On election day, November 4, Jennifer Florida won a temporary restraining order against St. Louis election officials, who had threatened to seize her campaign literature if it described Florida has an “independent Democrat.” Florida was on the ballot as an independent candidate for Recorder of Deeds for the city. The lawsuit was in U.S. District Court, and is Florida v Board of Election Commissioners for the City of St. Louis, Missouri, e.d., 4:14cv-1840.
Florida’s only opponent was the Democratic nominee. Florida was the incumbent. She had been appointed earlier in the year, after it was too late to run in the Democratic primary. Missouri holds primaries in August but requires primary candidate to file by March. Florida was defeated, even though she had been endorsed by the Mayor and Congressman William Clay. See this story. Probably the straight-ticket device worked against her.
The restraining order issued by the court on election day says, “It is hereby ordered that defendant, its officeers, employees, or agents, and those acting on its behalf or in concert with it are prohibited from seizing plaintiff’s campaign materials and shall immediately return any campaign materials seized from Plaintiff.” The Board of Election Commissioners had felt it is improper for an independent candidate to use the name of a qualified political party to describe herself.
This is a more fun version of the story.
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/political_eye/article_2c6b0462-6566-11e4-89f9-474f470fa91c.html
The Democratic nominee, Sharon Quigley Carpenter had held office from 1980 until 2014, and was forced out of office just prior to the primary. The reason that Florida had not run in the primary was that she was an alderman, who was appointed after the resignation, and never given a thought about becoming the recorder of deeds.
The mayor, Francis Slay, who Carpenter had babysat for as boy, endorsed Carpenter in the Democratic primary. He then switched his endorsement to his appointee who was running as an independent.
On her campaign website, Jennifer Florida, asked for support for her bid to become 15th Ward Recorder of Deeds. She had been previously been 15 Ward Alderman, but Recorder of Deeds is a citywide office. Incidentally, in October, there was a special election to fill the 15th Ward Alderman seat Florida had vacated.
I suspect based on the story, that the complaint about the “independent Democrat” was by someone tweaking the Democratic mayor’s nose for his endorsing the official Democratic nominee and then switching to support an independent who had previously run for office as a Democrat.
Incidentally, the reason for Florida’s resignation was her hiring a grand-nephew to an intern position in her office. Isn’t political nepotism fun?
There was a Republican candidate on the ballot as well. The results were:
Democrat 60%
Independent 27%
Republican 12%
This is what is to be expected of big city “machine” politics when voters blindly vote for a certain party without knowing or caring who are the party nominees and of what “record” they have.