Police chief Sam Dotson

Police Chief Sam Dotson often has told political insiders and casual observers about his desire to be mayor. Yet the timing of his announcement last week to run for the office might have less to do with his mayoral aspirations than an effort to stay ahead of the posse.

Now that Francis Slay is leaving Room 200, after 16 years as mayor, several of Slay’s possible successors have cast doubt about Dotson’s future as police chief, provided he still holds that position when a new mayor is elected in April.

At least one candidate, Ald. Antonio French (D–20th), made it clear that if he becomes mayor, he’ll move to fire Dotson. “The city of St. Louis needs a new police chief,” French says. “Sam Dotson has wasted too much of his political capital defending failed policies, denying that we have a crime problem, blaming prosecutors and judges, violating the civil rights of peaceful demonstrators, and defending the actions of ‘bad apples.’"

Ald. Lyda Krewson (D-28th) says she will consider how Dotson is doing as police chief if she becomes mayor, then act accordingly. The Central West End Alderwoman calls crime the city’s “number one issue” and believes running the police department is a “24-seven, 365-days-a-year job.”

“As a city, we can’t continue down this path of increased violent crime,” says Krewson. “St. Louis needs and deserves a mayor and police chief who are on the same page working to keep us safe. That’s what local control of our police department was all about. It’s uncertain at this point whether I would keep Sam Dotson on as police chief, but will base that decision on what progress has been made on decreasing crime over the next six months and the chief’s new crime fighting plan. We need a police chief that both the mayor and city residents have confidence in.”

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones with her father, Virvus Jones, the city's former comptroller

Another mayoral candidate for the March primary, City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, suggests that it might be difficult to oust Dotson, though she plans to replace his boss.

"The only new mayor who could promise a new police chief would be Sam Dotson,” Jones says. “A little-noticed consequence of local control is the new job status of the police chief. Chief Dotson is now a civil servant, like the fire chief or the traffic commissioner. His boss, the Public Safety director, is not. I'd start by appointing an experienced person as director who will use every resource of city government, not just the police, to reduce the causes of crime."

The next mayor could direct the next director of Public Safety, who is a mayoral appointee, to replace the police chief, though “cause” for the firing would need to be shown. Local control provisions instituted in 2013 makes the police chief a civil servant, with some of the protections afforded that job classification. A bill passed in Jefferson City exempts public-safety employees from the ban on civil servants running for office. The city’s classification as a charter city, however, could give it the power to overrule that exemption and thereby prohibit public-safety employees from running for office.

Either way, a court challenge to that exemption or deliberation over a possible firing of Dotson running for office could take weeks, if not months.

From Police to Politics

Photography by Kevin A. Roberts Former Mayor Clarence Harmon

The last police chief to run for mayor was Clarence Harmon, who was elected as the city’s second black mayor in 1997. (Harmon defeated the city’s first black mayor, Freeman Bosley Jr., in that election. Harmon was a one-term mayor, losing in historic proportions for an incumbent mayor in a three-way race in 2001. Harmon only received 5 percent of the vote, finishing a distant third to Slay and Bosley.)

Dotson apparently had planned to wait until after the presidential election on November 8 to announce his mayoral candidacy, but when Mayor Francis Slay went public with his statement that Dotson should resign as police chief if he runs for mayor, Dotson changed his plans.

“I am a full-time police chief, and that will not change during this campaign,” Dotson said when he announced his candidacy last week. “Leading this department will remain my number one priority.”

He also took a swipe at his political opponents, saying he has “gone to work every day combating the biggest problem plaguing our city: violent crime. And I have done so with very little support from career politicians like the other announced candidates for mayor.”

French charges that on Dotson’s watch, “homicides and shootings have skyrocketed” as the chief “reduced the number of police officers...eliminated three police districts, and reassigned officers leaving the city’s most violent areas undermanned.” (Dotson could not be reached for comment.)

Dotson is a familiar face for many St. Louisans, though much of his notoriety comes from appearing at crime scenes while talking about murders, car jackings, and police shootings. He's also a frequent guest on conservative talk show host Mark Reardon’s afternoon program on KMOX and is often on The Allman Report on KDNL-TV, whose host is conservative Jamie Allman.

The Political Map

Dotson, Jones, French, Krewson, and Aldermanic President Lewis Reed have officially announced their candidacies. Collector of Revenue Gregg F.X. Daly has formed an exploratory committee, and Sate Sen. Jamileh Nasheed has not ruled out a possible mayoral run. Bill Haas, who's run for mayor four times before, is another possible entry.

The dynamics of the voting demographic promise to be vastly different than in 1993, the last time there was a large field of mayoral candidates. The traditional, binary black-white analysis has less significance than in years past. Today, gender, age, and desire for change have also risen to the fore.

The city’s demographic breakdown is 44 percent white, 49 percent African-American, and 7 percent “other,” which includes Latinos and Asians. On balance, the city population is younger than it was 24 years ago. The wild card appears to be the Bernie-crats—those looking for a change. Of the city’s 28 wards, 12 went for Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary. Hillary Clinton beat Sanders in the city, largely because she carried predominately African-American wards in North City. Many of the Bernie-crats in South City could lean toward Jones, as she's seen as a more progressive candidate, in part due to her opposition to public funding of the proposed riverfront NFL stadium. Krewson, French, and Reed supported the stadium bill.

Either a Jones or Krewson victory would give the city its first woman mayor. While Krewson is a veteran alderwoman from the Central West End, her previous two attempts at citywide office—for school board in 1989 and aldermanic president in 2002—fell short. Jones ran for treasurer and won and likely will win re-election this November. She previously served as a state representative. In a mayoral run, Jones could couple support from left-leaning Bernie-crats in South City with black voters for a broad base of support.

Daly, who's expected to decide whether to run in early November, has widespread name recognition, in part because of citizens writing checks to the Collector of Revenue's office.

Reed lost to Slay by 4,000 votes—54 percent to 44 percent—in 2013. This year, Reed experienced turbulence for his January appearance on Bob Romanik’s Grim Reaper AM radio show, when Romanik called Ald. Megan Green a string of derogatory names over her allegations about corruption and bribery during the lobbying for a new stadium.

Social media is sure to play a role, though that role will be ethereal and equivocal (as is often the case with online activity). Largely because of his rising profile during the events in Ferguson, French has 134,000 Twitter followers, though many of them are likely not registered voters in the city. Dotson has 13,000 followers, but that's probably due to his Twitter followers' concerns about crime, not Dotson's mayoral ambitions. Krewson’s mayoral Twitter account has 3,900 followers, and Jones has 5,000.

Those numbers could be significant or meaningless. Either way, the game is on.

The primary election for mayor is March 7. Filing for mayor begins November 28 and ends January 6. The general election is April 4.