The Fourth of July holiday week found both Gina Mitten and Steve Butz pounding the pavement through a heat warning, making their final case in a Democratic primary where their priorities are often at odds.
The two are competing in the Aug. 4 primary for the 4th Senate District seat. And with no Republican in the race, the winner will replace term-limited state Sen. Karla May of St. Louis.
Mitten, an attorney who represented parts of St. Louis city and county in the Missouri House for eight years and now lives in Richmond Heights, said Butz’s opposition to abortion rights pulled her into the race.
“If Representative Butz and I had a similar voting record, I wouldn’t be in this race,” she said. “I would feel comfortable having myself and my daughter or myself and my community represented by him.”
Butz, an insurance agent, current state representative and lifelong resident of south St. Louis, counters with policing at every chance, noting that his opponent lacks the backing of law enforcement. The lawn of the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association headquarters in south city is staked full of Butz’s campaign signs.
While abortion is an issue, Butz maintains it’s not the issue.
“When people asked me that I said, with your own family and friends, or your Fourth of July party, or whatever, did (abortion) come up? No,” he said. “ … Did illegal fireworks come up? Yep. Did slow response time, ’cause we don’t have enough cops come up for that? Yep.”
As of mid-April, when the most recent quarterly financial report came out, Butz had about $183,000 cash on hand compared to about $100,000 for Mitten.
Butz has been endorsed by St. Louis city and county law enforcement, as well as the local firefighters unions, and his top donors include retired investor and GOP megadonor Rex Sinquefield, the Missouri Insurance Coalition and a pair of political action committees tied to lobbyist and former House Speaker Steve Tilley.
Mitten is endorsed by several unions, including local chapters of the American Federation of Teachers, the UAW, CWA and Teamsters. By far her largest donor is a PAC funded by Missouri trial attorneys.
Roots in St. Louis
When he was a young adult, Butz’s mother made him a sign that read “Steve Butz for Alderman.” It still sits in his Holly Hills home in south St. Louis. His insurance business is a couple miles down the road in St. Louis County.
He never ran for that seat. But when his state House seat opened up soon after the last of his six children moved away for college, he ran — first losing in 2016 and then winning the 2018 primary by just 90 votes.
He says he’s good at cultivating and maintaining relationships, and even Mitten said she still uses him as her insurance agent. The two served together in the House.
But the relationship he leans on hardest is with the city itself. Mitten lives in Richmond Heights, a few blocks from the city line on the county side of the historically contentious city/county divide. Butz underscores this point often.
“I think (Mitten) would try her best, but I think you have to have your roots in the city of St. Louis,” he said. “You have to be a city resident for decades to bring the passion that this city is gonna need.”
Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis branch of the NAACP, who has not endorsed either candidate, is unpersuaded.
“I don’t think Gina, because she moved a little bit over the land, makes her less of a St. Louisan than Steve,” Pruitt said. “I don’t think that makes her a carpetbagger all of a sudden.”
Roots in activism
Mitten was raised by an activist mother and a minister father. A life of public service through politics was only natural, she said. She was door-knocking for President Jimmy Carter before she was old enough to vote. She joined her first protest after President Ronald Reagan fired thousands of air traffic controllers on strike.
She spent most of her childhood in University City, but moved to California with her mother after dropping out of high school. In her early 20s, she moved back to St. Louis and decided to pursue a career as a lawyer. Two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. She raised two children while earning a law degree from Washington University. With what little free time she had left, she and her husband joined a local Democratic group.
In 2012, after redistricting reshaped the 83rd House district lines, she ran for office, winning her primary with 65% of the vote. She never faced a primary challenger again. She served in Democratic leadership and was appointed by then-House Speaker Todd Richardson to the committee that investigated former Gov. Eric Greitens.
Mitten was then appointed as an administrative law judge in 2021. She was fired in May 2024. Her termination letter stated that she had four backlogged cases, including one that was 445 days late.
An attack ad from Butz’s campaign accuses Mitten of failing injured workers by issuing late decisions.
Mitten says her firing was political, adding that the court never litigated whether she met her deadlines, but rather focused on whether she was denied due process.
“I submitted my materials on time every year,” she told The Independent. “And I never received a single vote of no confidence for the committee that was formed in order to monitor the work of administrative law judges.”
Mitten brought a wrongful termination lawsuit and lost. She’s now appealing that decision.
Police takeover
Last year, Butz was among only seven Democrats, including three others who represent St. Louis County, who broke with their party and voted in favor of a public safety bill that put governing power of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in the hands of a state board rather than local officials.
The city previously won back oversight of its police department in 2013 after roughly 150 years of state control.
“Over the past, I’m going to say 10 years, there’s been an increase in lawlessness in the city of St. Louis, both with traffic and certainly gunfire, I’ll just say those two things, that have made the city much less safe and certainly people feel much less safe.” …. Butz said last year during House debate on the legislation, adding that he is good friends “with about 50 officers” and that morale in the department was low.
Butz told The Independent that this Senate seat will carry outsized weight over future appointments of the city police board.
“This Senate position is going to have way above average input into who those future police board members are going to be,” he said.
The Board of Police Commissioners now has six members — the mayor of St. Louis and five people appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. The law also requires the city to spend a certain amount of its budget on the department, causing rifts between cash-strapped city officials and first responders.
Butz acknowledges the disagreements but stands by his vote.
“Everyone who’s lived in the city of St. Louis knows how important it is that we recruit and retain officers so that the police department can do its job,” Butz said. “They’re understaffed and underpaid.”
He points to Kansas City, where the state-appointed police board — after Missouri voters approved a budget increase — graduated its largest class in a decade this January. Butz hopes for similar results in St. Louis.
Mitten said she understands the department’s struggles and how a lack of support can translate to public safety problems. But she said she wouldn’t have voted on such a “half-baked” bill, calling it unfair to residents.
St. Louis City Alderwoman Daniela Velazquez, who represents part of District 4, said her constituents overwhelmingly support local control. Velazquez is among several St. Louis officials who have sued over the police board.
“Most city elected officials opposed the state’s takeover of SLMPD because we believed it was bad for the city,” said Velazquez, who endorsed Mitten. “State legislators representing St. Louis should be fighting for our city, not voting against it.”
Mitten has also called a $1,000 donation from police board president Chris Saracino a conflict of interest. Butz called Saracine a “lifelong buddy” and former high school classmate.
State Rep. Del Taylor, a St. Louis Democrat, was willing to set his disagreements about Butz’s vote on state control of the police board aside to endorse him.
“Both will do a great job of supporting us,” Taylor said. “I just think Rep. Butz having started businesses, managed businesses, and managed teams of employees, I think he has the experience to guide St. Louis to better economic times.”
The future of abortion
Last year in Jefferson City, Butz spoke out against what will now appear on the November ballot as Amendment 3, — the legislature’s proposal to again ban nearly all abortions — calling the legislature-proposed amendment to again ban nearly all abortions a waste of time and taxpayer money sure to lose at the ballot box.
But votes he cast in 2019 and this year continue to follow him.
In 2019, Butz was one of only three Democrats to vote in favor of a “heartbeat” bill that included the trigger law that banned all abortions with limited exceptions when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. He later voted against the final bill.
Butz was also among a handful of House Democrats in 2025 who approved a bill in which healthcare providers could face the death penalty if they don’t provide life-saving care to a baby born after an attempted abortion. The bill Butz supported failed to clear the Senate last year. When lawmakers sent the bill to the governor’s desk this year, Butz voted present.
Butz, who is Catholic, said he personally opposes abortion but supports exceptions, including for medical emergencies, rape and incest.
Former state Rep. LaDonna Appelbaum, a Democrat from St. Louis, said she served with both Mitten and Butz and was routinely disappointed by how Butz voted against reproductive rights.
“That just put a thorn in my side,” Appelbaum said. “We need someone we can absolutely count on 100% to vote for women’s healthcare choices.”
Nearly 80% of Senate District 4 voted in favor of abortion rights in 2024, said Maggie Olivia, with Abortion Action Missouri, which has endorsed Mitten.
“We’re so used to politicians turning around and trying to pull the rug out from under voters,” Olivia said, “Especially in this district, with this intense level of support for abortion rights, we deserve representation that we can trust to make the right vote every time.”
Butz has also stated publicly that he donates to pregnancy resources centers and claims the state’s tax credit for his donations. But he voted against a bill in 2025 that aimed to increase the tax credit for pregnancy resources centers from 70% to 100%, saying it no longer constituted “charitable giving.”
Democratic state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern of Kansas City endorsed Butz, nodding to his work ethic as part of the superminority where she said outworking and outmaneuvering Republican opponents is mandatory to make progress.
She isn’t worried about his voting record on abortion, one she said has evolved to align more with voters. Views on abortion, even among the Democratic caucus, are varied and complex, she said.
“What I know from working with Steve is that he’s always a team player,” Nurrenbern said. “And that’s one of the most important things that I see moving forward.”