Nov. 7, 2006, resonates in my memory for more than one reason.
It was the birthday of our oldest son, who, at the time, was getting acquainted with his own 6-week-old son – our first grandchild.
An evening with family would have been a great way to spend that Tuesday night, but instead I was at my desk at the Leader, part of a skeleton crew covering the general election.
The returns were mostly humdrum, with county Democrats doing what they usually did in those days – squashing their Republican challengers just like we do those pesky crickets that try to invade our homes in late fall.
Newsfolk are required to stay detached about Election Day winning and losing (just the facts, ma’am). But as the evening wore on, I was crestfallen by the race for 10th District associate circuit judge.
Republican Darrell Missey, the only elephant serving in the 23rd Judicial Circuit (which covers Jefferson County) looked like he might lose.
Missey had run a cagey campaign in 2002 to win against the Democratic incumbent, and then performed so well in handling juvenile matters over the next four years that he’d drawn praise and endorsements from even Democratic judges and lawyers.
Juvenile cases are confidential, so it’s hard for a judge overseeing them to attract attention. But Missey had established the county’s first truancy court and had gotten involved in other efforts to address the problems that made our county one of the busiest juvenile venues in the state.
Regardless, Missey drew a Democratic challenger who viewed him as vulnerable in then-deep-blue Jefferson County.
I wanted Missey to win, and by the end of the night he had, barely – by 1.5 percentage points – the only Jefferson County Republican to survive that year’s Democratic Party lawn mower.
Ironically, the 2006 general election was Missouri’s first after a new state law prohibited voters from casting a “straight-party ticket,” in which a single mark could register support for all candidates in one party.
With the change, voters who wanted all Democrats, for example, had to vote for each individually. And that’s what they mostly did that day, but enough made an exception for Missey to carry him to a second victory.
He never again faced a ballot challenge before leaving the bench in January to become director of Missouri’s Children’s Division.
I remember Nov. 7, 2006, as evidence of voters too often choosing party over candidate. That stubborn habit had almost cost the county a superlative judge.
But Missey focuses on the gratitude he felt that night.
“As a guy who studied politics (he earned a degree in political science before going to law school), I was aware of what trouble I was in – not because of me – it was just a tough year to be a Republican,” he said last week. “People were reacting to the Iraq war, and I was satisfied to have survived.
“They voted for every Democrat and me. I’m so honored and grateful to all of them for having paid attention to my work.”
Over the course of decades, Missey was one of only a handful of Republican candidates who made it through the county’s Democratic Party juggernaut.
But that was about to change.
Four years later, I was again at my desk, covering the Nov. 2, 2010, general election.
In gobsmacking fashion, Republicans suddenly took control of the lawn mower. They ran over Democratic incumbents, took the brand-new county executive job, six of seven seats on the new County Council and several state legislative positions.
The transformation has continued over the last 12 years and now there are NO Jefferson County Democrats holding county or state elective positions, except for former Democrats who thought it best to change parties (of course, this had happened in earlier days, too, when Republican-minded candidates ran as faux Democrats).
A giant shoe is on the other foot, and it looks like it’s going to fit for a while.
I was astounded back in 2010, the biggest election night surprise in my career, but Missey said he knew Republicans had a big day coming.
“It was just a matter of time,” he said.
He noted that when he won his race in 2002, 40 percent of the Jefferson County electorate already identified as Republican.
“Every new subdivision” grew that number, Missey said. And when the Chrysler assembly plants in Fenton were targeted for closure in 2009, it blunted the United Auto Workers’ influence in Jefferson County.
“That was the tipping point,” Missey said.
Missey talks partisan politics with assurance backed up by astute analysis (I loved our conversation) but there’s one place he fervently believes should be devoid of partisan labels – the judicial bench.
“I insist on that more than anything; we should not have labels at all,” he said.
So, when Democratic judicial incumbents kept falling to Republicans, some of whom were less qualified, Missey said he began advising a change in party label.
“They (the Dems) were more conservative than I am,” he said. “Several of them did that (jumped parties) at my suggestion.”
Back in 2002, Missey believed Jefferson County was not really a Democratic stronghold.
“We were an independent county that voted Democratic,” he said.
Are we now an independent county that votes Republican?
I didn’t ask Missey that question, and I don’t know the answer. But here’s what I wish we had: A climate where a gifted Democrat could eke out a victory, just as Republican Missey did 20 years ago, when he was on the dark side of the equation.
It could happen someday, perhaps while I’m still breathing.
In politics, what goes around comes around.
