Wright-Jones makes Senate bid official on Tuesday
State Rep. Robin Wright-Jones, D-St. Louis, is announcing on Tuesday that she’s DEFINITELY joining the crowd running for the 5th District state Senate seat.
Jones’ announcement is slated for 10:30 a.m. next Tuesday, in Zion Corner’s Community Room, 3300 Park Avenue at Compton.
In her release, Wright-Jones said the event is open to politicians, the press and the public.
She joins a field that already includes two state House colleagues: Rodney Hubbard and Tom Villa, and possibly a third, Connie Johnson. (In response to posters below: I’ve talked to Johnson a week ago, and at that time she did not rule out a bid. Maybe she’s changed her mind since then.)
All are vying for the seat now occupied by state Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis, who can’t run for re-election because of term limits.
As Wright-Jones’ release notes, she “currently represents the 63rd Legislative District, which encompasses an area bounded by the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Harris Stowe State University, the Gateway Classic Foundation building, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, Downtown St. Louis, Soulard, Lafayette Square and the Cherokee Business District.”
Now, for the racial overtones of this contest, which has already prompted some black Democrats to call for state party chairman John Temporiti to get involved in the same “whittle-down” negotiations that he’s promoted as success stories in other contests (unclear, though, if Mike Evans is going to cooperate in the lieutenant governor’s race).
The issue: Wright-Jones, Johnson and Hubbard are black. Villa is white. Similar dynamics helped Jeff Smith, who is white, capture the the 4th District seat in 2006. A number of city African-American politicians (and the St. Louis American) have taken note of the edge that Villa will hold.
(UPDATE: In fairness, I should note that the 4th District had a slightly different scenario, since there were three black candidates and two white candidates.
But the result was the same, in the view of some black Democrats: that the three candidates split the black vote and hurt their chances of obtaining the seat.
Others note that the other white candidate, Derio Gambaro, got more votes than two of the black candidates. )
But what concerns many black Democrats is what could be the effect in the 5th. The upshot could be that the city of St. Louis, which has a slight black majority (but as of the last census, still a slight white edge in voting-age population), could have an all-white crew in the state Senate.
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The effort to recall Mayor Francis Slay will distract a number of people from concentrating on this Senate race, and it will help State Representative Tom Villa win. The recall petitioners are going to confuse people in the North Side community as to when to vote and for whom. The Senate race will be so divided with factions everywhere, and State Representative Tom Villa will walk in. Then there will be no more African-American Senators in the City of St. Louis.
By the way, John Temporiti can’t make anybody drop out of the Senate race, because everybody that is running has the right to do so. We need change in 2008, and no more people in office that have failed to get anything accomplished to improve the plight of the poor and disenfranchised people in the City of St. Louis.