Follow-on November 7
Lots of outraged readers this morning… I left so many people off the winners list!
More Winners
Prop B hero is former Charlie Shields’ Chief of Staff, Chris Roepe, who brought the “little tobacco” guys into the campaign. Ron Leone ran his traditionally solid ground game for the C-Store guys, but Roepe is the guy who managed it over the top by getting them to put money in and getting them up on the air with some cover for the ground game. He’s definitely on the rise in the political consultant game.
Nancy Rice, the godmother of many a St. Louis politicos, after years leading her tribe in the wilderness, finally crossed over to the promised land of Local Control. One of her godchildren described it as “overturning 150 years of history.”
Of course there were a bunch of Republican operatives of varying degrees who worked on keeping their supermajority safe. Kit Crancer oversaw the revamped Missouri Senate Campaign Committee. His boss, Tom Dempsey, guided the new committee to an auspicious beginning, and assured himself the pro tem spot by acclamation tomorrow, I would bet.
Yancy Williams helped his boss Kurt Schaefer attain a 15 point crushing of Mary Still in a Democratic lean district. And in the process quite possibly helped pull Caleb Rowden across the finish line.
And Brad Green’s work over the course of months made Gary Romine’s win over Joe Fallert seem ho-hum.
And Some Losers
Big money loses again. Rex Sinquefield has some success, particularly with local control of the St. Louis police department. But that’s outweighed by the sinking of Rep. Shane Schoeller secretary of state bid in which he invested $400,000.
David “contrarian indicator” Humphreys in addition to watching the latest unraveling of the court plan change had other notable losses. $350,000 to Ed Martin, $100,000 to Cole McNary, and $25,000 to Shane Schoeller… but of course $0 to the only Republican winner Peter Kinder.
And two less obvious losers- Governor Jay Nixon and Senator Roy Blunt.
The case for putting them in this group… Nixon revisited the same sin from four years ago. He sucked all the money from House and Senate Dems raising eight figures, and then refused to let them draw from the well, while winning by double digits. Says one Dem legislator, “I’m lookin forward to the day when he says he needs me sometime during session…”
Blunt: The two races that Republicans had the best chance at and wanted the most were US Senate and Secretary of State. They were the same two races that had the most divisive primaries, fielding three viable candidates each. Who’s to blame here? Arguably it was Blunt’s lack of leadership to bring consensus and avoid the damaging primaries that vexed Republicans this cycle.