in rural areas of the state), there is not only no interest by the state GOP in recruiting, funding, or promoting candidates in St. Louis City, they usually actively discourage quality candidates from running, and advise major GOP donors to give their money elsewhere. Effectively, they’ve conceded the field to the Democrats, and, as a consequence, abandoned the citizens of St. Louis to more years (if not decades) of government mismanagement and decline.

Republican leaders from across Missouri will rail against the “money pit” that St. Louis City has become for the state budget, then sigh, roll their eyes, throw up their hands, and declare that there’s nothing they can do about it. To all appearances, the entire Missouri GOP strategy for the City seems to be praying for a “Damascus road” conversion of a majority of the City’s elected officials to conservative good-government principles, or other similar miraculous event. It’s a plan that hasn’t worked since it was implemented in the late 1960s, and there are no indications that it’ll work any time in the foreseeable future, yet they keep trying it over and over. What was that definition of insanity again?

There’s only one sure way to stop the bleeding from the City and put it back on the path of recovery and growth – you have to invest in the hard work needed to find quality candidates, then back them with the appropriate campaign teams and funding, with an extensive and coordinated PR campaign, to push conservative candidates and conservative principles.  It’s not going to be easy, and it’ll be years before there’s any significant success, but it’s got to be done, or the City’s problems are going to continue to drag down the entire state, instead of being the economic engine that will make doing much that state government needs to be doing (like repairing hundreds of substandard roads and bridges) possible.

As long as it’s just the Democrats contending among themselves, the political discussions and the options presented to voters will just continue to be more of the same failed policies that have been tried for the last 60 years. It’s the old school ward patronage Democrats vs. the “big government solves everything” Democrats vs. the socialist Democrats vs. the “everybody’s a victim” Democrats. In order to “rethink almost everything” as Mayor Slay so carelessly admitted, you have to actually have a different way of thinking of government, and the way that government serves the citizenry.

Relying on people like Rex Sinquefield or similar deep pockets individuals or groups to try to ramrod through changes at the state level won’t work, as the recent vote on the earnings tax showed. You can put all the means of improving City government within the reach of City voters you want, if the only arguments that they hear at election time are against using them, then you’ve just wasted all that time and money. What is needed is troops on the ground, in the neighborhoods, schools, and businesses, in the form of credible Republican candidates for alderman, Citywide offices, and the state legislature, who can present the conservative arguments for a different political vision than voters have been hearing for multiple generations, in order to change the conservations around what should happen to turn around the City and get it back on the road to recovery. The Democrats failed vision is not being challenged. People look at their choices at election time and don’t see anyone that is saying anything different than what they’ve heard for the last half century. And that’s when they are even offered a choice – most of the time the Democrat Party leadership hand picks a single candidate which is presented as the new office holder, unchallenged.

It’s time for the Missouri Republican Party and the Missouri GOP leadership and organizations to realize that, no matter how large a majority they have in the state legislature or how many statewide offices they hold, St. Louis City will continue to be a giant anchor on the growth of the state and a drain on the state budget, requiring taxpayer from across the state to keep paying higher taxes in order to try to keep the City afloat, unless they change their views and begin to target City districts and offices with serious GOP candidate and campaigns. Republican activists are going to have to leave the comfortable confines of solidly Republican districts and campaign in much less friendly districts within St. Louis City. Major donors will need to be convinced that there’s a coherent long term plan that’s just as achievable as flipping the rural areas of Missouri that had been Democrat Party strongholds since the Civil War to now just as solidly Republican areas. It’s not going to be pretty, it’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen overnight, meaning that those looking to a quick, painless fix to the problems of the City are going to be frustrated repeatedly.

But if the future of the City of St. Louis, as well as the state of Missouri, is going to be one of renewal, growth, and progress, then the hard work has to be done. The walls of ignorance and misinformation have to be torn down, and a new, conservative vision for the City has to be present by strong, intelligent voices. Republicans and conservatives, long suffering and abandoned, have to be found and re-energized to man new campaigns. Attitudes and perceptions have to be challenged and changed. The stakes are the very survival of St. Louis – not only the City, but the entire region. And it’s a fight that we cannot afford to lose.

But is there the political will to take on this fight? That’s a question that only those outside the City can answer.

A quick quiz: Where is this statement from – Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay in a recent posting on his official blog, or from one of my mayoral campaign speeches from 2001?

Okay, that’s a trick question, since the answer is “both”. But it does reveal something significant about the views of the current Democrat party leaders in the City of St. Louis toward the problems that the city faces. Mostly, it tells almost everyone that they don’t have a clue as to how to turn around the 60+ year decline that has occurred under their leadership (or, rather, lack of it). What is that old saying about doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results?

On the surface, St. Louis City would seem to have a huge advantage over other part of the region. Nearly all of the interstate highways run right through it, providing commuter access both into and out of a number of residential, commercial and industrial areas. It has both historic and modern residential properties, in a variety of styles and sizes, at prices generally below the regional averages for similar properties. There is a generous amount of available office space, commercial properties, and available land, again at favorable prices compared to the surrounding areas, and with all the major utilities and infrastructure already in place. Nearly all of the major cultural and sports venues are located within the city limits, and there are well-established religious, civic and cultural organizations based throughout the city. In addition, there are two world class universities and two world class medical complexes. So why are people and business fleeing the City instead of flocking to it?

The current City government leaders just give the usual litany of ills: crime, poverty, aging infrastructure, declining tax revenues, poor public schools. But, while these may be the excuses that people give, they’re only symptoms of deeper problems that big government Democrats are unable to even consider, much less know how to address.

As the result of well-intentioned changes to the structure of city government to combat rampant corruption, enacted nearly a century ago, Saint Louis doesn’t have just one mayor – it has nearly forty. In addition to a ruling triumvirate of mayor, comptroller and president of the Board of Aldermen, there are, as a result of the city-county split in 1875, 8 citywide elected officials who answer to no one in city government other than themselves, each with a plethora of political patronage employees and their own political campaign apparatus. Add to this the 28 aldermen, each a “mini-mayor” within their own wards, acting as gatekeepers on any and all development within their domains and dispensers of government largesse. Stir in a generous helping of federal, state, and local laws, ostensibly intended to boost growth in the city, but each requiring the one thing that guarantees the exact opposite – an ordinance, passed by a majority of the Board of Aldermen. Tax abatements, zoning changes, business licenses, new development - all have to go through the legislative process of having an "enabling ordinance" voted into existence.  Instantly, you have not one, but 15 potential roadblocks to any project. Due to a nearly two century old tradition of “aldermanic privilege”, no alderman will vote in favor of a bill that doesn’t have to support of the “home” alderman. And, even if you manage to garner the initial support of a majority of the board, any objections by any of the 11 citywide elected officials becomes an overnight showstopper, due to the political clout they can wield at the ballot box. All this before you even begin to deal with the usual modern big city Byzantine labyrinth of governmental bureaucracies.

In order to begin to turn the giant ship of state that is the City of St. Louis around, there first needs to be a major overhaul in how the city government operates. Here are a few starting suggestions:

• Completely replace all patronage employee positions with civil service, except for immediate subordinates of the elected officeholders. This will eliminate the political hand-outs of public jobs, and make the officeholder more beholden to actual voters than ward political organizations.
• Eliminate the need for an ordinance for most development activities, like zoning changes, conditional use permits, tax abatements, and tax credit eligibility. This eliminates the need for currying favor with those almost 40 politicians listed above.
•  Reduce the number of aldermen to 16, and base the number going forward on the population of the city, as reported by the official decennial U. S. Census. An increase of 20,000 will add two more aldermen; a decrease of 20,000 will reduce the number by two (keeping the number always even, with the board president holding the tie-breaking vote, as is currently the case). This give an incentive to implement policies, tax structures, and laws that encourage population growth, since a larger population will result in more opportunities for politicians to get elected.
• And, of course, the 2000 lb. gorilla in the room – undo the city-county split, and have the City rejoin St. Louis County as just another municipality, eliminating the duplicated “county” offices, merging the city and county police departments, and allowing for the natural growth in the size of the City through annexation of surrounding areas.

None of these proposals will ever be put forward by Mayor Slay or the rest of the Democrats current holding office in St. Louis, since they eliminate the source of their political power, and, with it, their ability to get elected.    But they will show that St. Louis is serious about making meaningful changes in how it does business and is willing to set aside political expedience for true growth and development.

The question is: Was Francis Slay serious when he echoed my campaign theme from ten years ago, and is finally willing to “rethink almost everything”? Or are we going to get more re-arranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic?

While anyone with an interest in the process is still digesting the huge array of data, there are some unmistakable facts already known:

·        Saint Louis County saw a small decrease in population, mostly in the northern part of the county.

·        Saint Louis City saw an 8% decrease, despite significant gains in residents in the central corridor (especially downtown), again primarily centered in the north part of the City, along the I-70 corridor.

·        The 1^st Congressional District was the only district that, as a whole, lost population. All other districts gained, as did the entire state.

The 1^st district poses some significant challenges to the redistricting committees. Due to provisions of the Voting Rights Act which protect “majority minority” districts, it must retain enough of a majority of African American residents to reasonably insure that an African American candidate can still be elected. (Note: The 5^th district, represented currently by Rev. Emmanuel Cleaver and composed of the greater Kansas City area, is not currently a “majority minority” district, and so does not fall under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act for that purpose.) Aiding the efforts to keep the district majority African American is the fact that this ethnic group actually gained population in the district. Working against it is the data that other minority groups, especially Hispanics and Asians, grew faster, and, most importantly, the numbers of Caucasian residents decreased at about double the rate of increase of African Americans. In order to maintain the “magic number” of 60 percent, the redistricting committees would have to add, as one person addressing the senate committee remarked, “every African American now residing in the both the 2^nd and 3^rd Districts”.

The various witnesses at the two meetings fell into some fairly predictable categories:

• African Americans, primarily from north St. Louis City, who regaled the committees with tales of rampant discrimination, segregation, and lack of opportunity, using language and imagery more from the 1960s or early 1970s instead of 2011. While I don’t doubt the sincerity of their opinions, the actual legal and business climate is very different than that presented. There are no impediments to either housing or employment such as there was 40 or 50 years ago, but most of these witnesses seemed to be isolated from these developments. They’ve been represented by African American legislators and other elected officials for over 40 years, the schools have been run primarily by African Americans by almost as long, but none of this seems to have changed their views of the world. Primarily, their concern was that they had to have an African American congressman to represent them, or, in their opinion, they would essentially become non-citizens. In fact, at least one witness went so far as to suggest that, instead of concentrating all of the African American residents in one district, they should be split between the district, in order to try to get African Americans elected to represent those districts, as well. And, of course, since all of the witnesses were either liberal Democrat activists or elected officials, only a liberal Democrat African American congressman was acceptable – conservative or Republican African Americans need not apply, and would be challenged by legal means if they happened to win an election in a redrawn district.
• Democrat party leaders, from across the area, insisted that the St. Louis metropolitan area still needed to be represented by at least 3 congressional districts. While there is data that supports this view numerically, the real reason for this view, as stated explicitly by at least one witness, is that they want to maintain at least 3 districts in Missouri held by Democrats, with two being in the St. Louis area. Not surprisingly, they want the district to be eliminated to be a Republican one. Given the current political shift heavily in favor of the Republican Party in Missouri, they may as well be wishing for snow in July.
• Nearly every witness from Saint Louis County who was not African American wanted to have nothing to do with being part of the 1^st District. Given the clear lack of economic development and the massive population losses (except for downtown St. Louis City), I can’t say t that I blame them. Over 40 years of bad congressional representation hasn’t done anything to improve the district, and, in fact, the tenure of both Congressmen Clay, senior and junior, have overseen the rapid decline of almost every part of it. Several witnesses endorsed lumping all of St. Louis City into the 1^st District, one even going to far as to suggest “bubble wrapping” it, to isolate it from the rest of the state.

About the only witness whose testimony I happen to endorse stated that the real reason for the various ills of the current representation in Congress, from all parts of the country, is the tendency over the last few decades of drawing “safe” districts for both parties, resulting in the majority of incumbents being re-elected without significant challenges, and often with no opponents at all, and only about 10 percent of districts being truly competitive in any given election. This results in a lack of true political discourse and dialogue, isolates and disenfranchises those voters in the district of the non-majority party, and heightens the political divide.

Personally, I would like to see the St. Louis area congressional districts redrawn in such a way that all of them, whether 2 or 3 districts, would be highly competitive districts, which, depending on which candidate could present the better campaign, could be won by either major party, and which would have to be vigorously defended election after election. Initially, I’d like to see at least a portion of St. Louis City included in the district which will be contested by current Rep. Todd Akin, so that conservative views and information could be injected into areas of the City that haven’t seen them from an incumbent office holder in over a generation or more.

We’ve lived with the current three district arrangement, in more or less the same format, for the last forty years, and during that time, the area has experience more decline than gain. It’s time to change the playing field, and shake up the political structures, to bring some fresh perspectives to the political process and some new voices into the conversations. I challenge those looking to redraw the maps to not be bound by the expected and conventional, but think “outside the box” and get creative with the new districts, so that there is some hope of a positive future for the St. Louis region.

For those reading this who aren't familiar with the event, Lincoln Days is the closest thing that the Missouri Republican Party does to an annual statewide convention.  It rotates between St. Louis, Springfield, and Kansas City (in that order) each year, and this year was St. Louis' turn again.  Dinners on Friday and Saturday night and a luncheon on Saturday with a line-up of speakers, various organizational meetings (including a meeting of the State Central Committee), booths for various groups and causes, and, of course, a number of "hospitality suites" sponsored by candidates, organizations, etc.  Definitely puts the "party" in "political party".

The mood this year was a lot more upbeat that the past couple of years, by all accounts. According to those who were there, the 2009 event was more of a political wake than a party, given the stunning results of the 2008 elections. Last year’s was only a bit better, as the Tea Party phenomenon hadn’t fully kicked in yet. But with the reversal of fortunes in the 2010 elections (which included the shocker here in Missouri of the ouster of long time Democrat Congressmen Ike Skelton by Vicky Hartzler, a political novice), many of the party faithful this past weekend were positively giddy, as evidenced by a record crowd of over 900.

As is traditional, the Springfield Lincoln Days were held in the University Plaza (formerly the John Q Hammonds) Convention Center, and, as usual, both the facilities and staff were excellent. Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder headlined the Friday night dinner, newly elected Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler spoke at the Missouri Federation of Republican Women luncheon (where the St. Louis chapter swept the local club awards), and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was the featured speaker on Saturday night. All of the speeches were positive and upbeat, extolling the Republican endorsed virtues of limited government, fiscal responsibility, economic recovery through private enterprise instead of government spending, and individual liberties and rights, while delivering the expected opinions of the downsides of the policies of the other party (or, as former Sen. John Ashcroft used to say, “Brand X”). The after-dinner hospitality suites were on a par with past events, with Ed Martin’s “Martin-I Bar” and Sarah Steelman’s suite going head-to-head with “Club GOP” (hosted by a local radio station) and, on Saturday night, the “Party with the Party”, sponsored by the Missouri GOP leadership. Personally, I also had a great time at Christopher Arps’ Move-On-Up.org and the Freedom of the Road Riders suites.

The big topics of the weekend were the results from last fall’s elections and the implications for the 2012 campaigns, the just announced 2010 Census figures (released the day before the convention) and the implications for redistricting at both the Congressional and state levels, and the ongoing budget battles in Washington. The Census figures were the one dark cloud on the weekend, as they mean the loss of one of the current nine congressional districts, and requiring the remaining eight districts to become significantly larger. There was a lot of speculation as to which district would be eliminated, without much consensus.

What was more remarkable this year was not necessarily what did happen, but what didn’t. There were two big events that most people were expecting which failed to materialize. The first, which most of the news media remarked on, was the lack of a formal announcement by Peter Kinder on his expected campaign for governor of Missouri. Instead, there were repeated non-announcement hints that he’ll be running, but with a formal announcement later. I suspect that there may be an announcement “tour” around the state later this spring or early summer.

The other thing that was missing, from my perspective, was any real presence by the Tea Party activists. There were a couple of low key booths, including one by the Club for Growth, but there was no overt presence by any Tea Party organization in any formal manner – no booths, no hospitality suites, no activists roaming the halls handing out stickers, buttons, etc. Several years ago, there was a significant attempt by the Republican Libery Caucus (the libertarian wing of the GOP) and the Missouri Republican Assembly (the more right-wing conservative slice of the Missouri GOP) to elect members to the state Republican Central Committee in a fairly bitter take over attempt that ultimately failed. This year, the similar insurgent campaigns that fueled the GOP resurgence in November didn’t result in similar activity within the Republican Party organizations, in Missouri, at least. Frankly, the fact that the Tea Party activists seemed to have faded away almost as rapidly as they appeared may lead credence to a lot of their critics that they were a one time fad, and not a long term political force.

Overall, it was a good weekend, both personally, and for the Missouri Republican Party. I had a chance to catch up with a number of folks that I hadn’t seen for a while, and got to meet several new people from all over the state. I talked about the challenges of being a Republican in St. Louis City, and pitched ways that folks from across the state can help reverse the situation. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I plan on attending next year’s Lincoln Days in Kansas City. As usual, it’ll be a party!

As we approach local elections this spring here in the City of Saint Louis, there are two very large issues that are on most peoples minds, one that the politicians want to talk about and one that they don’t. The issue that everyone wants to talk about is the sunset vote on the city earnings tax, mandated by the passage this past fall of Proposition A. The established politicians of the local Democrat Party are, of course, arguing that disasters of biblical proportions will befall the city if the earnings tax is repealed. They’re threatening tripling of other taxes, laying off half (or more) of both the police and fire department (with the resulting lawless chaos), thousands of poor being tossed out of government provided housing on the street, and other similar apocalyptic scenarios. To a certain extent, there are major problems that the elimination of the revenue provided by the earnings tax provides (which is about 1/3 of the current city general revenues), all the discussion of what disaster would befall without it is a convenient diversion to any discussion of why the city government needs the revenue in the first place. “We can’t discuss why we need the revenue until we’re certain that the revenue isn’t going away all at once.” Sound similar to the “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” attitude of their national counterparts?

The issue that no one in the current government wants to talk about, but most citizens do, is the recently adopted trash collection fee, and the accompanying changes in trash collection services. Although the $11 a month fee for most households is modest by regional standards, and much of the changes will extend the lifespan of the landfills currently used by the City and avoid significant increases in refuse hauling costs resulting from longer trips to more distant facilities, the real concern is how it was enacted. Rather than presenting a case to the public via a public vote, and letting the citizens of St. Louis determine what their government’s priorities should be, the Board of Aldermen quietly moved the bill imposing the new fee thru the legislative process with as little public scrutiny as possible, and, after final passage, sprang the new fees and service changes on the public as a fait accompli. Aldermen and city officials were dispatched to neighborhood and business organization meetings to present a “there’s nothing we can do about it” message, as if someone had been holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to vote for the changes against their wills.

Both of these issues are representative of much larger ones, and ones that mirror similar issues at the national level. Is government supposed to be the solver of all problems if the citizenry, real or imaged? Or is it supposed to “do only a few things, but do them well”? Is government responsible for actually creating jobs, or to provide an environment that fosters and encourages private job creation? Is government supposed to provide all forms of “general welfare” – housing, food, health care, etc. – or only to promote conditions where these things can be provided by ordinary citizens and businesses? What are the “few things” that government is supposed to be responsible for? Public safety, streets and sidewalks, health care, education?

And who is deciding what the priorities of government are? Who is making the decision about taxes and spending? The voters? Or politicians, usually elected by a very small fraction of the population, and working for their own interests and priorities? Or by unelected bureaucrats, many of who aren’t responsible to any oversight by the Board of Aldermen or any city elected officials, and are more concerned with preserving as many government jobs (especially the patronage jobs) as possible?

A quick look at the City budget shows what the politicians and bureaucrats think the City’s priorities should be, and should be a source of discussion for the upcoming elections. While it’s true that the earnings tax (and the related payroll tax) account for over a third of the general tax revenues, the general revenues are less than half of the City’s tax revenues, reducing the earnings and payroll tax revenue to about 1/6^th of the total.   An almost equal amount is provided by state and federal programs – meaning that, instead of making a case to the voters, City government is asking taxpayers from across the state and the nation to pay for projects and programs that the City wants to implement. What’s missing from this is (a) are they really something that the City government should be doing (in which case voters would have chosen to fund them with the appropriate tax or fee revenues), and (b) because they’re funded from state and federal programs, there’s an additional administrative overhead imposed on the use of the funds that wouldn’t be required if they were funded from local tax revenue, making the costs anywhere from 10% to as much as 50% more expensive that they might have been. The City runs Lambert International Airport, at a cost of about the same as the police and fire departments combined. While the annual costs for running the airport are mostly paid for by the various fees, sales taxes and rents from the airport itself, the pensions and benefits for the City employees of the airport (including a separate police department just for the airport) are not. Many departments have very large budgets, seemingly well beyond what you’d expect those departments to need funding for. There is frequent duplication of offices or services (such as a police department, a sheriff’s department and a City Marshal’s office). And, in just this year’s budget alone, the City has imposed an additional $18 million dollars in new or increased taxes and fees, most enacted without any voter scrutiny or approval.

Even more is what is not said in the budget. The City holds title a significant percentage of the buildings and land in within the city limits, all of which are not only no longer generating tax revenue, but actually impose additional costs on the City to maintain. City government regulations, and how those regulations are administered by city bureaucrats, set the environment in the City for whether someone will start a new business, build new housing or commercial buildings, chose to buy or sell property, or to move into or out of St. Louis. The City budget planners can cite all the “economic factors” they want for their budget projections, but many of the causes for increases or declines in tax revenues are completely within the control of our elected officials, and the city government employees that are supposed to work for the benefit of the citizens, but are frequently working against them.

The solution to all of these issues is the same that that voters applied to the federal government last November. Voters need to scrutinize their local and state elected officials with the same level of intensity that they did to their congressional representatives. Do the values and policies that our aldermen and city wide officials match our own? If not, why are we voting for them? Your alderman or mayor might be a really nice person with the best of intentions, but if their priorities are to the preservation of government employees (and their own elected positions) instead of being the best stewards of the taxpayers trust, then they should be voted out of office.

The voters spoke loud and clear last November, and a change in direction occurred in how our national government will be run, at least for the next two years. Will the same thing happen in March and April in our local elections? That’s up to same voters, who can choose to apply the same criteria to their votes for aldermen as they did for their Congressmen and Senators, or they can choose to ignore the even larger impact that they could make and stay home on election day. The decision is simple: Do the citizens control the government, or do the politicians and bureaucrats control the citizens? It’s up to you to decide.

The field of candidates has been set for the Spring 2011 elections in the City of Saint Louis, and, apart from a couple of small articles in the local papers, the local citizenry is completely oblivious. It is entirely likely that both the March primary (March 8^th) and the April general (April 5^th) elections will come and go with the vast majority of voters not even aware that an election took place.

On the ballot this spring are half of the Board of Aldermen (the fourteen even numbered wards) and the President of the Board of Aldermen. Of these, 11 incumbents have no primary opponents, and 5 of these will face no opponent in the general election, as well. For these latter five, they’ve effectively already been re-elected without a single vote being cast. Unless someone mounts a write-in campaign, the voters in Wards 2. 8, 18, 26 and 28 won’t even have the opportunity to vote against the current holders of those offices.

Even for the voters in the wards with either contested primaries or general election opponents to the current incumbent aldermen, the only way that they’ll know that an election is approaching is the if they happen to spot campaign signs around their neighborhood. Why? Because, if the pattern holds from previous City elections over the last decade or so, there will be almost no coverage of the elections in any of the local news media until the elections are over. At best, voters can only expect a “voters guide” the weekend prior to the primary election, which will consist of almost meaningless candidate provided bios of less than 100 words. It’s entirely possible that the choice of alderman in the 9 contested wards will be decided by fewer than 1000 voters each. Will any of the candidate truly be able to claim that they were chosen by a majority of all of the voters of their respective wards?

The dominant news media in St. Louis – TV, radio, and  newspapers – will all argue that these races don’t really merit extensive coverage, and that their limited resources are better spent covering other stories. But is that really true? Northside redevelopment, the earnings tax, city budget cuts, the (theoretical) Ballpark Village, looming problems with the police and fire department pension funds, more public funding for improvements to the various sports stadiums, the continued lack of accreditation of the public schools, jobs, businesses, and residents moving from the City to the surrounding areas (or even completely out of the metropolitan region) – all of these have been front page stories in the newspapers and the lead stories on the evening news. It’s the Board of Aldermen that will be tasked with crafting the solutions to these and many more problems, including the impending redrawing of the ward boundaries. But the vast majority of voters won’t know where their “chosen” representatives stand on these issues, because most candidates (especially the incumbents) won’t volunteer their positions unless pressed, and the local news media have unilaterally decided that voters don’t need to know such “unimportant” information.

There will be opportunities for the voters in the wards with contested races to learn what the candidates think about the issues. Most neighborhood associations will be hosting candidate forums either during their regular meetings or at special events set up for that purpose. Many business organizations will be hosting the candidates as well. Some candidates may even campaign door to door. In this new era of social networking, viral videos, and citizen journalism, the possibility exists of filling the void that the traditional news media have left open. Voters in the wards with contested races should aggressive seek out and question the candidates about their views and positions on the topics that will impact the City – not just about trash pickup and alley pavings, noise issues and nuisance property owners, but about the "big" issues: the earnings tax and it’s alternatives, job creation and attracting businesses, and making the City an attractive alternative to the rest of the metropolitan region as a place to live, work, and raise a family. Ask how they want to see the ward boundary lines redrawn. Ask what changes they’d make to the City Charter, or which “county” offices should be changed from patronage offices to civil service. Take videos of the candidates campaigning, and share them with family, friends, co-workers, neighbors. Keep track of which candidates respect the campaign sign laws and which candidates post signs on vacant buildings, empty lots and public rights of way, and share photos of the violators.

Unfortunately, the choices for voters are already set, and for the voters in at least five wards, they’ve been denied any choice. For the remainder of the City, we can hold the candidates to a higher level of scrutiny than the traditional news media seems willing to engage in, and perhaps obtain a higher quality of alderman, if only briefly. The real solution is for more civic engagement by business groups, civic leaders, and others to recruit and support higher quality candidates for these important local offices. This will be the topic of a future column, but for now, we’ll have to make do with the choices we’ve been given.

The results of the elections in March and April will be deemed legally valid. Whether or not they’ll be legitimate, or if the citizens of Saint Louis will even notice, will be decided by the voters.

That famous quote by the late Congressman Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, applies to the upcoming Saint Louis City elections even more than usual. A number of events have converged to bring what is sure to be a bright spotlight on the upcoming municipal elections – the recent surge of the political right, both nationally and regionally; the continuing problems with the economy and the related policies of the Democrat Party; and the passage this past November of new state laws involving the earnings tax.

Regionally, the GOP did fairly well in the Saint Louis County state legislative elections, with a pick-up of one state senate and three state representative districts, reflecting the similar gains statewide. There were four GOP candidates in the eleven City state representative races, all of whom made respectable showings in losing efforts. However, the Republicans failed to capture either the County Executive office or the 3^rd Congressional district, due mostly to a combination of ballot initiatives that brought out a higher than expected liberal voter turnout in both Saint Louis City and Saint Louis County, boosting the Democrats efforts, moderating what could have been even larger gains in the region. But there was a definite resurgence for the Republican Party, which both the regional and national media had declared on death’s door just two years ago.

On the policy front, both the wildly unpopular changes enacted by the Obama administration and the Democrat controlled Congress on healthcare, anti-terrorism efforts, immigration, and economic policy, and the rather moribund administration of Gov. Jay Nixon, have energized the electorate toward conservative and libertarian policies, and dampened Democrat activist enthusiasm – an almost complete reversal of just two years ago.

But the biggest surprise was the passage of the Proposition A, the earnings tax initiative. While the immediate effect is to ban any new locally imposed earnings or income taxes, the longer term impacts are to the existing earnings tax laws in Saint Louis City and Kansas City. The earnings tax effectively now has a “sunset” date, and must be affirmatively voted back into existence every 5 years, beginning with this April’s municipal elections. And it is this issue that could be the Achilles’ heel for the Democrats in Saint Louis City.

Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay and the Saint Louis City Democrat Party are already preparing to mount a massive campaign to re-instate the earnings tax, by using similar tactics employed during the fall campaign trying to defeat Prop A. They’re predicting apocalyptic disaster if the earnings tax fails to be re-approved – massive cuts in the police and fire department, draconian reductions of city services, and doubling or tripling of property and sales taxes. And, in the Democrats’ “zero sum” view of governmental tax and economic policies, they’d be right. Assuming that there were no other way to increase tax revenues to cover the loss of the earnings tax beside raising existing taxes, the city government would have to enact massive cuts in spending. The problem for the Saint Louis City Democrats is that their view of the economic world is just flat out wrong – and has been for over 75 years.

The Democrats will spend the next three months crying that you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip – that there’s no way to realistically generate enough additional tax revenue to cover losing the earnings tax dollars, if allowed to expire. The reality is that there is a lot that could be done to raise additional revenue without raising tax rates. But there’s been no one challenging them on their “facts”.

Currently, there are thousands of abandoned buildings and thousands of acres of vacant land owned by the City as a result of a variety of policies that ended with the City acquiring the titles. None of that property generates any tax revenue. On the contrary, it costs the City taxpayers over $5 million each year to perform even minimal maintenance (and not very much of that). A similar number of properties are effectively abandoned, with the owners paying only a token amount to keep the City from seizing them for back taxes, and giving the owners tax write-offs (depriving the state and federal governments of legitimate tax revenue, as well). The City’s 66 square miles hasn’t changed since 1875, and there hasn’t been any significant new (as opposed to rebuilt) neighborhoods since the 1950s. It needs police, fire, street, sewer and other services for a city that was intended to support a population of over 750,000 and tens of thousands of businesses, large and small – but which currently has less than half of both. Despite large vacant lots and an established infrastructure, developers prefer to try to wedge yet one more new high-rise building in downtown Clayton (even tearing down buildings less than 25 years old) instead of in downtown Saint Louis, where there’s plenty of available land.

The Democrats will point out that the need the earnings tax, especially on people that only work in the City but aren’t residents, because they have to maintain that 66 square miles with only a population of 365,000 and fewer business than the city had in 1900. But the question that never gets asked is “Why doesn’t the city have more residents and businesses?” And it’s this question that trips them up – they simply don’t have a coherent answer. They cite competition from the other areas in the region, or other metropolitan areas nationally. But they never consider that it’s the policies that they have pursued for the last 75 years that initially drove people and jobs out of the city for the surrounding areas, and that keep those people and jobs from coming back into the city.

The Democrats, in the coming months, will be holding almost non-stop “informational” meetings, sending representatives to every neighborhood organization meeting, organizing door-to-door efforts, etc., in order to retain the earnings tax in April. Instead of just letting them present their tale of doom and gloom unchallenged, Republican and conservative activists should call them on their policies at every opportunity.

As I write this column, there is only one Republican filed as a candidate for the March primary elections – Alderman Fred Heitert, the longest serving alderman in Saint Louis City history. There are 13 other aldermanic seats that will go uncontested in April, unless candidates step up and challenge the Democrats and their destructive policies. And the GOP has been given the perfect issue to run on – “Why do we need the earnings tax?”

Republican candidates can show up at every place that the Democrats try to gain support for retaining the earnings tax, and keep hammering on the same points – why won’t businesses of any size come to Saint Louis instead of going to Saint Louis County or other areas in the region, why does the City own so much abandoned and vacant land, why does it take so many government officials and agencies to approve starting a business, renovating a building, developing a neighborhood. If Saint Louis City had a population of 750,000, would we need an earnings tax?

Realistically, I expect that the earnings tax will be retain this April. In fact, I’ll probably hold my nose and vote to retain, simply because, right now, there’s no viable alternative to it, because the Democrats won’t change their spots on economic policy. But we can start hammering away at those policies, starting this year.

Fourteen candidates. That’s all that is needed. If the Tea Party movement wants to be taken seriously, and be more than just a single election “flash in the pan” footnote in history, they have to go beyond the high profile national elections, and get down in the trenches and contest local elections. This one is tailor made for the Tea Party folks. Candidate filing ends at 5 PM on January 7^th. Are they up for the challenge?

The end of 2010 sees the conclusion of a tumultuous year and “off year” campaign season, and begins to set up a very interesting and potentially historic 2011 and 2012. How things will actually play out in the coming months and years is anybody’s guess.

This past year saw the meteoric rise of the Tea Party movement, the wild swing of the electorate from the euphoria of left-leaning Obamamania to right-leaning fiscal conservatism (with a muting of many of the contentious social issues on both the right and left, although they were not entirely absent), historic gains for the GOP in both Congress and state legislatures and executive mansions, the enactment of both a massive national health care program and an expansion of federal oversight of the financial markets, and the rejection of a variety of immigration and fiscal policies from both the left and right.

Closer to home, we’ve seen the retirement of Christopher Bond from the U. S. Senate (replaced by Roy Blunt, in a unexpectedly large victory over Robin Carnahan), the defeat of Ike Skelton by a relatively unknown Republican candidate, and the passage of a state constitutional amendment that could spell the eventual end of the earnings tax in St. Louis and Kansas City. In addition, as a result of the decennial census, Missouri is slated to lose a U. S. House of Representative district, reducing our influence in presidential elections, and setting up the real likelihood of two sitting Congressmen having to run against each other in 2012.

There were a number of unexpected disappointments and failures this year as well. As historic as the gains were for the Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives, they failed to re-gain control of the Senate, losing several races that they’d appeared to be winning only a few weeks before November. The GOP still seems to be in disarray in some of the key states, notably California, Illinois, and New York, squandering the “tsunami” of the national turn to the right. And for all the Tea Party movement’s successes at the state legislative and U. S. House of Representative levels, the seemed to be unable to put together larger efforts in statewide elections.

All of which give me a huge cornucopia of topics to opine upon in the coming months. There are Saint Louis aldermanic elections in March (primaries) and April (general election), as well as the first vote on retaining the earnings tax. There will be the GOP’s efforts in Congress to roll back many of the Democrats legislative and regulatory accomplishments. The redistricting fights in both Missouri and Illinois (which also lost a congressional district) could prove to be epic. The Tea Party movement is riding high after the November elections, but it remains to be seen whether they can sustain the momentum thru the 2012 presidential election. And there are currently no clear candidates for the GOP for either Missouri governor or for President. And that’s just the low hanging fruit to choose from.

For those just encountering Gateway Politzania for the first time, my political worldview is decidedly Republican, conservative, libertarian, and, socially, right of center. My focus will tend to be on more local and regional issues and contests, with the occasional foray into the national scene (there are simply far too many other pundits with much greater knowledge and insight of those issues and races for me to really add much to the discussions, except as to how they may impact the Saint Louis region).

With the current workload from my “day job” (and since that paycheck is the one that pays the bills), I can’t promise that I’ll be posting on a regular schedule, or with any greater frequency that once every two or three weeks. I may be able to post more frequently, especially when there are special events or unusual circumstances that warrant a posting on a particular topic or occurrence, but I’ll make no guarantees.

So, as I wrote in my first posting a few years ago, sit back, fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for a "no holds barred" ride into Gateway Politzania!