Bond capitalized on the division within the urban Democratic base and beat Nixon by 10 points. The margin of victory was boosted by support from the African- American community.

“The Bond campaign worked early to lock in as many endorsements of prominent African American leaders they could,” said John Hancock, the former executive director of the Missouri Republican Party. “They were more successful than any Republican candidate I can remember.”

Hancock added, “You had the good feelings toward Bond and the bad feelings toward Nixon.”

***

Nearly a decade later, those feelings are as raw as ever as Nixon deals with the crisis in Ferguson.

For three nights, St. Louis County police engaged in aggressive confrontations with protesters. It wasn’t until four days after the shooting and subsequent protests that Nixon ordered the Highway Patrol, operated by Nixon’s Missouri Department of Public Safety, to take the lead.

State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal accused the governor of being “AWOL.”

Nixon’s office disputes the claim, saying that he stayed abreast of the situation through briefings by the Highway Patrol and conversations with St. Louis County leaders. The office also notes that Nixon requested an investigation by the Department of Justice.

With TV and social media continuing to stream images from Ferguson that seemed more appropriate to uprisings in foreign squares, Nixon tapped the Highway Patrol’s Captain Ron Johnson, a Ferguson-area native and an African American, to lead the effort. The night after the patrol took over, Ferguson was calm. That was shattered the following day when local police released a video allegedly showing Michael Brown robbing a store.

That was a turning point for Nixon. “Since Thursday, when he announced that the Highway Patrol would take the lead on security responsibilities in Ferguson, this has been, quite literally, a round-the-clock effort for the governor,” said Scott Holste, Nixon’s press secretary.

State Rep. Tommie Pierson, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and a St. Louis minister, defends Nixon’s handling of the protests. “The governor is responding the best he knows how—the same as me and others. Nobody knows exactly how to respond to this thing to make it right,” he said, though he acknowledged that the desegregation issue is the basis for mistrust by some in the African-American community.

Nixon fared much better in his handling of another national-level crisis—the 2011 tornado that devastated Joplin, a town of 50,000 in Missouri’s southwest corner. Carol Stark, editor of the Joplin Globe, recalled that Nixon was on the ground in Joplin the morning immediately after the storm, and visited regularly throughout the summer.

“When the families of the dead stood outside a makeshift morgue begging for the release of their loved ones’ bodies, Nixon quickly stepped in, putting the Highway Patrol in charge. I remember it as one of the many transforming moments in that terrible disaster,” Stark said. “It was the action of a true leader.”

The tragedy helped Nixon in his 2012 reelection campaign, and brought him national attention. He beat his rival in some of the reddest counties in the state, winning over voters from rural Republican strongholds and urban liberal centers alike.

When Nixon leaves the governor’s mansion in January 2017, he’ll be 60, and some have begun to ask what’s next. Nixon denies that he’s pondering a run for national office, but last month, he went on a publicized trip to Iowa, where few, if any, politicians go by accident. He has said he’s ready for Hillary if the former first lady decides to run, but has also said it’s his belief that America needs a “voice from the heartland.”

Those pushing the “Nixon For America” narrative point to a shift left by the conservative Democrat after his reelection. He’s embraced Medicaid expansion, a key pillar of Obamacare. He endorsed gay marriage. And after letting four anti-abortion laws go into effect without his signature in his first term, he vetoed a measure that would triple the state’s 24-hour waiting period for the procedure.

In his final term, Nixon has been on the defensive in the state legislature. Republicans hold a supermajority, which makes it easy to block his agenda and harder for him to sustain his vetoes. Still, the governor has managed to find successes. Last year, he organized opposition to a steep tax cut that he argued would cripple the state’s budget, and has renewed a similar effort this summer with the support of local education officials and local government leaders.

As Nixon is looking at his political future in 2016 and beyond, Joplin’s Stark, who has endorsed him repeatedly throughout his political career, admits that the governor may have blown his chance.

“In Ferguson, Nixon could have provided that much-needed leadership within the first 24 hours of the looting,” she said. “He missed that moment that so defined him in Joplin.”