St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, a Democrat, had been in the camp of Sen. Hillary Clinton until Sen. Barack Obama appeared to clinch the nomination on June 3.

Since then, the mayor has endorsed Obama. And Slay was among the local notables who met with the candidate while he was in town earlier this week.

Slay said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he believes Obama, like Clinton, to be keenly aware of what the nation’s urban areas need to prosper. That’s the main reason why he gets involved at all in national politics, Slay added. 

This afternoon, Slay — an Internet blogger – sent out his own, admittedly partisan, take on the presidential contest.

Bottom line, in his view: Missouri will decide who’s elected president. And the St. Louis region will decide who carries Missouri.

Here’s some of his analysis:

Slay said in a blog post earlier this week that he expected “the national election will be decided in St. Louis and St. Louis county, because we have the votes that will swing the most important swing state.”

As he explained in today’s email:

“A  ’swing state’ is a state in which either of the major party candidates has a reasonable chance of winning the state’s Electoral College votes. That certainly describes Missouri, a state whose voters usually select their statewide candidates with razor-thin margins, repaying the attentions of the better-run campaign.

“That makes Missouri – and the voter-rich St. Louis region – the likely host to many visits by Senators John McCain and Obama and the media and mail targets of both the Republicans and the Democrats between now and November.

“Besides being a swing state, Missouri is also known as a ‘bellwether state,’ a reverential nod to the fact that more Missourians have voted for the eventual winner of all but one Presidential election since 1904. (The sole exception, the 1956 contest, was the one in which we narrowly and incorrectly favored a Favorite Son of neighboring Illinois over a victorious Ike.)

“Pundits differ in their interpretation of our state’s uncanny electoral successes, some arguing that Missouri merely reacts (more weathervane than bellwether) to the country’s mood rather than leads it.”

The guts of his prediction: “Missouri is a swing state, the nation’s bellwether, and our majority vote will be electing the next President of the United States on November 4.”