By Don Corrigan Incumbency is almost insurmountable. That’s a truism in America and Missouri, according to Ken Warren, a political science professor at St. Louis University with decades of expertise on polling, democracy and politics. He’s not optimistic about Ray Hartmann’s chances in his quest to unseat U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin. Pollster Warren has
By Don Corrigan Ray Hartmann often jested that he fought his way off his native “mean streets of Ladue” to become an alternative newspaper tycoon. He dropped that line after selling the Riverfront Times in 1988 to New Times Media. Even after he sold the popular weekly after a quarter century of column writing and
There’s a scene in “Oppenheimer,” a recent movie about the making of the atomic bomb, when a woman hanging up laundry outside is warned to take in the sheets. The laundry outside might get contaminated with the impending explosion of the first atomic bomb. Karen Nichol of North St. Louis County notes that the mothers
When Josh Hawley debated Sen. Claire McCaskill in the 2018 U.S. Senate contest, he unleashed the usual invective against the incumbent Democrat. He told a Missouri Press Association audience that she was a “radical leftist,” a hopeless “elitist” and a “Hollywood liberal.” Such a pity that he hadn’t yet coined his most recent pejorative, “Epicurean
For decades the Missouri legislature has been at odds with the will of the people on a host of major issues. Legislators are unfazed. In this year’s session in Jefferson City, lawmakers seem determined to codify their disdain for grassroots democracy. Legislators have introduced a slew of proposals to effectively end state voters’ use of
