ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Megan Green and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush record a video to get out the vote while greeting voters outside the precinct at the Missouri School for the Blind on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022.
Robert Cohen, Post-Dispatch
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Megan Green, right, greets U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-ºüÀêÊÓƵ, outside the voting precinct at the Missouri School for the Blind on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Green and fellow Alderman Jack Coatar are running for aldermanic president to succeed Lewis Reed, who resigned in June after his indictment on federal corruption charges. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Robert Cohen
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Jack Coatar greets voters outside St. James the Greater School in Dogtown as he seeks to be elected aldermanic president on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Coatar and Megan Green are running to succeed Lewis Reed, who resigned in June after his indictment on federal corruption charges. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Robert Cohen
Alderman Jack Coatar, left, and Alderman Megan Green are candidates for ºüÀêÊÓƵ aldermanic president.
Candidates for aldermanic president Megan Green (left) and Jack Coatar shake hands outside the polling place at Missouri School for the Blind in ºüÀêÊÓƵ on Sept. 13.Â
ST. LOUIS — Alderman Megan Green is getting a promotion.
Green, of Tower Grove South, will be the next president of the Board of Aldermen after defeating Alderman Jack Coatar, of Soulard, 54.9% to 44.5% on Tuesday.
Her victory puts an exclamation point on the rise of progressive Democrats in the city and gives Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, who endorsed Green, a reliable partner atop the legislative branch. Together, they can accelerate efforts to fight crime with social services, rein in tax breaks for developers and make racial equity the city’s North Star.
“The people won tonight,†Green told supporters at HandleBar in The Grove. “We're finally getting the political representation that matches the demands of a movement.â€
“Today, ºüÀêÊÓƵ chose collaboration over confrontation,â€Â Jones said to the crowd as returns came in. “ºüÀêÊÓƵ chose progress over the status quo.â€
The win was a hard-won milestone for Green, a rural New York native who came to ºüÀêÊÓƵ by chance 17 years ago, fell in love with its charms and challenges, and decided to stay and work to make it better.
After false starts as a classroom teacher and a charter school organizer, she won a special election in 2015 to become an alderman just as the Ferguson protests were galvanizing a progressive movement in the city. And she quickly established herself, pushing for police oversight and a higher minimum wage.
But when she tried to go bigger with runs for board president in 2019 and state senate in 2020, she lost. Black candidates countered her southside support with overwhelming numbers in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
This time, however, she had the endorsements of the city's most prominent Black politicians, Jones and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, and the city’s Black newspaper, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ American.
She ran on an unapologetically progressive platform promising to reform an "arrest-and-incarcerate" public safety approach with investments in affordable housing, education and healthcare. She pledged to work with Jones to reroute development tax breaks to affordable housing and schools. She said she wanted to remediate lead in every building in the city, build up a child care system to draw more families here, and get the ball rolling on reparations.
Coatar, a more moderate Democrat, tried to brand her plans for big structural change as too pie-in-the-sky for a city that needs work on nuts and bolts. He leaned into frustration with trash overflowing dumpsters and 911 callers getting put on hold, and promised to shore up a shrinking police force.
He enlisted endorsements from former mayors Francis Slay and Lyda Krewson, and spent big on TV advertisements to get his message out. But voters didn’t buy it.
He conceded shortly after 10 p.m., telling supporters at Molly's, a bar and restaurant in Soulard, that he had no regrets, and that he was looking forward to working with Green and Jones as the board prepares to shrink from 28 members to 14 this spring.Â
“We’ve got a lot of work to do in the coming months,†he said.
Indeed, Green will only have five months to start making good on her message. Tuesday's contest was just to finish the term vacated by former president Lewis Reed when he resigned in June following his indictment on corruption charges.
She'll have plenty to do: The board is considering plans to deploy more than $150 million in federal aid, and could be soon parceling out more money from the Rams settlement.
The results showed Green won nine of the 14 newly drawn wards by more than 15 percentage points on her way to a 10-point win.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Megan Green and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush record a video to get out the vote while greeting voters outside the precinct at the Missouri School for the Blind on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022.
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Megan Green, right, greets U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-ºüÀêÊÓƵ, outside the voting precinct at the Missouri School for the Blind on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Green and fellow Alderman Jack Coatar are running for aldermanic president to succeed Lewis Reed, who resigned in June after his indictment on federal corruption charges. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
ºüÀêÊÓƵ Alderman Jack Coatar greets voters outside St. James the Greater School in Dogtown as he seeks to be elected aldermanic president on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Coatar and Megan Green are running to succeed Lewis Reed, who resigned in June after his indictment on federal corruption charges. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Candidates for aldermanic president Megan Green (left) and Jack Coatar shake hands outside the polling place at Missouri School for the Blind in ºüÀêÊÓƵ on Sept. 13.Â