Talk About Not Investing in Home

As this ad runs on TV featuring a clip of Aldermanic President Jim Shrewsbury saying how he deliberately does not invest in the City of St. Louis, his latest campaign finance reports show he remains committed to that philosophy.

Of the $289,221.41 that his campaign has poured into this race in the last 30 days, more than 80% of that was paid to out-of-town firms.

Shrewsbury’s mailers appear to have been printed by a Washington D.C.-based firm called The Strategy Group for $23,817.95. While his campaign commercial appears to have been produced and placed on local TV by a Denver-based company called Media Strategies. All told, more that $235,000 was paid to non-local companies.

In all fairness, much of the $190,000 (less at least the normal 15% fee for media buying) paid to Media Strategies for Shrewsbury’s media buy will probably pass back through St. Louis through the three largest television stations (KSDK, KMOV, and KTVI), most of which (if not all) are owned by out-of-town companies.

But some local vendors did get a few dollars from the Shrewsbury campaign. Printer Creative Litho got $331.47 for a small job, web designer Brian Marston received $2,500 for work on the campaign website, and Aboussie & Associates, the firm of longtime political operative Joyce Aboussie received $10,000 for “voter contact“.

*Shrewsbury’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Alderman Lewis Reed, is a client of local firm A.D. French & Associates