It was September 1924.
Spinster sisters Eliza and Lucille Alter of St. Louis, ages 96 and 84, left their St. Louis home on a bright Thursday morning, alone and on foot.
On a mission, they reached their destination four blocks away and did something that was unusual for women of the time – they registered to vote.
A St. Louis newspaper found the Alters’ registration novel enough to write a feature story about it. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which extended voting to women, had been ratified in 1920.
Eliza and Lucille’s great-great-niece – my cousin, Carolyn Huskey Scott of
De Soto – emailed me a copy of the news story a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the glimpse into history, and the vision of those two old ladies, putting one foot in front of the other, making their way to sign up.
But when I spent part of the day sifting through campaign materials for the now-in-the-books Aug. 2 primary election, I saw something in that 98-year-old story that speaks to here and now.
It was a quote from Eliza, the elder of the sisters.
“There remains no excuse for voters being ignorant or lax,” she told the reporter.
And how, in 2022.
There were campaign ads in newspapers, on TV, the radio and the internet. There were fliers in mailboxes and literature stuffed in front doors. There were town halls, debates and ice cream socials.
Leader staffer Steve Taylor, who collected campaign pieces on the job and from his home mailbox, gave me a box of fliers and ads to review.
Whew! (Literally, some of that stuff smelled pretty bad, as negative political advertising, unfortunately, continues its rotten reign.)
But there were positives in the stack, too. Some of the ads focused on a candidate’s accomplishments and ideas rather than the opponent’s (too-often fabricated) negatives.
And in the category of pure information, I was particularly proud of the Voters Guide that Taylor put together, which allowed candidates to share their views at no expense to them. Most did their part and completed their surveys. Bravo!
Since opening in 1994, the Leader has compiled Voters Guides for every April municipal election and the August primary and November general elections, both of which run on two-year cycles. During the height of the pandemic, expenses forced the guide out of the paper’s print version to our website only, but the guide has been back in print twice now, with the Jefferson County Growth Association sponsoring a portion of the cost and the Leader picking up the rest.
“We’re delighted to be back in print (with the guide),” Leader publisher Peggy Scott said. “And our readers have told us they are, too.
“I think it’s very important. It gives voters the opportunity to find out information about all of the candidates in one place that is easy to read and easy to access.”
As usual, the Aug. 2 guide provided succinct resumes and candidates’ responses to questions on local issues.
That’s what many of those pervasive campaign pieces and broadcasts did not do. Some were misleading, some were malicious, and some were ridiculous. State Senate candidate Dan Shaul riding on a tandem bike with Nancy Pelosi? In Taylor’s story about political action committee spending, Shaul, who lost his race to Mary Elizabeth Coleman, was a good sport about that ad, noticing that the anonymous Photoshopper gave him a better-than-life physique.
My husband and I found humor in the buzzwords employed so often by so many. Candidates running for local jobs with specific skill sets wanted us to know they love their guns, their unborn babies, their God and their former president.
That’s all fine, but kind of irrelevant considering the jobs they were seeking.
Fighting “illegal immigration” showed up in several ads and I wondered which border the local politicians planned to protect – the one with Mexico, or maybe the one between Jefferson County and Ste. Genevieve County. Even the line between Festus and Crystal City?
Dennis Gannon, who won his primary for re-election as Jefferson County Executive with a general election race ahead, gave the fight against illegal immigration top billing in at least one of his ads.
I’ve known Dennis for about four decades and I figured he’d be gracious if I asked him about it.
He was.
He said that line was a conscious choice.
“That’s something people have anxiety about,” he said. “You want to reassure them that you have the right mind about that.”
He acknowledged that the county doesn’t have a present problem with illegal immigration, but noted that the Mississippi River port he has worked hard for is coming and those jobs should be protected and added that I-55 can be a conveyor for undocumented people.
“When you do my job, you have to look at every angle,” Gannon said.
Well, OK.
I was relieved as the Aug. 2 returns rolled in. It looked like county voters had cut through the noise, the name-calling, the rhetoric.
Maybe it’s because I agreed with a lot of their choices, but it appeared they had done their homework, while posting a respectable turnout for a primary election without a major referendum (39,969 of 158,840 registered voters cast ballots).
If you can hear me, Eliza (who lived a vital life until a fracture turned fatal at age 101), I want you to know that Jefferson County voters on Aug. 2 were neither “ignorant or lax.”
