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What a week we had in St.

Louis and in Missouri with primary election results.

We're going to get into that, but first let's welcome the panelists starting with the media veteran herself Wendy Weise who's back from vacation and we're happy about that.

Bill McClellan from your St.

Louis Post-Dispatch, she's Sarah Fenske from St.

Louis Magazine, the 314 podcast and her daily newsletter and from the St.

Louis American Alvin Reed.

Want to give a quick shout out to Karen Romani who shared her beautiful artwork with us this month.

It's our rotating art exhibit here on the mantle behind me on the Donnybrook set.

Thank you very much Karen and you can learn more by going to Karen Romani's profile Alvin, we're going to start with you.

How do I explain this one?

Amendment 5, Missouri voters were asked to reduce their income taxes to zero and then increase the sales taxes or the tax on services that aren't currently taxed and like nothing I've seen before, every county voted against it.

Every one in the state of Missouri.

It was the governor's number one priority.

As a matter of fact, it lost 83 to 17 percent.

It just was completely rejected like nobody's business.

Yet the governor a day or so later said he's going to move forward and he's going to still try to cut taxes.

What the heck?

Well first, like the Associated Press called that race about an hour after the polls closed and it probably took them about an hour to actually just basically look at the figures and be certain.

So it had lost at five minutes after seven and people say a loss is a loss is a loss.

Now when you get whooped like that, you have to look at where did this idea come from?

What were we thinking about?

And I think the people of Missouri told the legislature and especially the governor these unthought -out kind of we don't know where they're coming from plans and who's backing them and they're a little they're a little too right -wingish for us even.

And all those people stood up and I think there's ramifications that will play out all the way through November.

What was really interesting, Mark Maxwell, the political friend and colleague of ours, he made the point that even though Missouri is such a staunchly Republican state, the Republican voters usually do not respond well to Republican policy.

I mean, when you think about that, that's kind of a, that's a really interesting take.

I don't think that this means that Governor Kehoe, when he said, I don't think this is, I'm not going to allow this to be extinguished.

I think it was, I'm just going to continue to keep the pledges and the promises that I made to the taxation is a number one issue for me.

I don't think he's going to be aggressively.

That's how I read that.

I feel like he kind of got the message.

Like he, I think he spent some political capital on this and he looks kind of foolish.

Like that was a drumming.

But he didn't say that.

Well, but nobody ever does.

I read that he was going to move forward with lowering taxes.

Yeah.

I think he will try to find something to shave off here or there.

I don't think you're going to see this like transformational play on to swap out the income tax entirely.

No.

You won't see that.

And I don't think it really hurts them.

I mean, it's.

I don't either.

You know, you look at the Democrats that have run for governor, Costa and then Nicole Galloway, they all were decent candidates and they all got rubbed.

I mean, the people might believe in the Democrats ideas, but they're just not going to.

No, I don't think he was going to lose if he decides to run for reelection.

I think he would win.

I think he would win.

But Republicans have to listen.

I mean, they definitely have to say, you know, the only way we could really mess this up is is not to ignore that.

Eighty three percent of the people came out and said you tried to hoist a bad idea off on us.

So, yes, I think it does change some things.

He loses big time and I don't know how he's going to recover.

Here's he was successful in uniting the state.

That's for sure.

He had rural and urban, black and white, Democrats and Republicans, all against his number one priority.

And he's going to bounce back from that.

Yes, yes, he is.

Charlie, you're the one that says.

As a candidate, but he will never like you said, like these wild schemes like this.

Oh, no, they'll be they will be filtered from now on.

I think it was the five.

I think it was the five year window.

I think it was that, you know, the legislators are going to decide how this is going to play out and what we're going to like.

They were twirling their hair.

That's right.

That I think made people really nervous.

So badly designed.

And like they did a terrible job marketing it.

Like it just felt like a failure.

It was too big.

That's for sure.

She always the 17 percent who voted for it, only voted for it because Alvin messed up.

Messed up.

I said I was going to.

No, no.

After going up, I called the governor and say it was my fault.

I mean, I mean, Bill, I want to ask you about Jake Zimmerman, who's the county assessor, but he won the Democratic primary for county executive beating Brian Williams, a state senator and another lawmaker, Angela Mosley.

The conventional wisdom says that Jake Zimmerman, who's white, lost because Mosley got into the race and there were two black candidates against one white and therefore Jake Zimmerman was victorious.

Are you buying that or did Brian Williams, who had a lot of money and backing, did he commit some errors?

Well, it's probably a little of both.

I mean, it's hard just Angela Mosley definitely drew votes away from Brian Williams, whether all those people would have voted for Brian if Mosley hadn't been running.

Who knows?

And I think Williams, like any candidate who loses an election, can look back and think of things he should have done better.

I thought that he should have been more aggressive in defending himself against Jake Zimmerman's attacks.

I mean, the flyers that I kept getting and I like Jake Zimmerman and I like when he was just the you know, I'm a boring kid, but I'll just I thought that was very effective.

But I thought his attacks against Brian Williams went too far, making him seem like against women and women can't trust him.

And I thought Brian Williams should have been more aggressively defending himself.

I agree.

I think Brian really wanted to run a positive campaign, which I have to give him some credit for.

I think he wanted to present himself as sort of above the infighting that has plagued county government.

And, you know, he was kind of coming in being perceived as the front runner.

And I think he really wanted to own that.

I think ultimately he couldn't own it as much as he did.

He ran a little bit cautious.

He didn't want to make a mistake, say anything controversial or sort of get out there.

And I think the voters needed to see a little bit more about what he would do.

You know, it felt like everything he was saying was maybe a little cautious.

He didn't want to get deep into the weeds.

And I think Jake Zimmerman was able to run on this idea of, OK, I can be like a competent administrator.

I'm not a lawmaker.

I'm just an administrator.

People are kind of ready for that after all the fighting.

I think I think you're right.

And I think that I think Jake Zimmerman had more name recognition than Brian Williams.

I think it was I think Brian Williams, if you listen to people, six, eight, nine months ago, it was a foregone conclusion he was going to win this in a walk.

Zimmerman said that he had internal polling that said that he was he was way ahead of where Williams or other external polling places had him.

And of course, Brian Williams said he he had the same sort of internal polling.

But I think that name recognition is always going to be huge here, even though he was.

I don't know.

Also, I don't think nine ninety nine out of 100 people on the street really recognize the name Jake.

So look, he had run.

He ran before.

He ran before.

Really help.

And it does.

I just think Travis kills if you Charlie, you know, like Brian didn't need to win all of those votes because, you know, mostly got 20 percent.

So you figure like if if split the difference, if he got 10 percent of those votes, he probably would have won.

So it did.

You know, that did absolutely make a difference if she doesn't get in the race one hour before, you know, the deadline.

He's probably he's probably not guaranteed.

He's probably the county executive.

Here's what I think hurts.

OK, there's going to be discussions about representation and inclusivity and all that.

And there will be people on South County and throughout this region who will say, like, you know, why should I care about that if you black community in St.

Louis County couldn't get your act together to pull for the same candidate to possibly elect a black county executive?

You guys do that to the wind.

So why should I care?

And how do you how do you argue North County?

I mean, how do you argue, you know, Mrs.

Mosley?

There's nothing you could say.

Well, I think there's some truth to that.

I think also Bill's right that Brian Williams should have defended his record more strongly when he was attacked.

And I you know, I thought that Jake Zimmerman did a very good job on your nine PBS interview when you were interviewing him.

But he did say he wanted to end the squabbling and the, you know, the impersonal stuff in fighting.

And yet, as Bill says, he says that Brian Williams is MAGA.

He is not that he's against women, which he is not.

And so I really question Jake Zimmerman, what kind of accounting executive he's going to be if this is the kind of campaign he runs.

I don't think I don't think you can make I don't think you can make that leap that he's going to that he's going to change his stripes, even though, you know, Sam Page is going to be transparent.

Right.

But I do think if you're Brian Williams and if you think you have already have a significant, substantial lead in the county, then maybe you feel like there's some room for modifying your message or not being as you know, not coming on as strong.

I am not like a football team going into that prevent defense.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden the other team marches.

I'm interested to see what his commercials will be against Hancock.

Well, I think that Hancock did a good job.

I think all three actually did a good job on Sarah's program here on 9PBS.

And if you haven't watched it yet, do so.

And you'll apprise yourself of the thoughts and values of Dennis Hancock, the Republican candidate, and Jake Zimmerman, the Democratic candidate for county executive.

Sarah, I want to ask you about this is a convoluted legal case.

But if I can try and explain it in an elementary fashion, and that's not going to be easy for me, because I don't, I'm no legal expert.

But last year, the General Assembly, in its wisdom, in the middle of the decade, broke tradition and they redistricted the state of Missouri, trying to make it easier for Republicans to win.

Okay.

Then 300,000 signatures were gathered by Missourians to repeal that new redistricting.

They went to the Secretary of State in December.

He had until this Tuesday, August the 4th, to certify them, to say if the signatures were valid.

He didn't do that on Tuesday.

Instead, he kicked the whole thing out, saying that the Missouri Constitution does not allow the redistricting to be accomplished through initiative petition or referendum.

So, we don't know what's going to happen.

Were the lines drawn for Tuesday's primary legitimate or will there possibly be some legal action which will result in a redo of Tuesday's congressional primary?

Yeah, I mean, there's absolutely going to be legal action.

This one is going to end up entirely in the hands of lawyers and judges.

And it's just maddening.

Like, there's a proper procedure this is supposed to follow.

And this man, Denny Hoskins, is supposed to administrate.

He's supposed to, like, keep things moving forward, certify whether there's enough signatures, do that in a timely way so we can have the next step of the process happen.

And instead, he has done everything he can to just gum up this works for completely partisan reasons, kind of like acting like, oh, I can't really do it until the final day of the deadline.

Oh, the deadline has now come.

And guess what?

I still can't do it because my reading of the law, it's like, buddy, you're a lawyer?

I mean, it's so disingenuous.

It's so maddening.

And it's created this situation where we could actually have legal action result in saying, oh, we have to do a redo of everything we just did because we were all voting in the wrong districts.

This is exactly the sort of thing that it's so complicated to explain that it's hard to get people mad about it.

But I think anybody paying attention is mad.

And the rest of us should be mad, too.

Well, almost 350,000 people are mad.

Yeah.

And along with that woman that Amendment 5 got, you know, it's kind of like, you know, we're tired of this stuff.

Get out your pitchforks.

Yes.

Not telling you to really get them out.

But yeah, I know it's very alarming.

That's I'll leave it at that.

Well, I have a bias in this one.

My wife was one of the people who went out and got petitions and sign petitions.

And they did it in such a good intentions and thinking they were doing something lawful.

And it really is kind of revolting to have this official say, well, I've decided that all your work was for nothing.

It doesn't count.

We're not allowed to do that.

And I couldn't tell you that six months ago.

Right, right.

So that you could fight.

Well, sadly, thanks to the whole Monica Lewinsky situation in the White House, I think we all learned a lot more about parsing the parsing of statements.

And I think that's, you know, he seemed to be well, do you can you can you validate the number of signatures were, you know, what you need to do with, you know, I just think this whole it's like he just the way he was he was being so elusive.

And that's what that's I think what really just angers people.

It's answer the question.

Well, I don't know what the latest is, but Mike Wolfe, the former dean of the law school and a former justice on the Missouri Supreme Court said that technically Congress seats members of Congress, the new members from the various states.

It's the Congress that does this and it's overseen by the Speaker of the House.

If the Democrats win in November and take the House, they'll have a Democratic Speaker of the House.

He may decide if push comes to shove not to seat the Missouri delegation.

I mean, this could become a constitutional crisis.

It could once again, like leading our country into war.

Hey, who do we go to next?

I think it's you, Wendy.

Cori Bush, who had been the U.S.

representative in the first congressional district, lost two years ago to Wesley Bell.

She ran against him again this time, but now she actually lost by more votes than she lost to him two years ago.

She said in her speech after when she conceded, which was not very magnanimous, she said that she's not going away, that she's going to continue to fight against AIPAC and the billionaires and the others.

What do you think?

And that's essentially, I was really struck because a number of high profile, progressive leaning Democrats whom I'm friends with on Facebook posted a sort of a summary that somebody had written about, you know, Wesley Bell versus Cori Bush.

And the fact that what it boiled down to was that if you want an activist, you want Cori Bush.

If you want a congressman representing his district, you want Wesley Bell.

And these are people that I'm sure quite a few of them voted for Cori Bush the last time.

But I was stunned by the number of times I saw that on Facebook and the number of people who were also sharing it with all of their friends.

And I think there are so many, there's just so many questions.

I think Wesley Bell has had, I don't know that I'd say he has distinguished himself.

He's, you know, he's obviously part of some very prestigious congressional panels.

But I think the lower key, you know, Cori is always going to be Cori Bush and stirring things up.

And, you know, I think people got tired of that movie.

They saw it once.

That's what I mean.

It's also interesting.

It's after the election that you get an idea of whether you voted the right way or not.

Like, you know, Brian Williams was so magnanimous and said, you know, congratulated everybody and even said Angela Mosley ran a fine race, even though she didn't run a race and say everybody has the right to run.

You know, watch that.

And I thought, that's a good way to do it.

And you watch Cori Bush and you think, how does somebody like that get as high as she got?

They're like, she and Denny Hoskins should be at the same time.

It's performative.

It's timing.

And what is, you know, the questions that the Palestinian Israeli questions, they're saying that that people's appetite for that kind of thing isn't what it used to be.

You know, that that, you know, for her to be the only member of Congress or the first member of Congress who denied, you know, that, you know, that the that Hamas was a terrorist organization or refused to refer to.

Alvin, you called it the day she said that she was going to run.

I said she's going to get beat way worse than she did the first time.

That's before or any of that.

It was just like, no, like you said, that movie's over.

I think, you know, the most effective line of attack that Wesley Bell had there was questioning that she had been out there raising money for the tornado.

And it seemed to have gone to herself.

I think those kind of questions, people are like, OK, I'm not voting for this outsider Zoran Mamdani kind of person.

I'm voting for somebody who has been in D.C.

and knows how to move money through committees.

And there was a lot of people, you know, she lost the city.

People in the city decided they just didn't trust her at this point.

Yeah, she's just like the amendment.

She lost all the way around.

Yeah, Bill, I want to ask you about St.

Charles County, where it turns out in the Republican primary, Steve Ellman won.

He's heading for his sixth term right now.

Turns out he also appeared at Donnybash.

Do you think that was the key to his victory?

Or is St.

Charles moderate moderating and moving away from people on the far right, like Bill Igle, his opponent who lost?

Well, I don't know.

I congratulate the people of St.

Charles County for the election.

And I think that Steve Ellman is one of those guys that I talk about who has good judgment and good sense and a fine fellow.

And Bill Igle, if you remember in the gubernatorial race, he won St.

Charles County.

I mean, so this was not an easy election for Ellman.

And the third major candidate, the former mayor of Lake St.

Louis, you know, he was a formidable person.

Yeah.

So I think this really speaks well of Ellman and the fact that the residents there trust him.

Well, you know, St.

Louis was far left and now it's moderated.

Do you think that St.

Charles was far right and now is moderating?

I'm not willing to say that this is, you know, a barometer of what is happening to MAGA in St.

Charles.

I think that Steve Ellman is just a very popular guy and a, as you said, a standup guy.

He always comes to Donny Bash.

He is marvelous with people from both sides of the aisle.

And I think the fire breathing, you know, that Igle is not going to sit as well.

That's not going to play as well with a lot of people.

I don't know that anybody other than Ellman could have been.

I think that's a great point.

And that's why I don't think St.

Charles is moderating.

I think those sort of like true Republican values, MAGA values, I think those are continuing and are going to persist there.

I think he just has so much credibility.

He came out of his retirement for a reason because he kind of knew nobody else could do this.

I think what he's got to figure out in the next four years, maybe in the next three years, who could he line up as a successor?

And is there a way he maybe taps out early and leaves the county in good hands?

So there's not some Igle trying to blow things.

I think that's why he ran.

Well, sure.

I think Tim Lohmeyer was the heir apparent and things just blew up.

So he's got to find a better heir apparent.

But there's, but other political careers have been restored and.

But not right off the bat.

I mean, he couldn't have jumped in this time.

Right, right, right.

I actually went, shout out to the good people at Tubby's in St.

Charles.

I went to Steve Allman's watch party.

And look, the people I consider to be moderate Republicans that I know were there.

And not all of them were from St.

Charles, but a lot of St.

Charles people, like I said, I would consider to be moderate Republicans, many of which watched Donny Brook and said hi to you all and that they really appreciate the show.

Is St.

Charles dramatically different?

No.

But there is a move more to, once again, the amendments didn't carry there.

They just, yes, there is a little bit.

Okay.

By the way.

The elections director out there.

I mean, he won handily.

Okay.

Hasn't there been a school board election?

Yes, several.

Oh, yes.

Hey, for the record, Bill Igle was a guest of our program Next Up.

We like to say the good things happen to guests of the show, but maybe not always, Sarah.

Okay.

Want to ask you about our final topic of the evening.

That's Prop U, which went down in flames in the county of St.

Louis.

It was a 3.5% sales tax on out-of-state internet purchases.

Okay.

So it's gone, but the county still has a 50 to $80 million deficit.

So what next?

Well, I don't think it should be bring back Prop U, which is apparently Sam Page's idea.

He's like, voters have said no to this twice in the last three years.

Maybe we should try again in November.

And this time we'll put some money into trying to sell it.

I'm like, putting money into trying to sell this thing is not going to work.

People do not want to give more money to the current administration and the current county council.

That dynamic is so toxic.

I think what we need to do is we need to elect a new county executive, let him look under the hood and figure out.

I think if somebody new comes in and says, we need you to come up with a new tax year, they would have more credibility to do that.

And I understand there's some real concerns.

How do we get through the end of the year without running out of money?

There may need to be some temporary austerity until the new guy gets in.

Well, I supported it.

I voted for it.

And, you know, I made the argument last week on the show that it's also the brick and mortar stores that have to pay this tax and the Internet doesn't.

I mean, I just can't understand why people were so adamant against it.

I'd say you're getting a new county executive in no matter what.

And the county's broke.

But it'd be nice to give the person a little bit something.

One county executive candidate, Dennis Hancock, doesn't want the tax.

In fact, he did tell Sarah on her 9PBS show that maybe we should eliminate the animal shelter and cut funding for buses.

You know, I mean, he wants to slap.

Like I say, even if, let's say Hancock won, all of a sudden he said, like, we got to get some more money.

How do we do it?

No, I voted for Prop U2.

It is.

I filled out the little blank.

It was like the day that I punched Dukakis for president.

I knew, you know, I'm putting up a good fight.

I went, well.

We're pleased to present the two guys who voted for Prop U. We were probably 1% of them.

Okay, hey, let's go to the old mailbag and see what people had to say about last week's program.

I think the panelists kind of missed the point in their discussion of St.

Louis County's proposed tax on out-of-state internet purchases.

Rather than questioning whether or not future leaders would spend the money wisely, they should consider whether it's fair to local retailers.

Like Bill said, Cary McGill of St.

Albans.

We also heard from Dede Coghlan of St.

Louis who wrote, I was appalled as I watched all of you laughing at the $2 .9 million FEMA award for tornado-stricken north St.

Louis.

The devastation and suffering continues in an area long forgotten by our region.

I think your callous and humorous reaction says volumes about who St.

Louis really is.

Finally, we heard from David W. Hausman of St.

Louis.

Instead of a green card, create a purple card requiring the undocumented to pay two to three times the usual amount into Social Security and also pay between 1% and 5 % of their checks through the Medicaid program of the state in which they're employed.

You can write us, CARE of 9PBS63108.

Don't forget those emails.

Donnybrook at 9PBS.org and on social media use hashtag DonnybrookSTL.

Call the nine line, share your opinions at 314-512-9094.

And wherever you are this August, listen to us on your favorite podcast source.

We have another program.

It's called Last Call.

You can find it on the Donnybrook YouTube channel.

And this week we'll talk about the return of an embattled health director to St.

Louis and also Webster Grove's employees spending city money at a strip club.

Among the topics that will broach.

Thanks so much for joining us for this edition.

We'll see you soon.

Donnybrook is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.

Thank you.