Sunday, October 17, 2010

Mayor Francis Slay and Ed Martin

The St. Louis American's Political Eye column seems to think that Democrat Mayor Francis Slay has all but endorsed Republican Ed Martin:
Politics, it is often said, makes for strange bedfellows. The 2010 midterm elections are making for quite the strange bedfellow matchmaker.

Take as evidence these photographs of Ed Martin, far-right Republican candidate for Congress, buddying up with Mayor Francis G. Slay this weekend at the Columbus Day Parade in St. Louis.
And then further down:
Slay campaign communications operative Richard Callow tends to be more talkative. So we asked him.

We asked, “What is this supposed to mean about the mayor's professed support for Russ Carnahan? I need to check my calendar, but it seems like Nov. 2 is awfully close to be playing those sorts of footises with someone you are trying to beat. Unless, of course, you aren't really trying to beat the person you say you are trying to beat.”

Callow wrote right back: “You probably missed this tweet from @SMGregali: ‘Walking in the Columbus Day Parade with Mayor Slay & Cong. Carnahan.’”

The EYE wrote back: “And he probably hoped we would miss the cozy photos. Some mouths have two sides – some tongues, two forks.” As former Comptroller Virvus Jones likes to say, What it is, it ain’t.
 As Editor at 24thState reported in September, someone—presumably Mayor Slay or someone close to him—has registered the domain: www.SlayForCongress.com. Maybe someone should ask Callow about that. Maybe someone already has.

Obviously, a Democrat like Mayor Slay has to go through the formalities of fund raisers for Russ Carnahan (D-MO). However, Slay can also see that the Tea Party tide might well wash Russ from office. Having served as Mayor of St. Louis for nearly ten years, it's not surprising that he might look to move on to Congress in 2012.

During those years of service, Mayor Slay would have worked with Russ's opponent Ed Martin as Ed served on the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners. While serving on the Board, Ed took an active role in renewing the Board's commitment to free and fair elections. A lot of people have forgotten that. And I don't think Ed talks about his work improving the integrity of St. Louis city elections as much as he should.

St. Louis city had serious voter fraud problems prior to Ed's service. John Fund is quote at Heritage.org: "...in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city." Meanwhile, RottenAcorn.com's tally of vote tampering reports: "Of 5,379 voter registration cards ACORN submitted in St. Louis, only 2,013 of those appeared to be valid. At least 1,000 are believed to be attempts to register voters illegally."

By cleaning up city elections, Ed Martin burnished the credibility of subsequent elected officials, including Mayor Slay. So it's hardly surprising that Slay has a soft-spot for Ed.

Here's a video of Ed Martin at McArthur's Bakery from August 2009 talking about vote fraud and his work to mitigate it when he served on the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners:

3 comments:

freespeak said...

Well, call me mislead?
I always liked Slay, except maybe for his idea to make St.Louis a world trade hub (?).
We have CERTAINLY had worse!
He has done much to improve the city!

freespeak said...

misled

freespeak said...

He is smart to cozy up yo Martin.
That's politics.