Missouri Jobs with Justice Says Vote NO on Proposition A. I agree

Supporters of the bill are flat out falsely claiming that this will make it easier to get a civilian review board, even though the ballot language explicitly prevents this.  Jobs with Justice, and pretty much all of the activists who have worked on this issue for over 10 years, are opposed to the phony version of "local control" expressed in Proposition A.  The people pushing this bill are working for multi-millionaire right-wing extremist Rex Sinquefield, who sees Missouri as his personal chess board.  Here's the text of the message from Missouri JWJ:

Jobs with Justice has supported local control of the St. Louis City Police Department, collective bargaining rights for police officers, and a civilian review board for our neighbors for over a decade.

However, the current ballot initiative proposing local control of the police unnecessarily undermines the power of a civilian review board and threatens good community/police relations.

Therefore we endorse a NO vote on Prop A, but continue to support other efforts to return control of the St. Louis City Police Department in a way that protects the rights of our police force and our neighbors by protecting collective bargaining rights for officers and the establishment of a civilian review board for our city. For more information check out: www.citizensagainstpropa.com.


Proposition A

Official Ballot Title:

    Shall Missouri law be amended to:
However, the current ballot initiative proposing local control of the police unnecessarily undermines the power of a civilian review board and threatens good community/police relations.

Therefore we endorse a NO vote on Prop A, but continue to support other efforts to return control of the St. Louis City Police Department in a way that protects the rights of our police force and our neighbors by protecting collective bargaining rights for officers and the establishment of a civilian review board for our city. For more information check out: www.citizensagainstpropa.com.


Proposition A

Official Ballot Title:

    Shall Missouri law be amended to:
Therefore we endorse a NO vote on Prop A, but continue to support other efforts to return control of the St. Louis City Police Department in a way that protects the rights of our police force and our neighbors by protecting collective bargaining rights for officers and the establishment of a civilian review board for our city. For more information check out: www.citizensagainstpropa.com.


Proposition A

Official Ballot Title:

    Shall Missouri law be amended to:

Proposition A
Official Ballot Title:
    Shall Missouri law be amended to:
 allow any city not within a county (the City of St. Louis) the option of transferring certain obligations and control of the city’s police force from the board of police commissioners currently appointed by the governor to the city and establishing a municipal police force;
establish certain procedures and requirements for governing such a municipal police force including residency, rank, salary, benefits, insurance, and pension; and
prohibit retaliation against any employee of such municipal police force who reports conduct believed to be illegal to a superior, government agency, or the press?
    State governmental entities estimated savings will eventually be up to $500,000 annually. Local governmental entities estimated annual potential savings of $3.5 million; however, consolidation decisions with an unknown outcome may result in the savings being more or less than estimated.

For the Full Text of Proposition A, visit this page on this Secretary of State's website. For the Fair Ballot Language, visit this page on the Secretary of State's website. To see the full list of MO JwJ's recommendations on this election's Propositions and Amendments, click here.

Finance Report for Fake Local Control: How A Right-Wing Idealogue Pays Off Local "Democrats"

Now that the Mayor's office and right-wing multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield have thrown local control activists under the bus and are pushing for a new ballot initiative that would actually decrease accountability and transparency, it might be worth taking a closer look at some of the campaign finance reports for Rex's front group, A Safer Missouri. Rex, if you recall, wants to gut state government and shift the tax burden to the poor, and local "Democrats" who get paid by him conveniently stay quiet on these disastrous ideas, just like they did when Rex pushed a statewide ballot initiative to get rid of the earnings tax. How many local "Democrats" need to be on the payroll of a right-wing ideologue with crazy ideas before St. Louis residents start to worry about our City's future?

First things first for documenting the atrocities: the astroturf local control group is called A Safer Missouri. Only one person has ever donated to the group: Rex Sinquefield.


And who benefits from the amazing generosity of Rex, who graciously took time out of his busy schedule of trying to privatize everything in Missouri to magically start caring about this issue last year? Why, St. Louis "Democrats" of course! One of the biggest beneficiaries was Martin Casas, former President of the St. Louis Young Dems and a current candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives. Casas, if you recall, previously said that he had no position on the disastrous Everything Tax, which should be enough to disqualify anyone from calling themselves a Democrat, asked people to sign a petition from the right-wing front group United for Missouri while working for Rex, and also claimed that he had "no idea" if signing up for A Safer Missouri would help build Rex's email list:


In light of how much Casas was paid by Rex, it's pretty hard to believe this claim was true. And how much was that? Casas got close to a cool $20,000 from Rex Sinquefield in 2011 according to the most recent campaign report:

And this is all in addition to the fact that Casas's wife is also on Rex's payroll, through a different organization.

Another local principled "Democrat" who benefited from Sinquefield's kindheartedness was Gregg Christian, Democratic Committeeman in the 15th Ward. Here's A Safer Missouri's payment to Christian's company Gladius Communications for "graphic design:"

Was Gladius responsible for this beautiful logo? Cause I'd say that's worth about $4,000 just by itself:

Another local Democrat paid off in this campaign is Nancy Rice, but she's paid by Rex for a lot of things (she works for Pelopidas) so I won't bother to document the cash for this situation.

Every politician who has ever taken money from ideologues has claimed that the money has *nothing* to do with their future votes. Yet we know our democracy is broken because the uber-wealthy have far too much influence on our laws via their donations. If St. Louisans are really worried about Democracy being for sale, we're going to have to start paying better attention to what's happening locally. Having "Democrats" in office isn't any better than Republicans, if they're all getting paid by the same people.

Roorda Says Only "Cop Haters" Could Be Opposed to Rex's Phony Local Control Ballot Initiative

To review, last year, activists working for local control of the St. Louis police department teamed up with the Mayor's office and other opportunistic local Democrats to try to get a bill passed through the Missouri legislature. Mayor Slay and the other opportunists, of course, used this as yet another opportunity to get paid by multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield who, just like every other entity that donates huge amounts of money to politicians, obviously doesn't want anything in return. I agreed with the St. Louis American on this: though I was suspicious of the group working with Rex, I ultimately thought local control was a good thing because the activists endorsed the idea and it could get St. Louis closer to a system with increased transparency and accountability.

However, the bill failed last year thanks to the incompetent GOP legislature, and when it returned as a ballot initiative, it was in a mutated form that discarded the original reasons for supporting it. The whole point of local control was to bring accountability and transparency, not to just shift from one opaque, unaccountable board to another. But the new ballot initiative pushed by Rex, Mayor Slay, and the other "Democrats", but not the actual activists, actually takes a step backwards on accountability and transparency, because what it actually does is prevent the creation of a civilian review board, and puts all of the power in the hands of a board appointed by the Mayor. Don't take my word for it: read the op-ed by Brenda Jones, executive director of the of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.

But to give you a sense of how nasty the "Democrats" are who are doing Rex'$ bidding, check out this quote from Jeff Roorda saying that only "cop haters" could oppose the Rex Sinquefield phony local control ballot initiative:

Let’s not get distracted by cop haters that are trying to drive a wedge, when we’re coming to the table trying to find a way to make this department work better,” Roorda said. “Civilian review boards do not work. They’ve never worked anywhere they’ve been tried. They’ve got one function, and one function alone, and that’s to drive a wedge between the police department and the community.”

Yep. Only "cop haters" could possibly agree with the ACLU about having accountability and transparency be a part of the law. Or maybe it's just, you know, people who want accountability and transparency.

Local Control Activists Thrown Under the Bus

This was an amazing story in the Political Eye that I had not seen before (but see the update):

As for the activists, they had been on the side of local control all along. Not because they love and trust this mayor, which they do even less than the coppers love and trust him, but because they see city control of the city police as a stepping stone towards citizen overview of a police force that has done much to test public trust in its authority to impound, confiscate, arrest and use lethal force. Whether this is reasonable thinking or not, activists have believed that mayoral control of the city police would be a meaningful step towards a Civilian Review Board. Activists believe civilian review is needed because the police department has a proven, poor track record of cracking down on its own. Even federal investigators, who were expected to bring down a host of white shirts along with the petty operator Greg Shepard in the towing scam, have let down the public where there seemed to be obvious, widespread corruption in the department.

This incredible, tentative coalition is officially quitsville. The POA and Mayor Slay have sided with Sinquefield on his local control ballot initiative, and the activists have turned against them. On the face of it, it would be difficult to imagine local control activists siding with any group that includes Slay, the coppers and Sinquefield, but they have specific reasons for their opposition that were outlined in a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri.

Please read the whole thing if you haven't already. It offers some important insights into St. Louis City politics.

One thing not mentioned in this article is that several St. Louis City Democrats were paid substantial sums of money by Rex Sinquefield to work on this issue. These same Democrats are supportive of Rex's plans to inch ever closer towards privatizing education, and turn a blind eye to his insane policy suggestions (backed by millions of dollars) like the everything tax.

Update: There was a nice op-ed in the Post-Dispatch about this by Brenda Jones of the ACLU.

Big Gov. Editor Threatens Tilley if He Doesn't Appear On Loesch's Radio Show And "Walk Back His Comments"!

Backstory: the St. Louis Tea Party doesn't like the proposal to restore control of the St. Louis Police Department to the City of St. Louis. In fact, they dislike it so much they made a blatantly race-baiting video suggesting that the bill had something to do with the New Black Panther Party (and remember, in tea party language, New Black Panther Party = "wants to kill crackers"). In fact, the tea party even suggested that House Speaker Steve Tilley is "associated with the New Black Panther Party" because he supported the bill.

Because of this, Tilley correctly claimed that opponents of the bill were "race-baiting." The tea party, as is their standard operating procedure, idiotically claimed that their bringing up the NBBP had nothing to do with race and that somehow Tilley was injecting race into the discussion.

The tea party and Carl Bearden had been sniping at each other for weeks, but it intensified today. And that's where it gets really interesting, because today Mike Flynn, the editor of Breitbart's Big Government, threatened that Bearden and Tilley would get slammed nationally if Tilley did not agree to appear on Dana Loesch's radio show and "walk back the comment." It's a pretty clear threat:


So what happens? Does Tilley cave to the threat? Does he stand his ground? I'll guess we'll know soon enough!

Update: Had to correct the post to reflect that Tilley will be on the show so the threat is specifically about whether he "walks backs his attacks on the tea party." But of course, the threats are the really funny part! Why is Mike Flynn injecting himself on an issue he does not understand?

Activist Hub Radio 2/13/2011

This week Adam and I talked about the developments in Egypt---particularly the right wing's reaction to them--along with the right's conflation of the Islamic faith with extremist groups. We also discussed the $315 million merger between The Huffington Post and AOL, along with the battle for local control over the police force here in St. Louis.



Also we are on itunes so please subscribe Activist Hub Radio on Itunes.

Support Local Control By Signing Up for Group Headed By Anti-LGBT Former Legislator?

Let me reiterate that I 100% support the citizens of St. Louis City having control over the police department. Excellent pieces in the St. Louis American, including a column by Jamala Rogers, who's been working on this issue for years, successfully make the case that even people who have suspicions about collaborations with Rex Sinquefield should support the passage of the bill. I think everyone should contact their state senators and tell them to support the bill, and I've been very disappointed in Maria Chapelle-Nadal for holding out on this issue, even if I agree with her reasons for distrusting Rex Sinquefield.

I'll further add that I don't think the argument that this is a nothing more than an opportunity for the city to raid police pensions is a good one. The pensions seem reasonably protected in the proposed legislation, and the reality is that cities across the state and country have been in control of their own police departments for a long time: that's just how the system should work in a representative democracy.

However, I still have some pretty major concerns with how the campaign is being conducted by certain members of the St. Louis political establishment. As pointed out earlier, several local politicians had been directing people to sign up for a local control lobby day without informing people that they were signing up through Rex Sinquefield's group, which could presumably be used to push destructive right-wing ideas like the mega sales tax. In fact, with the exception of State Representative Jamilah Nasheed, many of these local officials whom I asked directly refused to commit to fight the mega sales tax. Martin Casas, when asked point blank on my facebook wall, said that he didn't have a position on the mega sales tax issue, a remarkable statement for someone running as a Democrat for Jeanette Mott Oxford's seat:
(to see why the mega sales tax is such an obviously horrible idea for anyone remotely progressive, and even too extreme for many Republicans, see here and here and here)

Casas is now back with a new article on the issue for Vital Voice. He argues that local control is an LGBT issue, since the city of St. Louis is more LGBT-friendly than the state of Missouri. However, at the bottom of his post, he asks people to "sign the petition for a safer Missouri:"

The petition page it goes to is pretty clear that it is signing people up for the Rex Sinquefield bankrolled group, United For Missouri:

And, as aficionados of this blog or FiredUp Missouri will know, the executive director of United For Missouri is Carl Bearden, who moved there after he was done working for the Koch Brothers' astroturf Americans for Prosperity group in Missouri.

Why is this important? Because Bearden had a long record of anti-LGBT activity when he was a Republican leader in the Missouri House of Representatives.

Bearden voted to ban the existence of gay/straight student alliances in Missouri.

He was a co-sponsor of HB885 in 2004, which would "Prohibit public institutions or any entity receiving state funds from adopting discrimination policies that exceed state and federal protections against discrimination."

He voted in favor of placing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Missouri on the 2004 ballot.

In other words, Bearden's record was nothing more than the most cynical of Republican strategies of bashing the LGBT community to score political points with social conservatives in Missouri.

Like I said, I'm in favor of local control and I even understand why Democrats might want to work with conservative allies to get it. However, are we really supposed to believe that Mayor Slay or the Young Democrats of St. Louis can't simply make their own petition and email list rather than gathering signatures for a leader of anti-LGBT activities of the legislature a few years ago? Couldn't Slay's group use some of the Civic Progress money they're funneling to cronies (some of whom worked for Rex on the other end of the earnings tax initiative) to get one of their buddies to do two hours of work to make their own petition site? And Casas is running for office: shouldn't he be building his own email list? I think it's ridiculous that the community of Vital Voice is being asked to support Bearden's organization, when other clear alternatives could be available.

I highly encourage people to contact their Missouri State Senator and tell that Senator that they support local control. I would also recommend contacting Maria Chapelle-Nadal and respectfully telling her that you think it's important that people have oversight of their own police department. And if you don't mind being on Sinquefield and Bearden's email list, by all means sign that petition as well, now that you know what you're getting yourself into.

Update: If you're interested in working to support local control, I'd recommend signing up with CAPCR, a group that has been working on this issue for a long time, well before any of Rex's money got involved: capcr_cob@hotmail.com

Tea Party Leaders Promote Themselves On the Backs of Naive Membership

I've reported before that, despite what they claim, the St. Louis Tea Party is not democratic, and their leaders are clearly using other people for their own personal notoriety and enrichment. The reality is that a small group of people make the decisions of what the group will do (like their ill-advised decision to fight against public transportation), and that same small group attempts to take credit for all of the people who attended rallies, or voted Republican, or whatever. Carl Bearden provides an example of a case in point:

Testimony was even given that the members of the St Louis Tea Party Association opposed the return of local control to the citizens of St Louis...

Anyway, I thought the report of the opposition of the St Louis Tea Party Association was rather odd so I checked it out. I found out that it was true that the Board of Directors of the St Louis Tea Party oppose the local control issue. But no “vote” of the members/supporters was taken.

In other words, the tea party claims to be a huge group of people across the St. Louis region. Then, a small, unelected Board of Directors makes decisions and even goes to Jefferson City to announce their position on controversial issues without even consulting the membership! So you have, what, 5 or 10 people claiming to speak on behalf of 5,000, without even actually consulting any of the people. In fact, they didn't even bother to announce on any of their blogs that they were planning on going to Jefferson City to "state the Tea Party position" on local control. No doubt those same self-appointed leaders use political positions like local control to curry favor with political players and to enhance themselves. They are, and always have been, about enhancing themselves rather than fighting for conservative ideals.

Are Prominent City Democrats Working for Millionaire Right-Wing Ideologue Rex Sinquefield? - Updated

Unfortunately, it sure looks that way. We all knew that quite a few St. Louis City Democrats were supportive of millionaire right-wing ideologue Rex Sinquefield's plans to move money from public schools to charter schools. The folks who run the City Democrats Many prominent Democratic politicians also recently decided (or were persuaded) not to resist Sinquefield's state-wide proposition to eliminate the earnings tax in Missouri, leaving it to grass roots groups to organize on minimal money to educate voters and solidly beat Rex in St. Louis City (which is important because, despite what some local Democrats are saying, voters are not so stupid as to magically forget what the earnings tax is before the April elections). But now it appears that local Democrats' collaboration with Sinquefield is taking a new, potentially devastating turn.

Activists in the City of St. Louis have been organizing for local control of their police force for a long time. And for a long time, they've been ignored by politicians in Jefferson City, who see no reason to concede power to the City of St. Louis for mere ethical reasons. However, in recent months, there's been a huge amount of momentum for local control. As I wrote earlier, I'm in favor of local control. However, alarm bells went off for me when I saw that Sinquefield and his employee, former Americans for Prosperity director of Missouri Carl Bearden, were getting involved. As reported today by FiredUp and Show Me Progress, Sinquefield created a new PAC, A Safer Missouri, and promptly donated $300,000 to the PAC.

Now, the fact that Sinquefield is getting involved by itself is not necessarily a big deal. As Alderman Antonio French (whom, I should be clear, is not one of the Democrats I'm referring to in the title) pointed out on Twitter, if there are a lot of groups working on the issue, then Democrats and liberals who are opposed to Sinquefield's extreme anti-government agenda can simply join a group fighting for the same issue that's not affiliated with Rex:

That's all well and good, assuming that everyone is up front about who exactly they're working for and where contact information is going. Unfortunately, however, this appears to be precisely what is not happening.

Mayor Francis Slay, his employee Mary Ellen Ponder, President of the St. Louis Young Dems Martin Casas, President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed, and Jamilah Nasheed all tweeted out a link to this google form.





Well, to be specific, Nasheed and Reed tweeted a link to an article on Reed's St. Louis Core website, which included a request for the RSVP that linked to the same document.

And Brian Wahby, Chairman of the City Dems Central Committee, linked to it on his City Dems page;

The actual form they were directing people to looks like this:

As I think is obvious to anyone who knows google forms, what this does is it collects your contact information and puts it into a google spreadsheet. This contact info, of course, is useful for future political campaigns. Groups interested in transparency will generally tell you how your information is going to be used. Unfortunately, this document has no disclosures of that sort.

Via Twitter, I asked most of the group if they could assure me that the information would not be used for any of Rex Sinquefield's campaigns.

None of them replied, except Casas, who said he "had no idea," despite the fact that, as was made clear in the Mayor's tweet, Casas is the point person for the day.

Slay and Reed continued tweeting, and didn't answer my question.

Of course, It would be vaguely interesting if all that happened was that the elected officials and operatives who were promoting this form only ignored my question and refused to simply say, "the information collected via that form will not be used for any future Rex Sinquefield campaigns." But it's actually worse than that. Because it's not just that they did not answer my question. It appears that I found the answer on my own.

The new web site for Rex's group, A Safer Missouri, has a page for "how you can help." This site promotes the same lobby day promoted by the St. Louis City Democrats, and says the following:

On Wednesday, January 26th the Missouri Senate will hold a hearing on Senator Keaveny’s bill that restores control of the St. Louis Police Department to the City of St. Louis. The hearing is scheduled for 2:00pm at the Capitol. Dozens of St. Louis residents will join Mayor Francis Slay and President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed that day in Jefferson City and visit with legislators about Local Control. Can you participate? We will offer transportation to those who need it.

In contrast, Lewis Reed's post about the lobby day refers to "the organizers" as a separate group. Likewise, Wahby's post simply says that buses are going, So Rex's group is providing transportation to the event, and what's more, as can be seen at the bottom of this screen shot from Sinquefield's PAC, Sinquefield's page links to the exact same Google Doc that the City Dems have been promoting:

In other words, Democrats in the city of St. Louis are apparently actively working to build the email lists of Rex Sinquefield, even as Rex is trying to push through a mega sales tax bill that would eliminate income tax in the state and shift the burden entirely to sales tax. This bill would gut our already struggling state government and would shift the tax burden to the poor and working class and away from the wealthy.

Furthermore, one wonders if city officials are also agreeing to keep quiet about the mega sales tax in exchange for Rex's support. Will they sit out a fight on a bill that would damage state government and hurt the people who can least afford it, just like they did with Rex's earnings tax repeal in November?

One other thing I'd like to point out: this is not really about a question of "how liberal are you?" Reasonable people can disagree about issues, if they debate them honestly. This is an issue of transparency. If a deal has been made with Rex, we deserve to know. If email lists and contact information are going to Rex, we deserve to know. That is about nothing more than the City Dems being honest and upfront about their dealings. We deserve that much, as do organizations like the DNC who are trying to decide if St. Louis is the best place for a national convention.

Of course, it's not too late. Any of those officials and operatives can now clear up this situation by declaring (1) that none of the emails collected from the Google Document will be used for a future Sinquefield campaign and (2) that they will vocally stand strong against Sinquefield's disastrous mega sales tax proposal and other attempts to destroy the government. I await their response, and I think it's fairly obvious how to interpret silence.

Update: A friend pointed out that the City Dems, as in the official group known as "The City Dems," did activiely oppose Proposition A in November. Apologies to that group and Brian Wahby for incorrectly characterizing their previous involvement. However, prominent politicians, most notably Slay and his crew, did not. I've changed the title and text to reflect that fact. It also doesn't explain why the City Dems would now be helping to promote Sinquefield's organization and building his email list.

What's the Cost of Local Control?

Like most St. Louis residents, I'm in favor of St. Louis having control of it's own police force, at least if provisions are included that ensure that the city can't raid police officers' pensions. Why should our police, unlike pretty much any other group in the country, be accountable only to a state board that might not care about the city of St. Louis and might not be familiar with it even if they do care?(I'm not saying this is true of the current board: only that the potential exists) So, in my mind, local control makes a lot of sense.

However, I do want to raise a few red flags about the coalition that has been organizing around this issue. Jamilah Nasheed, who was once described as one of Mayor Slay's "fiercest critics," is now retweeting Slay and Jeff Rainford regularly. Maybe this is not a big deal. As they always say about people trying to get things done in politics: "no permanent friends and no permanent enemies: only permanent interests"

But slightly more suspicious is the support of the effort from Rex Sinquefield and the Missouri GOP. Rex, of course, is behind the earnings tax repeal that would gut St. Louis City government, and behind efforts to eliminate income tax in favor of increases in sales taxes, which would gut state government and place a much larger burden on the poor and working class while allowing Rex's fellow millionaires to continue to stockpile money.

There are different ways of viewing Sinquefield. One might think that he views the Missouri political system as one of his chess matches, and he cynically uses his money to move politicians around like pawns. In this case, I think we'd want to be very suspicious of this new collaboration, and ask what exactly he's getting in return. On the other hand, you might look at Rex and think that he really is a True Believer in his right-wing anti-government ideology, and is more misguided than cynically trying to manipulate things. In this case, you might think that he just donated $300,000 to the local control cause because it fits with his ideals about government, and he's not necessarily expecting anything in return.

But even if you think that Uncle Rex might be willing to do some good for St. Louis without asking for some pints of blood in return, you couldn't possibly think the same about our current GOP controlled legislature. They are led by birthers, conspiracy theorists, and people with extreme hatred of anything to the left of Sarah Palin. The Republican house already voted in favor of local control; why would they do this unless they expected something in return?

What might be the exchange? I have no idea, but there are certainly extremely important issues up for discussion and Republicans are only a few votes away from a veto-proof majority. Is local control important? Yes. Is it more important that stopping the sales tax? No way. Is it more important than stopping Republicans from destroying our unions by making Missouri a right-to-work-for-less state? Definitely not. Is it more important than making sure Republicans don't game the redistricting process? Nope. I don't know if this new coalition has anything to do with these issues, but it's worth keeping an eye out.

The new "grassroots" group that is funded by Rex's $300,000 is called "A Safer Missouri." Their facebook page, which has been around for a while, only had six members when I checked. Two of those members were local Democrats Martin Casas (of the Young Democrats of St. Louis) and Nancy Rice. Ben Muehleisen has worked with Sinquefield's groups in the past.

Both Casas and Rice, along with Rainford and Slay, are big supporters of the move to charter schools and away from public schools, one of the issues Sinquefield is best known for. My guess is that this collaboration might have something to do with future cooperation on pushing for the charter school movement, arguably at the expense of public education.

I don't want to sound all "the sky is falling!" here. I'm in support of local control, and I don't have any evidence that Rex's support is in exchange for some blood money. However, I think it's important to raise the flag now, so that our future understanding will be informed. If there is any indication that some of the Democrats involved in this process fail to push back against Rex's right-wing agenda (like many did during the Prop A campaign), this will be useful background.

Update: Here's a response from Martin Casas, which makes sense to me:

Coalitions are a beautiful thing, but they are different then a circle of friends. THIs IS A HUGE ISSUE FOR THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS, and it's a civil rights issue. People frequently disagree on many issues, but when there is a common goal we have to come together and fight for it. This is the kind of thing we ask our representatives to do: to put the welfare of the people ahead of any of their personal feelings. Adam, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this.

I can understand why Martin supports this. But what still puzzles me is why Sinquefield, the MO GOP, and even Carl Bearden (formerly of Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity) would support this. I'd really like to know what they're trying to get from this.