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Several candidates were vying for Steve Brown’s seat, but the two with the inside track were Stacey Newman, who fought a hard race against Brown last year, and Gina Mitten, whose husband is a committeeman with 34 percent of the vote in his hand. The committee met in Clayton Thursday evening, listened to the candidates speak for five minutes each, and voted.

Rea Kleeman, who had tossed her hat in the ring–and who with her dedicated activism would have made a good rep, by the way–called to tell me that Newman got the nod. She said Stacey’s speech was impressive because she could describe the many political activities she’s devoted herself to in this last decade. Newman stressed her fight to stop the concealed weapons legislation that Republicans rammed down our throats even though voters had spoken against it, as well as her statewide efforts to organize women politically. She is currently the executive director for Harriett’s List. She could show that she knows how to fundraise, and, in fact, she had even lined up some endorsements in the week or so she had at her disposal.

District 73, Clayton and Richmond Heights, is strong Democratic territory, so it’s a safe bet that Newman will win the special election and easily retain the seat.

The legislative session ends at 6:00 p.m. Friday, and on Tuesday, after four months of absorbing punches from the GOP, House Democrats felt like they were hanging in for the 14th round of a bout with Sonny Liston. The topic of the day was the omnibus education bill, a 200 page tome. Think of it as a shoe box filled with dozens of scraps of paper, each one proposing some small change to how education works in this state. Many of them have majority support, but almost every one of them is a deal breaker for somebody–or several somebodies. So the larger the tome, the tougher it is to get passed.

Each new amendment brought more wrangling, and Rep. Mike Spreng, D-Florissant, fed up with it, was just waiting for the bell to end the round. He says he didn’t come to Jefferson City to score points against Republicans or defend Democrats. He came to do some good for Missourians, and he didn’t think the arguing tended toward that goal, whether it was about accepting federal funds to pay for informing parents fourteen days before the start of the school year if their child’s school is failing or about instituting a quality rating system for pre-schools.

Rep. Steve Brown, D-St. Louis, was less disgusted. True, he didn’t see the talk, talk, talk as productive, necessarily. But he did think it was important for Democrats to stay on their toes in the fourteenth round, lest Republicans manage to sneak another end of session Village Law or midwifery licensing provision past everybody. At the same time, the arguments at least serve the purpose, Brown said, of eating up the clock, using time that Republicans might otherwise employ for some mischief.

For all I know, that was what he thought Rep. Vicki Englund, D-St. Louis, was up to when she rose to question Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka, about his adamant support for accepting federal funds to inform parents about failing schools. Actually, she wanted an answer. Why, she wanted to know, despite his frequent contempt for federal funds, did Jones want this money but not the federal dollars for “poor, sick children”?

“Apples and oranges, lady,” said the gentleman from Eureka. “Apples and oranges. I take it on a case by case basis.”

Well, OK, but that answer begs the question of why in one “case” he wants the federal money and in another (even more deserving case, Englund would argue) he doesn’t. So she asked twice more why he wanted the dollars for education but not for poor, sick children.

And got the same refrain. “Apples and oranges, lady. Apples and oranges. I take it on a case by case basis.”

That amendment was batted around for half an hour. Another passed so quickly that I missed the debate because I sneezed. As Spreng pointed out, the leadership allows extended debate and delaying tactics when they want to. But they can cut it off in a nanosecond when it suits them.

Turns out that all the amendments debated on that bill, whether passed or failed, were moot, because the omnibus education bill failed. It sank under the weight of too many amendments. Presumably, the leadership is now looking over the vote results, ferreting out which amendments played the biggest part in sinking it. Once they get a handle on that, they’ll decide whether and how to take another stab–in the short time at their disposal–at passing it.

By that time, members of both parties may be feeling punch drunk.

Photo by Michael Bersin

Steve Brown, running against Stacey Newman in HD 73 for the seat Margaret Donnelly is vacating, comes from a political family. And he’s proud of it. His aunt, Sue Shear, represented that district for 26 years, beginning at a time when women in the legislature were rarities. In fact, Steve remembers, as a kid, listening to her discuss with his dad whether or not she should run–a difficult decision back in 1972 for a woman. He asked his dad why people bother running for office and was told, “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

Brown was guided in the direction of a political career from the get go. As a child, he ran errands for politicians. When he was eight, he was often sent to collect checks for the Hearnes senatorial campaign, whose office was next to The Fatted Calf in Clayton. Steve’s mother was distressed to learn that he was sometimes entrusted with thousands of dollars in checks.

He never lost any.

As a young man, he spent lots of time knocking on doors with his aunt and with Harriett Woods. Then, after college, he went to D.C. as a staffer in Dick Gephardt’s office. He considers it a privilege to have worked not only with Gephardt, but with Stephanopoulos, Begala, and Carville. He was, he says, traded for a player to be named later when Joan Kelly Horn unexpectedly won the Second District in 1990 and needed an experienced aide. After two years with her, he went on to law school and a long stint in Jay Nixon’s office, from which he’s taken a leave of absence to run his current campaign.

I’ll admit to mentally raising an eyebrow when Brown mentioned his admiration for James Carville, a man who’s been in my doghouse for several years, but especially since he tried to torpedo Howard Dean at the DNC in ’06. But whatever. As I talked to Steve about the issues, he was progressive. For example:

• When it comes to a woman’s reproductive freedom, he’s adamant: “It’s beyond the government’s authority to tell people what to do with their bodies.”
• About education, he says that we can’t expect a strong economy without an educated workforce. We need to spend much more. When people say we can’t afford to spend more, he responds: “It’s too expensive not to, at all levels.”
• In fact, considering how much dropouts cost our society, Brown would work toward universal pre-kindergarten education.
• He’s disgusted about our broken health care system and would, at the very least, want to regulate insurance companies so that they can’t turn down those with pre-existing conditions. But ideally, he’d like us to learn from the experiments in California, Vermont, and Massachusetts and try to craft a workable plan for universal health coverage in Missouri.

Most important, though, far more important than any other issue–and I wholeheartedly agree with him–is the environment. When he starts talking about the environment, Brown gets wound up.

He points out that every car produced lasts an average of 16 years, and we’re still producing too many gas guzzlers. We’re not on the right path, but he has a vision. He wants to see Missouri produce all of its electricity needs through wind and solar power. That needs to replace our addiction to oil, which is crippling our economy and hogtying us to the mess in Iraq. Not to mention ruining the only planet we’ve got. Brown has two small children, so … well, you get the point.

Both Brown and Newman are fine candidates. Either one would make an excellent state representative. It looks like it’s Brown’s race to lose, though. Both have an impressive list of endorsements, but because of his years in Nixon’s office, Brown has plenty of political connections, and the money has followed.

As of April 18, his campaign had collected $133,675.78 to Stacey’s $45,260. Of course, $45,000 means Stacey’s no slouch at fundraising, but Steve has already spent more than she’s collected: $56,834.39.

That’s a serious burn rate. He has seven full time organizers knocking on doors and planning neighborhood coffees. Volunteers will also be knocking on doors. Nor is he just depending on others to do the job for him. He’s already knocked on 3,000 doors himself. That’s work he enjoys.

It’s not that Stacey won’t work hard as well. She’s always been a self-starter. But she spent only $5,000 last quarter of the $45,000 she had. In other words, she doesn’t have the kind of staff to help her that he does.

Finally, Brown’s family history matters in HD 73. Sue Shear, because she served so long in this strongly Democratic district (70/30), was popular, and a lot of her old supporters are still around voting. It won’t be lost on them that her family has endorsed her nephew.

The results of an  April poll of 400 likely primary voters, paid for by Brown’s campaign, reinforce the other indicators that he’s ahead in the race. The poll showed him with a double digit lead, with 36 percent of the voters planning to vote for Brown, while 13 percent plan to vote for Newman.

Like I said, we’ve got two fine candidates–but Brown’s got the edge.

HD73 in St. Louis, the seat Margaret Donnelly is relinquishing in her run for Attorney General, went 70/30 for the Democrat in 2006. It’s a foregone conclusion for the Ds this year, so the primary is the real election, with Stacey Newman and Steve Brown facing off. Both are serious candidates, with solid fundraising, though Brown has a distinct edge, since his bank account at the end of the last quarter had twice as much money as Newman’s.

We’ll soon see what the next quarter brings, but in any case, Newman contends that she’s the better fit for the district because of its history of electing progressive women: Donnelly for six years, and Bray before that for ten years. You can see the support from progressive women in Newman’s endorsements, starting with Senators Maida Coleman and Rita Days, Representatives Mott Oxford and Wright Jones, and Coulcilwomen Burkett and Fraser. Not to mention, Governor Bob Holden.

More important than the history of her district, she says, is that the House needs another progressive female. Less than 22 percent of the legislature is women, and some of those are Republican. Of the Democrats, not all are progressive. In fact, progressive women in Missouri’s lege are practically an endangered species.  

Newman is undeniably progressive. She started taking an active interest in politics in 2000. After Columbine and other school shootings, she wanted to do everything possible to see that her six-year-old daughter, Sophie, and all children would be safe when they went to school. So she and Sophie took part in the Million Mom March (where she met and became friends with Jill Schupp and Jeanne Kirkton, both now also running for state rep). After that march, Stacey and Jeanne began lobbying as private citizens against the legislature’s plans to overturn the ban citizens had voted for on concealed weapons.

She and Jeanne, as citizen lobbyists, showed up in Jeff City almost weekly for three years. They earned enemies. The word she uses is “stalked” to describe the harassment in the halls and the angry letters she got from NRA proponents.

She recalls with disgust that after Gov. Holden vetoed the legislation allowing conceal/carry, Senator Gibbons, whose Kirkwood district had voted 80 percent against allowing it, changed his vote in favor of it just before the veto override session in September. That vote was enough to override the veto. He risked the displeasure of his constituents, she says, because the NRA, which is the lobbying arm for gun manufacturers, contributes the big bucks to Republicans.

From her work on the gun issue, Stacey broadened her activism to a variety of women’s issues, like domestic violence. Then in 2003, she worked with State Party Chair May Scheve, under the DNC, to get out the women’s vote. After January 2005, she continued traveling around the state organizing women’s groups, but not under the auspices of the Missouri Democratic Party anymore. The Women’s Coalition became a privately organized PAC, with her as the executive director.

Her antennae immediately began vibrating when Governor Blunt commented in 2005 at the Missouri Baptist Convention that Plan B is an “abortion pill”. She formed a coalition of 18 groups to fight what they called “Blunt’s War on Women”. There’s no permanent victory in that war as long as Republicans control the governor’s mansion and the legislature, but the coalition did stop the Pharmacy Denial Bill in 2006, a bill which would have allowed pharmacists to decide whether or not to fill a prescription for Plan B or for birth control pills, for that matter.

Newman feels that women need more advocates in Jeff City, partly because so many issues, even beyond abortion, birth control and pay equity, are women’s issues. For example, the Medicaid cuts the Republicans enacted affected women disproportionately. Seventy percent of the people cut from the rolls were females.

It’s not that Democratic male reps won’t vote for legislation to protect the victims of domestic violence. And, sure, most Democratic men in the House will vote against Republican nuttiness if it claims that Plan B is an abortifacient (when the FDA has ruled that it is not, that it’s just a contraceptive). Most of the Democratic men will also vote against letting pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions for religious reasons.

But those male legislators don’t make such issues their priority. Women do that, Stacey says. She will do that. She’s persistent, unafraid to stand up for her ideas–a fighter, in short. And yet she looks for cooperation more than confrontation. She met with Sarah Steelman and her staff, for example, in late 2005, thinking that some of these women’s issues need not be partisan. Stacey tried to convince Steelman to lend her support to Bray’s bill allowing police to confiscate a gun if they’ve been called to a domestic violence dispute and believe that the gun in the household presents an imminent danger to a spouse.

Steelman’s staff, all women, seemed interested, but a large picture of Phyllis Schlafly looked down on the meeting and Steelman’s icon must have given Newman’s ideas a thumbs down. Sarah never returned Stacey’s phone calls. Stacey says she wouldn’t try to enlist Steelman’s cooperation in future, but that doesn’t mean she won’t work to persuade other Republicans that women have some issues in common.

Look, for Stacey Newman, running for office isn’t about adding a notch on her resume. Her husband will be retiring soon, and her youngest child is in high school. If she wanted to, she could focus on cooking great meals and shopping at the Galleria. But she’s passionate about issues and she’s met women who are being hurt by Missouri’s anti-woman government. That’s why she’s running.