Um, isn't that in University City?
JF

Damn, Joe Frank: you beat me to it!

yep. a private street in university city is where "the people's candidate" will host his gathering.

guess the greens don't want to park their hybrids on the northside...

slay doesn't even have to lift a finger against this willie marshall!

For those interested, I humbly (OK, not so humbly) recommend the latest (March 12) post on St. Louis Oracle, about the Slay-Marshall contest.
www.stloracle.blogspot.com

I read this article in The Economist about Slay . . . sorry for the length, but the on-line service did not allow for an "open" link . .

A POISONED CHALICE
Mar 10th 2005

No competition for the top job, and no wonder

"BE CAREFUL what you wish for" would be good advice for Francis Slay,
the mayor of St Louis. His re-election later this year is all but
certain--but so are the problems he faces in running his city for four
more turbulent years.

No Republicans have bothered to file for the race, so Mr Slay will face
only token competition from the Green Party. This week he easily beat
his two opponents in the Democratic primary. One of these was Irene
Smith, a black alderwoman whose long career in public service was
replaced in voters' minds by an unfortunate scene during a filibuster
in 2001 when she urinated into a waste bucket on the floor of the
chamber where the Board of Aldermen was meeting.

The other hopeful was Bill Haas, a Harvard-educated lawyer who works
in customer service at a local Wal-Mart. Mr Haas is a perennial
candidate who once advertised for a rich wife to support his campaigns.
He has managed to win a seat on the city school board, but the strain
of it has led him to muse openly about suicide on his web page.

In his campaign, Mr Slay spent lavishly on television advertisements
promising that St Louis would be a great city again. The emphasis was
on the word "again". The mayor's most ardent supporters cannot claim
that the city is what it once was, or should be.

The police department was caught manipulating crime statistics by
filing some incidents as "memos", which would not therefore be counted
as reports in calculating crime rates. And only now, after five years,
has the Department of Justice stopped supervising the notoriously
corrupt and dysfunctional city election board. The many job losses
already incurred by the city are likely to increase now that the St
Louis-based May Company has been acquired by Federated Department
Stores, which will probably consolidate and move some jobs to
Cincinnati. The future of May's Famous Barr department store, a fixture
in downtown St Louis for generations, is also now in doubt.

The city's worst problem is its schools, which are teetering on the
edge of losing state accreditation. Although the mayor has no direct
control over the school board, many of its members were candidates Mr
Slay put forward. Two years ago the board was forced to bring in a
private "turnaround" firm from New York to try to reshape the school
system. Since then dozens of schools have been closed, non-teaching
jobs have been outsourced, and every board meeting has turned into an
episode of "The Jerry Springer Show". Creg Williams from Philadelphia
was recently hired as the first permanent superintendent for two years,
a job even more thankless than Mr Slay's own.

Nor can the mayor be held responsible for the problems of the Catholic
church in St Louis. The conflict between Archbishop Raymond Burke and
some members of his archdiocese has become yet another daily soap
opera. The archbishop has all but excommunicated the church board for
its refusal to turn over church property to his control. Recently, when
the archbishop was about to announce the closing of more than a dozen
Catholic churches in the city, Mr Slay buttonholed him for two hours in
city hall. But to no avail. The mayor does not have, and will not have,
an easy time.

I read this article in The Economist about Slay . . . sorry for the length, but the on-line service did not allow for an "open" link . .

A POISONED CHALICE
Mar 10th 2005

No competition for the top job, and no wonder

"BE CAREFUL what you wish for" would be good advice for Francis Slay,
the mayor of St Louis. His re-election later this year is all but
certain--but so are the problems he faces in running his city for four
more turbulent years.

No Republicans have bothered to file for the race, so Mr Slay will face
only token competition from the Green Party. This week he easily beat
his two opponents in the Democratic primary. One of these was Irene
Smith, a black alderwoman whose long career in public service was
replaced in voters' minds by an unfortunate scene during a filibuster
in 2001 when she urinated into a waste bucket on the floor of the
chamber where the Board of Aldermen was meeting.

The other hopeful was Bill Haas, a Harvard-educated lawyer who works
in customer service at a local Wal-Mart. Mr Haas is a perennial
candidate who once advertised for a rich wife to support his campaigns.
He has managed to win a seat on the city school board, but the strain
of it has led him to muse openly about suicide on his web page.

In his campaign, Mr Slay spent lavishly on television advertisements
promising that St Louis would be a great city again. The emphasis was
on the word "again". The mayor's most ardent supporters cannot claim
that the city is what it once was, or should be.

The police department was caught manipulating crime statistics by
filing some incidents as "memos", which would not therefore be counted
as reports in calculating crime rates. And only now, after five years,
has the Department of Justice stopped supervising the notoriously
corrupt and dysfunctional city election board. The many job losses
already incurred by the city are likely to increase now that the St
Louis-based May Company has been acquired by Federated Department
Stores, which will probably consolidate and move some jobs to
Cincinnati. The future of May's Famous Barr department store, a fixture
in downtown St Louis for generations, is also now in doubt.

The city's worst problem is its schools, which are teetering on the
edge of losing state accreditation. Although the mayor has no direct
control over the school board, many of its members were candidates Mr
Slay put forward. Two years ago the board was forced to bring in a
private "turnaround" firm from New York to try to reshape the school
system. Since then dozens of schools have been closed, non-teaching
jobs have been outsourced, and every board meeting has turned into an
episode of "The Jerry Springer Show". Creg Williams from Philadelphia
was recently hired as the first permanent superintendent for two years,
a job even more thankless than Mr Slay's own.

Nor can the mayor be held responsible for the problems of the Catholic
church in St Louis. The conflict between Archbishop Raymond Burke and
some members of his archdiocese has become yet another daily soap
opera. The archbishop has all but excommunicated the church board for
its refusal to turn over church property to his control. Recently, when
the archbishop was about to announce the closing of more than a dozen
Catholic churches in the city, Mr Slay buttonholed him for two hours in
city hall. But to no avail. The mayor does not have, and will not have,
an easy time.