A while back, in one of his many posts here arguing against Slay’s re-election, our good friend ashriver cited the Saint Louis American’s Political Eye as a credible source. When questioned on the reliability of the Political Eye, ashriver defended it as one of reputation. If they consistently passed along unsubstantiated gossip, then the P.E. would get a bad reputation as an untrustworthy source of information. Setting aside that many purveyors of false information and innuendo find their way onto every network and every editorial page in the country, I’ll present an example of why ashriver and others shouldn’t be so quick to accept the word of the Political Eye as the gospel truth.

Ever since Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman surprised the St. Louis political establishment by filing for the St. Louis mayor’s race, Slay’s critics have suspected that Coleman filed at the urging of Slay or his allies. In other words, she is supposedly a stalking horse, a false candidate in the race only to peel off confused voters who couldn’t remember whether they wanted to vote for Denise Coleman or Maida Coleman. Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman, who had been long rumored to be interested in the race, finally announced her intention to run in the last week before the filing deadline, only to opt for an independent run after Denise Coleman’s surprise filing.

Currently, Slay’s critics are casting about for proof that Denise Coleman is a stalking horse, without much success. A couple of weeks ago, the Political Eye’s evidence was that a Slay statement prepared in advance referred to “Ms. Coleman” rather than to “Maida Coleman”. Pretty lame stuff. The latest weak attempt refers to Denise’s website:

“The big red flag for me is that Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman had a professionally done campaign website operating just a few days after she claims she had a revelation to run. It would seem it was worked on before she was inspired and had to cost a couple of thousand dollars. She has apparently filed no Statement of Committee Organization, and one is required 20 days after the first contribution comes in and they reach $500. So who did the site, what did it cost and when was it done? If she claims a friend or relative did it, it would still be considered an in-kind contribution and put her over the $500 mark. It will also have to be reported on her first report,” this person writes.

Well, a casual glance at Denise’s website showed me the opposite of what that “astute city observer” claims. If it was a “two thousand dollar” website prepared well in advance, it probably would look more like Irene Smith’s website, which is clean and well-designed, rather than cluttered with a couple of typos like Denise’s. I tend to believe Denise’s campaign finance report, which shows that it was begun the day after Denise filed for office. And I tend to believe Denise and some of her closest supporters, who told me more than a month before the filing deadline that Denise was mulling  a run against Slay. Her team cut their teeth in the local organizing effort for Obama, who also inspired Denise to shoot for the seemingly impossible. Perhaps she’s naive, and perhaps she’s a longshot, but she definitely isn’t a stalking horse.

Personally, I’m agnostic on Slay. My own neighborhood has improved over the last eight years, and is finally beginning to perform closer to its potential. It’s safer and more businesses have moved in, and it even retains a diverse mix of people of different races and income levels. I don’t know if Slay can personally take credit, but he hasn’t gotten in the way, either. I also understand that not every neighborhood has had the same results as mine during Slay’s two terms, so I’m open to critiques on what he has done wrong and how someone else might do better.

But what turns me off as a swing voter is this bullshit insider baseball criticism of an idealistic candidate and of Slay. Nobody cares about it except the people who already see Slay as someone behind every problem in the city, and they’re already on your side. Give me something tangible and you might persuade me to take you seriously again.  

( – promoted by Clark)

Earlier, I wrote a diary explaining why I am not a fan of current St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.  This is how I started the post:

Below are some reasons why I think anyone who believes in the values expressed by the Democratic Party should not support the candidacy of Francis Slay for St. Louis Mayor.  I think all of these reasons fit into a general theme: in every local issue of substance, Slay has sided with the rich and powerful over the working class and the disenfranchised.  In my opinion, one of the most important things about the emergence of the netroots in recent years has been that it pushed us towards a more meritocratic system.  That is, in the traditional system, the power brokers in the media and the political establishment decided what ideas could even be heard and discussed, and they were very bad at doing so (often because they had vested interests in certain ideas).  The emergence of blogs allowed good ideas to get a wide audience simply because they were good ideas, and not because they had to get the approval of someone in power…

I don’t get the feeling that I convinced many people.  The main argument against me (IMO) was not so much that Slay is a great mayor, but rather that there were no other candidates who seemed like they were better choices.  I now present exhibit B, a column from St. Louis American political blogger “Political EYE”, which I think makes a pretty strong case that we should replace Slay with a different mayor, even if that other candidate is not everything we had always hoped for in a mayor.  I’ll include some choice quotes below the fold, but you really need to read the entire post.  

Obviously how much you make of the following will depend almost entirely on how trustworthy you think the source of information is.  The St. Louis American definitely has a history of being critical of Slay, but I personally don’t think the EYE would go out on this much of a limb without having at least some goods.  I note as well that the Arch City Chronicle followed up on this post without questioning the basic premise at all.  In fact, Dave Drebes had his own question.

The Political Eye column starts the central theme with this:

The EYE knows that money and positions change hands illicitly and off the books in this town, by virtue of being inadvertently caught up in the cell phone equivalent of a back-room deal regarding an attempt to pay off Fire Chief Sherman George. But Mayor Francis G. Slay showed more savvy than Blago.

I’m not even sure what in the rest of the article to cite, since it really is a huge list of pretty specifc innuendo, ranging from the police department to the fire department to publicists and even to the IT department.  Probably the most noteworthy is the EYE claiming to have been a part of some of the conversations in question:

Assuming everyone represented themselves truthfully in this deal n and it would have been foolish to bluff when the stakes were this high n a local developer had Slay’s go-ahead to make Sherman an offer. But even the developer was using an intermediary, a local activist who is no stranger to the deal table. This activist, unable to get a call back from Sherman over the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday weekend (when Slay wanted to close the deal), called the EYE. The EYE then called Sherman, relayed his answers n always, “no” n back to the activist, who told the developer, who spoke to Slay or then Chief of Staff Jeff Rainford or both.

Like I said, you really need to read the whole article and judge for yourself.  But I think a system like this is ultimately bad for any institution, whether we’re talking about the federal government or the City of St. Louis.