White Power and Missouri Politics - SLM Daily - November 2012

White Power and Missouri Politics - SLM Daily - November 2012

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  But that still leaves Gov. Jay Nixon winning reelection by 12.1 percent and Attorney General Chris Koster winning by 15.1 percent. And the number of ballots cast for McCaskill, Nixon, and Koster was almost identical: In an election in which more than 2.7 million Missourians voted, the three were separated by less than 3,000 votes (or one-tenth of 1 percent). That’s remarkable.

Obama, on the other hand, received roughly 270,000 fewer votes that the candidates below him on his own ticket. Literally 10 percent of the electorate supported three major statewide candidates while opposing their standard-bearer, a man with whom they were constantly linked, and with whom they expressed no serious disagreement.

How do you explain those incongruous outcomes? I have a theory:

It’s racial. Missouri doesn’t do the diversity thing in statewide elections.

Before you send in the Reverse-Political-Correctness Police, here are the customary disclaimers: No, everyone who voted against Obama is not a racist, and yes, the people who voted against the president (while supporting the rest of his ticket) surely had many reasons that weren’t race-related.

I’m not calling anybody anything.

But here’s the bottom line: In its nearly two-century history, Missouri has never elected a person of color to any statewide office. Not one. In fact, only one African-American has even made it onto the ballot. That was Rep. Alan Wheat, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 1994. He lost to John Ashcroft by 25 points.