Slay. Bosley. White. Black. Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary was probably decided by one factor: Race.
Aldermanic President Francis Slay is likely to be the next mayor of St. Louis City after winning Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Most of the Caucasian voters backed Slay. Most of the African-American voters backed former Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr. Slay won because more Caucasians than African-Americans cast ballots.
Final unofficial returns showed Slay with 46,090 votes, or 54 percent. Bosley had 35,326 votes, or 41 percent.
After Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary, the racial divide of St. Louis is more apparent than ever.
Lost somewhere in the middle of this racial divide was the current Mayor Clarence Harmon. He was abandoned by most of the Caucasian voters who had elected him four years ago. The African-American voters who did not choose him then, once again cast a ballot not in his favor.
Harmon, the city’s former police chief, “had no constituency,” stated Ken Warren, political science professor at Saint Louis University.
Most voters, Caucasian and African-American, chose their candidate for one reason: vision, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s poll.
In the same poll, Caucasian voters said Slay’s strongest trait was integrity. His weakest trait was his lack of administrative ability-an apparent reference to his lack of experience as mayor.
Those findings are from the Post-Dispatch’s exit poll, called the Warren Poll. Canvassers interviewed 782 city voters Tuesday as they left their polling places in 22 wards. The racial breakdown of the poll participants reflected the overall percentages for a typical city-wide election.
Warren supervised the poll, and it has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. That means that any number in the overall poll could be 3.5 percentage points higher or lower.
However, Caucasian and African-American voters polled were so far apart on most questions that the margin of error generally did not matter.
Among Caucasian voters, 86.3 percent backed Slay. Among African-American voters, 84.8 percent supported Bosley. Harmon was lost somewhere in the middle, with only 7.7 percent of Caucasian voters and 2 percent of African-Americans favoring him.
The final figures show that Slay received 52.7 percent of the votes. Bosley received 41 percent, and Harmon received only 5.3 percent.
By winning the Democratic primary, Slay conquered his biggest struggle thus far.
Warren concludes that race is still the trump card. “Slay was seen as the white voters’ candidate. Bosley was seen as the black voters’ candidate. And Harmon had nowhere to go,” Warren said in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
