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Coleman Admits Nixon’s Weakness Among African Americans, Democrats

January 31, 2008

JEFFERSON CITY – Despite attempts to unite behind Jay Nixon, a leading Democrat made it clear today that Nixon’s failures on behalf of the African American community is one reason why party loyalists are looking for an alternative on the November ballot.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch today reported that “Nixon’s record on the St. Louis schools desegregation case is a sore spot in the African-American community,” and added this telling quote from African American Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman: ‘“That’s, unfortunately, Jay’s legacy,’ Coleman said. She saw the split when she talked politics with seven St. Louis aldermen who were in the capital Wednesday to testify on local control of the police department.”

“Jay Nixon broke a promise to the African American community for political purposes and that has not been forgotten as Senator Coleman’s statement clearly illustrates. It is little wonder why Democrats are so concerned that Nixon may not stand a chance this November,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Missourians deserve a leader that unites Missourians, not divides them like Jay Nixon has for more than a decade.”

The source of Nixon’s weakness on desegregation is rooted in his 1992 campaign rhetoric. During that campaign, Nixon pledged to move away from a focus on litigation and instead would seek compromise and settlement. But by the close of Nixon’s first year in office, he had abandoned that pledge and created a wedge in the African American community that still exists today.

The Kansas City Star put it this way in a 1998 editorial: “[S]omething happened to Jay Nixon as his insatiable political ambition pulled him toward the goal of higher office. He made the decision to play to rural and suburban prejudices and resentments against Kansas City’s schools.” And then-St. Louis Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr., who sponsored a resolution that requested President Bill Clinton cancel a fundraising trip to St. Louis to support Nixon, told the Post-Dispatch in 1997: “‘He’s [Nixon] tearing this city and this state apart racially,’ Bosley said.”