Calloway Jumps Into Mayoral Recall Fight — Against the Recallers

Last week St. Louis County state representative candidate Don Calloway, Jr. penned a letter to the St. Louis American questioning the strategy of those involved in the effort to recall St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay. Calloway, an attorney at the firm Thompson Coburn (as of July, Calloway is now with the firm Lathrop & Gage) and a political newbie, is running in the district currently represented by Ester Haywood, who is term-limited.

Whatever justification there may be for the criticism [against Slay], the current recall effort is possibly the most horrendous thing the anti-Slay contingent could have come up with …

… A recall, similar to any other election, is a battle of campaign finance. The pro-Slay contingent will be raising lots of cash to combat the recall. The pro-recall committee doesn’t have the support of an established political base to give enough money to make the recall effort viable. Furthermore, political donations are public record. This will force otherwise-closeted supporters who could give big money to support a recall into the open, which many are not willing to risk.

The Slay for Mayor October 2007 quarterly report shows $318,000 on hand, every penny of which can be lawfully used to battle a recall. Strategically, the pro-recall committee has helped Slay, by giving him a golden opportunity to raise money that will eventually go to his 2009 reelection effort…

Most importantly, the pro-recall effort will weaken the moral authority and political viability of our most important advocacy group: the St. Louis Clergy Coalition.

Contrary to mainstream media reports, the recall is NOT a Clergy Coalition thing, it is a Rev. Douglas Parham thing. As president of the coalition, Parham had to have known that taking a stand as the face of the recall would paint the entire coalition as being in support. This is not the case. At the Oct. 21 recall rally, coalition members in support included Parham and the Rev. James T. Morris, who as a candidate for the state House can take political stances. Where were the Revs. Sammy Jones, Earl Nance Jr. or E.G. Shields? The recall is not a Clergy Coalition endeavor.

Calloway’s letter fails to mention that Rev. Shields is his campaign treasurer.

In response, local activist Eric Vickers, who is one of the organizers of the recall effort, wrote an open letter to Calloway defending the strategy and attacking the young candidate for his old thinking.

[Calloway’s] claim that the recall is infeasible because it “doesn’t have the support of an established political base,” is indicative of the racial paradox that has stymied the collective progress by blacks in this city. That paradox, simply put, is the difference between talk and action, the difference between black leaders being captive or being free.

Too many of this city’s black leaders (and blacks in positions like Calloway) live in a benign state of captivity in which they dare not confront the powers that crush beloved black men like Sherman George. They are as afraid today to face and fight a mayor as Frederick Douglas was initially with his slave master. They say it is a difference of means and methods and approaches, but in the end it is fear.

In the end, they are leaders who, as Douglas poetically put it, “profess to favor freedom and deprecate agitation,” but “want crops without plowing up the ground…rain without thunder and lightning.”

In the end, they will realize that Douglas is right about Mayor Slay: “power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Click here to read Calloway’s full letter.
Click here to read Vickers’ full response.