Gov. Jay Nixon waited five days after a black teen was shot dead to visit the area. The Late Show with Jay Nixon

Sometimes a politician’s biggest sin is failing to show up.

Gov. Jay Nixon waited five days after a black teen was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, to visit the scene. By then, protesters had been marching for days, police had rolled in military-grade equipment, the president was calling for calm and the national media were all over the story.


Meanwhile, on Twitter and on the ground, people were asking: “Where is Jay Nixon?”

In an age of 24-hour news cycles and 140-character tweets, Nixon’s late arrival felt like an eternity. Voters expect to have executive boots on the ground, and quickly, in times of crisis. Some observers, including fellow Democrats, said Nixon had dealt a significant blow to his career — the same way poor timing had hurt other politicians in crises past.

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“His political deafness is staggering — he came, he came late,” said Chris King, the managing editor of the St. Louis American, an influential African American newspaper. Up to this point, “I think he did almost everything wrong.”

After announcing Wednesday night that he was cancelling his scheduled appearance at the state fair, Nixon traveled Thursday to Ferguson and other areas near St. Louis to defend the rights of protesters and media covering the events, while also warning against against “lawlessness.” He announced later in the day that Missouri Highway Patrol would be taking over security from local officials.

“This is a place where people work, go to school, raise their families, and go to church. A diverse community. A Missouri community,” he said. “But lately it’s looked a little bit more like a war zone and that’s unacceptable,”

In describing his visit to the scene of the shooting, Nixon noted that the dead teen, Michael Brown, was “a young man, a man not much younger than my own sons.”

( PHOTOS: Images from unrest in Ferguson)

The governor’s spokesman stressed that Nixon has been deeply involved in responding to the restlessness in Ferguson in a variety of capacities all week.

“It’s important to note that on Monday morning, the governor requested the independent investigation by [the Justice Department] and issued a public statement on the situation; that he spoke at a community forum to a standing room only crowd at a church in [nearby] north St. Louis on Tuesday; and that he’s been in frequent communication with local leaders from the start,” press secretary Scott Holste said in an email.

But in politics, nothing beats being there.

The coverage in recent days has been dominated by images of heavily armed police complete with tanks, protesters dodging billowing smoke and tear gas and reports of journalists being arrested. There have been few counterbalancing images of a governor taking visible action to bring the situation under control.

Other pols have also learned the lesson the hard way.

A slow response to a 1969 snowstorm nearly derailed the administration of New York City Mayor John Lindsay, an oft-repeated case study in municipal circles; more recently, and perhaps most prominently, there was the case of former President George W. Bush and his slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama on Ferguson: 'Now is the time for peace')

Meanwhile, a proactive handling of a crisis can boost a politician tremendously, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie saw after he took decisive action during Superstorm Sandy (though he had plenty of warning about the storm). Nixon himself has earned plaudits in the past for his handling of a tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri.

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who is now president of the liberal Center for American Progress Action, said it’s not always helpful to be hyper-critical in these cases, but that “it’s important to act quickly in such a situation to try to reassure people, to try to calm the situation, to try to prevent an escalation of tensions.”

“Some may think that’s not the governor’s responsibility,” he said “…but it seemed obvious rather early on that, at least in my judgment, these local leaders were not providing the kind of reassuring leadership that was needed given the death of this young man and the understandable reaction that followed.”

Other observers in the state noted that it wasn’t immediately apparent that the situation was going to escalate so dramatically, but most agreed that it was evident sooner than Thursday.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized on Tuesday that Nixon’s “every instinct is to dodge bad news whenever possible. Sorry, governor. But you asked for the job.”

One protester in the area Thursday carried a picture of Nixon’s head with the words “Missing in Action” written on his face.

A longtime Missouri Democratic operative said the incident has likely tanked any future political career for Nixon, who is term-limited. His name has come up now and then as a possible long-shot presidential contender, but what was considered more likely, said the source, was that he might challenge Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) in 2016.

“If he had any plans to run for U.S. Senate in 2016, this has ended that, unless he’s able to be seen as the conciliator,” which is a tall order at this point, the veteran operative said, adding: “This will not be quickly forgotten. This is not over yet … every day it continues and he’s not in the middle of it trying to solve the problem is a year, in political terms, off his life.”

It doesn’t help that Nixon has had a rocky history with the African-American community.

The relatively conservative Democrat won 92 percent of the black vote in his 2012 reelection, a state President Barack Obama lost.

Still, some black political leaders harbor resentment from the 1990s, when, as state attorney general, Nixon was involved in backing an end to some school desegregation programs. That played a role in his loss to former Republican Sen. Kit Bond in 1998 and has come up again in recent days.

“The governor has been absent from the minority community his entire political career,” said Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, speaking on MSNBC and referencing that controversy. She has been one of Nixon’s most vociferous critics, a crowd whose ranks have grown in recent days.

“My suggestion to [Nixon and others], if I could suggest something to them: they need to act now, they need to be out here,” said Willie Royster, a local comedian. “I know people are fearing for their safety, but they need to see it for themselves.”

But Kelvin Simmons, who previously worked for Nixon and was for a time the highest-ranking African American in state government, warned that the situation is not only tragic, but also near-unprecedented for that part of the state. It was important to give officials dealing with the situation time to get their bearings, he said.

“Anybody can be critical of timing, but at the same time, you want to get it right,” Simmons said. “When there is no playbook that is written on, ‘Here’s how you handle this,’ people do their very best, to the best of their abilities.”

Nicholas P. Fandos contributed from Ferguson, Missouri.

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