This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 2, 2011 - St. Louis Alderman Kacie Starr Triplett, D-6th Ward, has accused her primary election opponent of appealing to race in an effort to unseat her in the March election. The opponent, Bradford Kessler, counters that the campaign incident that has upset Triplett was unintentional.
At issue is a mailer that Kessler's camp sent to voters a few days ago. One part of the mailer includes Keller's photo, along with a campaign button-like graphic that says: "KESSLER He's one of us!"
Triplett says she is offended by the message because she says it amounts to code words to swing white voters to Kessler corner. He's white, and she's black. The ward's population is about 50-50 black and white, but Triplett says more whites tend to vote. She argues that the "He's one of us" reference is aimed at swaying white residents in the ward.
"It's racial politics," she says. "It has no place in the 6th Ward because the ward is progressive. Voters supported another African-American candidate (Lewis Reed, now aldermanic board president) before they elected me when I was 26."
In an e-mail earlier in the day, Triplett conceded that the phrase "He's One of Us" may not have racial overtones for some voters. But she says that "for those who are involved in politics and understand the racial dynamics and racial politics in the City of St. Louis, you know what my opponent is trying to do."
Kessler was blunt and apologetic in his response to questions about the mailer.
"If you want my honest opinion, I think they (his opponents) think it's racist," he says. "That was not the intent, but in this political climate, there shouldn't be anything suggesting" race.
He says he did not review the mailer before it was sent out. He refused to identity the woman whom he said was responsible for adding the button to material that was mailed. But he insists that her intent was sincere, saying her reference to Kessler being "one of us" was making the point that he was not a politician but an average citizen hoping to make change in the ward.
Asked why he would not be more transparent about who sent the mailer, Kessler repeated his comment that "I'm not going to tell you. I think her intentions were fine." He says she was "somebody who knows me" as "just one of the people who live here, not a politician, just an ordinary person."
Howard Wynder, Kessler's campaign manager, says the mailer was a big mistake. He said that was his personal opinion and not an official response from Kessler. Wynder said the mailer included the wrong pictures and didn't reflect the diversity of the audience where the photos were taken. All the pictures in the mailer show Kessler interacting with white males.
"When I saw that mailer," Wynder said, "I thought it was stupid. I can say that to you because that's exactly what I told him. I knew the mailer would turn into a racial issue because of the real problems of inequality in St. Louis. It could be misunderstood."
Like Kessler, Wynder didn't shed any light on the question of how the mailer was sent out without a review by the candidate and his campaign manager.
Triplett says she finds it hard to believe that the two were unaware of what was in a mailer. She also said the issue raised the question of whether Wynder, an African American, was campaign manager in name only. She says her own campaign manager, who is white, is actively engaged in her campaign and had also been her manager during her earlier successful race for alderman.
Kessler said he wanted to get beyond the controversy and talk about why he got into the race. He charges that residents in various sections of the ward are upset because they don't see Triplett at functions and addressing issues, such as crime, which he said was widespread in the loft district among one segment of the homeless and was a problem in some other sections of the ward, too.
He said residents were frustrated because they feel Triplett wasn't giving the issue enough attention.
Triplett responds that she has been campaigning since September, and adds that "one thing about how I work as an alderman is that I'm not just visible on election day." She says she spends a lot of time on ward issues and is engaged with all segments of the ward.
She says it is Kessler, not she, who has no history of being active the neighborhood. She says she has lived in the ward much of her life, attended school there and moved back to it after attending college and working in Washington for two members of the Missouri congressional delegation. She has the endorsement of the ward organization as well as Reed's.
Kessler says he has sought no endorsements.
The latest campaign-finance figures show that Triplett has raised $88,010, and that Kessler had raised $27,559.
Regardless of the outcome of the 6th Ward primary, the mailer offers some a cautionary lesson about how race, intentional or not, can affect a campaign. There have been cases in St. Louis politics in which candidates from both sides of town have appealed to race. Some appeals have been subtle, as in campaigns where literature containing a picture of a black candidate was circulated mainly to white residents in an effort to boost the turnout of white voters for the white candidate.
Other appeals have been more blatant. The most recent example involved the victorious campaign of Rory Ellinger, a white attorney, who won the race for the 72nd District seat formerly held by Maria Chappelle-Nadal, when she ran for the Missouri Senate.
The seat had been held by black candidate for years. But Ellinger won the primary against two black candidates. After that, a few blacks waged a write-in campaign to try to make sure the seat was kept in the hands of blacks. Ellinger easily won in the general election .
"They waged a blatant campaign based on race," Ellinger said of the write-in campaign. "It was called SOS, which stood for Save Our Seat. It was openly racist, and I'm proud that the African-American community supported me."
He says that the experience makes him sympathize with Triplett.
