Johnson to firefighters’ union: Don’t endorse me
Usually around this time, we receive news releases from candidates boasting about their latest endorsement.
But today, State Rep. Connie Johnson sent out a note highlighting whose backing she doesn’t want.
Johnson, seeking the 5th District Senate Seat, has informed the St. Louis firefighters’ union that she would reject their support.
“I neither seek nor will accept an endorsement from Local 73 for the Senate seat because of the current racially hostile climate in the St. Louis Fire Department,” Johnson wrote in a letter to union president Chris Molitor.
The union, Johnson says, favored — “if not engineered” — the removal of former Fire Chief Sherman George, the first African-American to lead the department.
Though the union never took an official position on whether George should have been allowed to stay in office, they did push for the promotions he refused to make.
“While I am a staunch supporter of organized labor, I simply cannot in good conscience seek or accept an endorsement from an organization such as Local 73 that so profoundly stands against diversity,” Johnson wrote.
Local 73 has frequently been assigned the shorthand of being the “white union,” while F.I.R.E. — the Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality - has been referred to as the “black union.”
In reality, Local 73 is the bargaining unit for all rank and file firefighters — no matter their skin color. Even so, many African-American firefighters — cognizant that the union did not always embrace black members — prefer to align themselves with F.I.R.E.
St. Louis firefighters, who by law must live in the city, have proved themselves a formidable voting bloc, especially in low-turnout primary elections like the one Johnson will be competing in this summer. Just ask Lewis Reed, who rode the Local 73 endorsement all the way to the head of the Board of Aldermen, becoming the first African-American elected to that position.
But that was before George’s ouster stirred resentment in the black community, a sentiment clearly shared by Johnson.
Johnson: Doesn’t want firefighter endorsement
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The Local 73 endorsement was important to Reed, but to say he rode the endorsement to victory gives the union a bit too much credit.