ST. LOUIS – When Cara Spencer was sworn in as the city’s new mayor, she vacated her seat on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. The city will hold a special election on Tuesday, July 1, to succeed Spencer as 8th Ward alderman.
Five people have filed to represent Ward 8 on the board, but the ballot itself has caused some consternation for city Democrats, who are suing the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners.
The candidates will appear on the ballot sans party affiliation. But the St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee says that is unfair to its chosen candidate and wants a judge to force the election board to include party affiliations on the ballots.
Last month, the DCC selected Shedrick Kelley as the official Democratic candidate. Although Republicans did not nominate a candidate for the race, Kelley is not without challengers. The city Libertarians nominated Cameron McCarty.
The other three candidates—Jami Cox Antwi, Jim Dallas, and Alecia Hoyt—are registered Democrats but are running as independents after securing the signatures of 10% of registered voters in Ward 8 who voted in the April 8 mayoral election.
In the November 2020 general election, St. Louis voters, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, supported Proposition D, which made elections open and nonpartisan for offices like the mayor, comptroller, and aldermen, and changed the primary system to allow voters to choose more than one candidate, with the top two choices facing off in a general election.
But according to the city charter, since there are no primaries allowed for special elections, the local committees of “established political parties” get to select their nominees and thus act as a primary.
The city Democrats allege that keeping party affiliations off the ballot prevents the party from “exercising its associational rights to participate in the political process as an established political party by issuing endorsements of candidates running for office.”