Posted on 08/24/2014 7:49:29 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On the boiling streets of Ferguson, Missouri, one recent image must have stung the state’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, more than others. Scrawled across a cardboard cutout featuring an image of Nixon’s face were the words, “M.I.A. AGAIN!”
Mike Fritz @mikewfritz
Protests brought both blacks and whites out in hot and muggy
Ferguson Wednesday.
4:19 PM - 20 Aug 2014
34 Retweets 12 favorites
Criticism of Nixon swelled after the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, by a white police officer. Some faulted Nixon for failing to take the lead in addressing the situation, which resulted in mass—at times violent—protests and found the streets of Ferguson cloaked in teargas, patrolled by police in tanks and other militarized gear. Others decried his failure to name a special prosecutor to look into the details of the shooting, leaving the investigation to a local prosecutor with family ties to law enforcement.
While the furor over Brown’s death exposed historic racial divisions in Ferguson, it once again drew attention to the long-standing and unusual rift between the Democratic governor and potential 2016 presidential candidate and one of the party’s most loyal constituencies—African Americans.
“The black anger at Nixon runs deep,” State Rep. Paula Carter told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1997, referring to Nixon’s decision as state attorney general to block desegregation efforts in the state—a move some believed was meant to pander to white voters.
The same year, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board was even more stinging in its assessment of Nixon’s bid to unseat Republican Sen. Kit Bond. If he succeeded, the newspaper concluded, “it will be because Nixon climbed over the backs of African-Americans to get there.”
***
Little in Nixon’s background prepared him for what he would face in Ferguson. Born in 1956, he grew up in DeSoto, a small enclave in Jefferson County, an hour south of Ferguson and the St. Louis metropolitan area, when whites were fleeing American urban centers like St. Louis for suburban and exurban towns.
According to U.S. Census records, Jefferson County’s population increased by 75 percent between 1950 and 1960. The historically Democratic county is white and working class: It’s the kind of place where Republicans vote in favor of labor unions and Democrats tout themselves as pro-gun and anti-abortion.
“We weren’t over the deep end. We’re people who believe in doing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, and treat people the way you want to be treated. We’ve Christian values, but not radical Christian values,” said Dave Lalumondier, a member of the Teamsters union who has lived in Jefferson County much of his life.
Lalumondier went to high school in another small, Jefferson County town close to DeSoto. “Jay was a freshman my senior year. He was a tremendous basketball player. Everybody who played any kind of sports at all in Jefferson County knew Jay Nixon,” he said.
Nixon’s mother, Betty Lea, was a schoolteacher and served on the local schoolBoard. His dad Jerry was a lawyer and his hometown’s mayor. When on the trail visiting with municipal leaders, Nixon often talks about answering the phone at dinner-time only to find an angry constituent trying to get in a word with his parents.
In 1986, only a few years after graduating law school and a stint in private practice, Nixon ran successfully for a seat in the Missouri State Senate. Lalumondier helped out on Nixon’s campaigns, knocking on doors to help get his friend elected.
“I’ve always had a lot of faith in him. He’s a good guy with good character,” Lalumondier said. “I could identify with him more than other people. It was those small town values—be honest and hardworking.”
When he started his political career, Nixon’s politics mirrored those of his hometown: He was pro-gun and anti- abortion and gay rights. He also opposed the state’s busing program, aimed at desegregating urban schools.
Nixon’s positions served him well with Jefferson County voters, who elected him to the statehouse for three terms.
In 1992, he ran his first successful campaign for attorney general, beating out the Republican candidate, House Minority Leader David Steelman, by six points. Nixon campaigned on his anti-busing position, calling the program a “failed social experiment.” He argued that money spent on busing in the desegregation program was sapping more than $400 million a year from local school districts. On the campaign trail, Nixon pledged to seek a settlement with the federal government, which had sued the state over efforts to end the busing program. But one year after he was elected, Nixon flip-flopped and asked a judge to end the desegregation effort in St. Louis.
The move drew immediate fire from African Americans, but that didn’t keep Nixon from easily winning reelection. By the time Nixon announced his campaign to challenge Bond in 1998, tensions with state’s African-American community had escalated.
The African-American outrage at Nixon that year ensnared President Bill Clinton, who had scheduled a trip to St. Louis to campaign for Nixon. U.S. Rep. William L. Clay, a popular African-American Democrat, asked the president to cancel the appearance.
“Nixon’s campaign against desegregation is offensive to fair-minded people of all races,” Clay wrote to Clinton, according to an account in the Kansas City Star. “It is reminiscent of the tactics of Southern political leaders of the ’50s and ’60s who sought to maintain segregation.”
Bond capitalized on the division within the urban Democratic base and beat Nixon by 10 points. The margin of victory was boosted by support from the African- American community.
“The Bond campaign worked early to lock in as many endorsements of prominent African American leaders they could,” said John Hancock, the former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party. “They were more successful than any Republican candidate I can remember.”
Hancock added, “You had the good feelings toward Bond and the bad feelings toward Nixon.”
***
Nearly a decade later, those feelings are as raw as ever as Nixon deals with the crisis in Ferguson.
For three nights, St. Louis County police engaged in aggressive confrontations with protesters. It wasn’t until four days after the shooting and subsequent protests that Nixon ordered the Highway Patrol, operated by Nixon’s Missouri Department of Public Safety, to take the lead.
State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal accused the governor of being “AWOL.”
Nixon’s office disputes the claim, saying that he stayed abreast of the situation through briefings by the Highway Patrol and conversations with St. Louis County leaders. The office also notes that Nixon requested an investigation by the Department of Justice.
With TV and social media continuing to stream images from Ferguson that seemed more appropriate to uprisings in foreign squares, Nixon tapped the Highway Patrol’s Captain Ron Johnson, a Ferguson-area native and an African American, to lead the effort. The night after the patrol took over, Ferguson was calm. That was shattered the following day when local police released a video allegedly showing Michael Brown robbing a store.
That was a turning point for Nixon. “Since Thursday, when he announced that the Highway Patrol would take the lead on security responsibilities in Ferguson, this has been, quite literally, a round-the-clock effort for the governor,” said Scott Holste, Nixon’s press secretary.
State Rep. Tommie Pierson, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and a St. Louis minister, defends Nixon’s handling of the protests. “The governor is responding the best he knows how—the same as me and others. Nobody knows exactly how to respond to this thing to make it right,” he said, though he acknowledged that the desegregation issue is the basis for mistrust by some in the African-American community.
Nixon fared much better in his handling of another national-level crisis—the 2011 tornado that devastated Joplin, a town of 50,000 in Missouri’s southwest corner. Carol Stark, editor of the Joplin Globe, recalled that Nixon was on the ground in Joplin the morning immediately after the storm, and visited regularly throughout the summer.
“When the families of the dead stood outside a makeshift morgue begging for the release of their loved ones’ bodies, Nixon quickly stepped in, putting the Highway Patrol in charge. I remember it as one of the many transforming moments in that terrible disaster,” Stark said. “It was the action of a true leader.”
The tragedy helped Nixon in his 2012 reelection campaign, and brought him national attention. He beat his rival in some of the reddest counties in the state, winning over voters from rural Republican strongholds and urban liberal centers alike.
When Nixon leaves the governor’s mansion in January 2017, he’ll be 60, and some have begun to ask what’s next. Nixon denies that he’s pondering a run for national office, but last month, he went on a publicized trip to Iowa, where few, if any, politicians go by accident. He has said he’s ready for Hillary if the former first lady decides to run, but has also said it’s his belief that America needs a “voice from the heartland.”
Those pushing the “Nixon For America” narrative point to a shift left by the conservative Democrat after his reelection. He’s embraced Medicaid expansion, a key pillar of Obamacare. He endorsed gay marriage. And after letting four anti-abortion laws go into effect without his signature in his first term, he vetoed a measure that would triple the state’s 24-hour waiting period for the procedure.
In his final term, Nixon has been on the defensive in the state legislature. Republicans hold a supermajority, which makes it easy to block his agenda and harder for him to sustain his vetoes. Still, the governor has managed to find successes. Last year, he organized opposition to a steep tax cut that he argued would cripple the state’s budget, and has renewed a similar effort this summer with the support of local education officials and local government leaders.
As Nixon is looking at his political future in 2016 and beyond, Joplin’s Stark, who has endorsed him repeatedly throughout his political career, admits that the governor may have blown his chance.
“In Ferguson, Nixon could have provided that much-needed leadership within the first 24 hours of the looting,” she said. “He missed that moment that so defined him in Joplin.”
Eli Yokley is a political journalist in Missouri. He is founder of PoliticMo.com, a website started in 2010 to cover the state's political affairs.
That is why I can NEVER vote for a democrat.
They forgot to add that Obama was not made for these times either.
The same is true for Obama. When all is calm in the world, he goes around giving speeches about himself. But when there is a problem...he goes AWOL (out playing golf).
It has nothing to do with the color of their skin, but simply the content of their character.
Jay just wasn’t cut out for controversy, Ferguson was ruining his nice political career. And he wanted to run for President
I’ve mentioned before that Jay Nixon has Presidential ambitions. Perhaps VP for Hellary? He has signed off on about 7 executions so far this year. Relatively pro-Second Amendment when compared to other Demwits. But he, like all Dems, is a shape-shifter...
MLK would be proud of you quoting him.
Wouldn't it be a helluva note if we really started beating up the lefties and progressives with MLK-isms. Hehehe. d;^)
In other words, he is completely qualified to be a Democrat pResident.
He's gotta be fouling his pants almost constantly, wondering whether or not the whole world really sees that he was elected above his level of competency and knowing that the Obama regime's handlers will extract what they need and leave what's left of him to the vultures.
Mr. niteowl77
It has nothing to do with the color of their skin, but simply the content of their character or lack thereof.
It is difficult to form a clear vision when your head is stuck up Obama’s nether regions.
I am not going to assume here, but he wouldn’t be related to President Richard Nixon, would he?
Not a word in this article about Nixon pre-judging the case when he stated that “a vigorous prosecution must now be pursued.”
I guess he was pandering to the left when he made the statement, showing he was willing and able to support a lynch mob mentality, a kangaroo court, and the demonization and prosecution of a police officer — regardless of the facts on the ground. The funny thing is, Nixon’s pandering apparently wasn’t enough to win him plaudits from the left.
The people and voters in Missouri should impeach this low life, Obamabot, vermin of a Governor and broom him inot the cesspool where rightfully belongs!!!
Like most elected officials, and even more so dumb-o-crats, facts are of little value when they do not fit the story that they want to have people believe.
NO TRUTH
NO JUSTICE
Jay Nixon is also a lying, traitorous Demonicrat.
“Missouri’s governor just wasn’t made for these times.”
So if his point is that J. Nixon is unfit to be governor and should never have been elected in the first place, then he appears to be correct.
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