This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 17, 2010 - Two weeks after the GOP's broad victories in Missouri and elsewhere, the state Republican Party is already prepping for 2012 by taking aim at the state's two top Democrats -- U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and Gov. Jay Nixon -- who both will be on the ballot in 2012.
Both have been emphasizing their records as political centrists, but Republicans are already at work trying to cast the duo as cautious politicians disliked by some within their own party.
In an attack sent out today, for example, the state GOP poked Nixon over the grumblings from "disillusioned Democrats" who are irked with the governor's low-key public presence during this year's campaigns that saw huge Democratic losses.
One of those angry Democrats is state Rep. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, who asserted that "as of today" she won't support Nixon's re-election because, in her view, he has "catered too far to the right" and worked too hard to appease Republicans.
"He is pandering too much to the outstate areas and Republicans," Nasheed said. "He is moving too far away from his base."
Her outspoken criticism comes as the governor's campaign staff is planning his first major fundraising event in St. Louis in at least a year. The Nov. 30 event at the Renaissance Grand Hotel is among several planned around the state in recent weeks, but campaign aides say the events are private affairs and are not any sort of official kickoff, which will come much later.
Nixon's campaign has yet to respond to Nasheed's comments. But his allies have noted that Democrats across the country took a beating on Nov. 2. And there's the fact that Nixon trounced his GOP rival for governor, Kenny Hulshof, by 19 percentage points in 2008 -- even as the state went for Republican John McCain for president.
Still, Nasheed's public complaints mesh with some private venting by other area Democrats upset over the party's drubbing Nov. 2 and worried about a 2012 repeat. The difference, she said, is that "Nobody is going to be as blatant as I am."
Nasheed renewed her particular concerns about Nixon's effort -- backed by some Republicans -- to curb the use of state historic and low-income construction tax credits, which Mayor Francis Slay and other St. Louis Democrats say is crucial to the city's redevelopment and the state's economic health. Nixon has maintained for some time that the financially strapped state can't afford to continue the current pace of tax breaks.
Nasheed also acknowledged that she is angry over the governor's action last year to cut from the state budget some money that she had sought to help counter the city's huge school-dropout rate, especially in low-income neighborhoods. If state money isn't spent up front on education, she said, it's "spent on the back end" when errant dropouts end up in jail or prison.
The last straw, as Nasheed sees it, was Nixon's decision to play a largely behind-the-scenes role in this fall's Democratic campaigns. The governor did help some Democrats raise money, and did appear at late-campaign get-out-the-vote rallies.
But although the titular head of his party, Nixon was not a mainstay on the campaign trail. He explained in late October that he was focusing primarily on doing his job -- which the governor said was what voters expected him to do. He contended that a strong performance as governor was the best way to help his party.
Nasheed sees Nixon's lack of political action differently. "I think he left them out to dry," she said, referring to many of her Democratic colleagues. Twelve Democratic incumbents lost around the state, although Nasheed (who was unopposed) wasn't one of them. "If he would have come out, the results could have been different," she said.
She asserted, for example, that Nixon distanced himself early from Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who was trounced in her bid for the U.S. Senate by Republican Roy Blunt. The governor, said Nasheed, "threw her under the bus."
A concern among some area African-American Democrats, she continued, was that Nixon -- in his quest to win outstate votes -- now would try to distance himself from President Barack Obama, who also is expected to be on the 2012 ballot and currently has low approval numbers in the state, according to all the latest public polls.
"If that happens, that will really hurt (Nixon) in the African-American community," she said.
Nixon has had a difficult relationship with some city African-American Democrats, going back almost 20 years. In his early days as Missouri attorney general, Nixon had backed a move -- also sought by then-Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr., the city's first African-American mayor -- to end the state's financial role in the longstanding regional school desegregation program.
Although Bosley didn't generate much public criticism, Nixon did. U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., sought to exploit a perceived rift during his successful re-election contest in 1998 against Nixon, then the U.S. Senate nominee.
Since then, Nixon has been helped by his longstanding political and personal friendship with U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., the region's senior member of Congress and an African-American.
But Nasheed's comments could reopen some old wounds, at the same time that some city Democrats -- black and white -- are still reeling from the Nov. 2 losses statewide.
The state Republican Party (which is witnessing its own internal strains) has made clear that it's eager to take advantage of any Democratic discord -- and feed it. Jabbed the GOP today: "Just like he did during the 2010 campaign cycle, as governor, Nixon has remained on the sidelines whenever the going got tough."
