Candidate Profile: Megan Ellyia Green for St. Louis Board of Aldermen President
Welcome again to Socialism on the Ballot, folks.
With primary season almost over, it will soon be time to look to general elections—but there are still quite a few DSA members who I haven’t had the chance to tell you about that are running for office this year. There are a few reasons for this, most of which just boil down to timing of endorsements (many were done before this blog came into being) or lack of endorsement. That’s where these “candidate profiles” come in: to at least spotlight a few candidates that didn’t get their due on this blog previously.
Who better then to start with than one Megan Ellyia Green, running for the obscure position of St. Louis Board of Aldermen President? Strap in folks. Despite the position in question, there’s a lot to go over here.
Who is Megan Ellyia Green?
Megan Ellyia Green’s history is pretty extensive—she is arguably one of the most impressive and active DSA members running in the electoral space, actually. She is currently the alderwoman for St. Louis’s 15th Ward, a position to which she was first elected in 2014, and is looking to make the jump to Board of Alderman presidency. The presidency position is not especially powerful on its own—mostly it presides over city meetings and makes the Board of Aldermen functional—but after the mayoralty itself is the most significant office in St. Louis. It would be a statement for a socialist to hold the position, and more importantly could serve as major step on the path to a socialist winning the mayoralty outright. If any such person can eventually make a jump like that, it would probably be Green in the presidency position.
It helps that Green is extremely active in the community and politically. Prior to her political career, Green worked with a number of nonprofits in Missouri—she lists Shalom House, Lemay Child and Family Center, and Childcare Aware of Missouri on her website here—and briefly taught in the St. Louis Public Schools system. She is a vocal advocate of the local Black Lives Matter movement and is currently involved with local homeless advocacy group Continuum of Care.
As for political structures to be involved in or run for, Green has been or done almost everything there is to do. Besides her current incumbency on the Board of Aldermen, in 2016, Green was elected to a four-year term in the Democratic National Committee—she of course aligned herself with Bernie Sanders and was the beginning of quite a series of campaigns for her. In 2017, Green joined St. Louis DSA, becoming their first elected official ever when she was re-elected unopposed in Ward 15. She would go on to garner their support in her unsuccessful 2020 bid for the safely-Democratic State Senate District 5—where she came up short by just 3% in the primary—and her more successful 2021 aldermanic re-election campaign in which she won a healthy majority. Among other achievements, she had the honor of being a state co-chair for Bernie Sanders in his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, served on the Missouri Democratic Party’s Executive Committee, and is currently on the Board of Directors of progressive group Local Progress.
The consequence of all of these runs for office is that Green has an extensive and comprehensive platform that has been refined between them. In an alderperson’s capacity, she supports a Tenants Bill of Rights and restarting Missouri’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program in housing; is for decriminalizing sex work and HIV positivity; wants to add sexual orientation and gender identity to Missouri’s protected classes, and is for banning conversion therapy. She has fought for St. Louis to become a sanctuary city—something banned by the state of Missouri, it should be noted—and is a proponent of legalizing marijuana and expunging convictions for marijuana. She also advocates for a Homeless Bill of Rights to be implemented by the city. When she ran for State Senate, she espoused support for Medicare expansion, Medicare for All, the expansion of mental health access and abortion access, a transition to 100% renewable energy and the Green New Deal, a $15/hr minimum wage, and repealing right-to-work laws in Missouri. Many of these policies are also things she has sought in varying capacities as an alderperson, although their scope is necessarily more limited by the powers of municipal government. By all accounts, Green is a committed socialist fighting for good things and someone who will use the presidency for good if she wins.
But, there’s also a significant detail to our profile that I’ve left out prior to this point: this is actually Green’s second bid for Board of Aldermen President. She previously ran for this position in 2019, ultimately taking third place but winning 10,868 votes and 31.2% in the progress. For as many losses as she’s taken, Green is actually quite a formidable citywide candidate, as demonstrated by this race, and it certainly doesn’t defy belief that in 2022 this race could be hers to finally win.
The 2022 election itself
Green’s 2019 run and its results
The electoral geography and circumstances of this race are, to not bury the lede, pretty good for Green on paper.
The most immediate reason for this is her 2019 coalition. While Green placed third in 2019, the numbers are deceptive of her overall strength. Green did incredibly well in mostly-white south St. Louis and she won more wards than the first-place Lewis Reed—6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, her own 15, 24, and 25—on the basis of this strength. She also performed strongly in the five wards Reed actually won (10, 12, 16, 23, and 28), taking an average of 35% in these wards. In general, Green seems well poised to win this part of the city and the electorate that comes with it, already giving her a huge boon in a citywide race.
And what doomed her to third place seems unlikely to be replicated—that being an abysmal performance in mostly-Black north St. Louis. In 2019, Green posted a truly rancid performance of just 11% in wards won by second-place Jamilah Nasheed. In a number of wards, Green did so poorly that she received 5% or less of the vote. But that was in a race between Green—who is very white—and two significant Black candidates. Reed was running for his ultimately successful fourth term as president of the Board of Aldermen, while Nasheed had represented the city of St. Louis for twelve years between her time in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri State Senate. That is decidedly not the case here, with Reed out on corruption charges (for which he has recently pled guilty) and Nasheed appointed to the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole. Instead, Green will get a matchup that is likely to level the playing field substantially in north St. Louis: a race against Ward 7’s also-white incumbent, John Coatar.
Green’s 2022 opponent: John Coatar
John Coatar is a fairly generic Democrat who takes pride in that status, and I mean that without any exaggeration. First elected in 2015, Coatar emphasizes his strong ties to the Missouri Democratic Party in his official city biography. Among other highlights, he has variously served on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, former St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay’s re-election campaign in 2009, and Claire McCaskill’s re-election campaign in 2012.
He is extremely vague on policy details, not dissimilar to what you would expect from someone who isn’t looking to stand out as a Democrat. Even in the announcement where he says he’s running for Board of Aldermen President, he really only makes two policy prescriptions, which are the city “must be able to fix its roads and pick up its trash and the city “must end our long-standing patterns of disinvestment” which appears to include reducing gun violence, making the city more walkable, and paying employees of the city a fair wage—Coatar also takes pains to include cops here for no obvious reason. He does not have a policy page on his website either from what I can tell. This all makes for a pretty stark contrast with Green, who does not shy away from policy.
But it’s also probably better for Coatar’s campaign that he stays vague on policy, because when he sticks his neck out it’s not usually for good reasons. Most recently—and perhaps most infamously—Coatar engaged in what appears to be an obvious conflict of interest: receiving thousands of dollars from developer Lux Living and attempting to advance their plan to demolish a building and replace it with Lux-owned apartments. This is despite recent city legislation (passed with 70% support) which, as The St. Louis American notes, “should have compelled Coatar to recuse himself from voting on an issue that directly benefits a campaign donor.” Coatar, of course, did not do this; in fact, he didn’t even disclose the conflict of interest, something required by the same legislation. The same article calls this out as a long-standing pattern for Coatar, continuing:
[Coatar’s] MEC reports are littered with maxed-out donations from real estate developers to lobbyists since his first run for office in 2014. Those donations can generally be matched up to legislation that Coatar later sponsored - like Lux Living (formerly known as Asprient) or Restoration St. Louis (though, that legislation failed) or the Koman Group (also failed).
Not great! Coatar has also probably not helped himself by being a plaintiff in a lawsuit which, in part, challenges the legislation which increased conflict-of-interest rules for aldermen and would prevent those rules from being implemented.
But Coatar has also taken other positions which can variously be called anything from deeply ridiculous to actively malicious—and many of these positions have also put him into direct conflict with Green. In fact the two have been at odds almost from the beginning. When St. Louis passed a minimum wage increase in 2015 (ultimately found unconstitutional), Green was one of its most ardent proponents and Coatar a vicious opponent, saying it would stunt business growth. That increase, for the record, would have been from a paltry $7.65/hr to $11/hr. When the ongoing debate over whether to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport was at its peak (and mostly being pushed in secret), Coatar was among its biggest backers; I think it goes without saying that Green, a socialist, did not support this mercifully failed endeavor. And in 2020, Coatar—a proud former prosecutor—remained firm in advocating for funding the St. Louis Police Department even as the George Floyd protests raged, while Green stood with Black Lives Matter and demanded a cut to their budget and spending elsewhere.
The election of Mayor Tishaura Jones in April 2021 and developments subsequent to her victory have only exacerbated their political disagreements. Green is a close ally and political friend of Jones, who she backed in the 2021 mayoral race; Coatar by contrast threw his support behind Lewis Reed’s failed mayoral bid, definitively placing himself in the now-disgraced former president’s camp. In July of 2021, when Jones laid out her coronavirus aid proposal, Reed cut $5,000,000 in spending intended to give $500 cash payments to low-income St. Louis residents (despite Reed otherwise substantially increasing the bill’s overall size)—and Coatar was right behind him in doing so. Only after a full floor vote was this spending restored, to the relief and irritation of Jones. Battle lines had clearly been drawn by this vote, however, and those have only become more entrenched with time. Jones has been extremely critical of the Reed faction in St. Louis, particularly following Reed’s indictment and guilty plea; Coatar meanwhile has become increasingly critical of Mayor Jones for “a lack of focus on basic services.”
The state of the race in September
Although both candidates are white, this race has all the makings of a typical St. Louis election, with high levels of political and racial polarization. The vast majority of Green’s support is in the southern, whiter half of the city, while Coatar’s support is mostly in the northern, Blacker half of the city.
Backing Green are alderpersons Christine Ingrassia (6th Ward), Annie Rice (8th Ward), Dan Guenther (9th Ward), Jimmy Lappe (11th Ward), Bill Stephens (12th Ward), Anne Schweitzer (13th Ward), Tina “Sweet-T” Pihl (17th Ward), Shane Cohn (25th Ward), and Mike Gras (28th Ward)—as far as I know only Pihl is Black among them. Of note also is that three of these alderpersons represent wards Green lost in 2019. Green also has the backing of three members of the St. Louis Board of Education (including its white president and fellow DSA endorsee Matt Davis) and the support of at least two state representatives—Rasheen Aldridge and Kimberly-Ann Collins, both Black. Overall, most of Green’s support is white. But by far Green’s biggest backer to date is the mayor herself, Tishaura Jones, who is obviously Black. I would guess that Coatar’s repeated criticisms of her and backing of Lewis Reed in cutting one of her COVID spending priorities for no obvious or good reason loomed in this decision.
As for institutional backing, St. Louis DSA has once again thrown in their lot to elect Green—this is at least their fifth time supporting her, an impressive amount for any candidate. Green also has a few other big endorsements, including Our Revolution and several SEIU locals. But perhaps the most noteworthy—if not the most impactful—institutional endorsement for her is that of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists: it indicates that her biggest weakness in 2019 may be a lessened issue for her this year. Support among Black voters will be critical for Green, particularly if she and Coatar split their mostly-white voter bases.
Coatar meanwhile, has dominated the endorsement game in the north. While Mayor Jones’s endorsement of Green is substantial given that her election relied heavily on northern, Black support, most alderpeople in the north have bucked the Mayor and gladly consolidated behind Coatar. Of the eleven alderpeople backing Coatar, seven are in the north (covering wards 2, 3, 4, 19, 21, 26, and 27) and these seven are all Black. Coatar also has four endorsements in the south: Joseph Volimer in Ward 10; Carol Howard in Ward 14; Tom Oldenburg in Ward 16; and Joe Vaccaro in Ward 23—these four are white. Like Green, he has two state representatives backing him (Steve Butz and Donna Baringer, both white) but he also has the support of previous mayors Lyda Krewson and Francis Slay (also both white) and Sheriff Vernon Betts (who is black). Institutional support for Coatar is hard to come by, however; in that respect it seems Green is clearly winning out, for whatever that’s worth.
Can Green win?
All of this, in sum—the good coalition Green had in 2019 which is likely to carry over, the polarity of the race now in 2022, and the pretty even battle lines of endorsements and support—suggests a very close race not dissimilar to the 2021 mayoral election, in which Mayor Jones edged out white alderwoman Cara Spencer by a 52-48 margin. But with Jones throwing her weight behind the candidate analogous to Spencer and turnout an unclear variable due to this race taking place alongside the 2022 midterms, it’s frankly anyone’s guess who will ultimately win this race. Even the primary—set to take place in just ten days—may not give us a good idea of what to expect here due to it being off cycle with Missouri’s other primaries (which happened at the beginning of August). What is not ambiguous however is that this is a race Green can win. The path for her victory here is just as open as her path in 2019.
As for what a Green win will look like: almost certainly like her 2019 results plus Reed’s 2019 results—or, put another way, very similarly to Cara Spencer’s map but with better margins. Green needs to be winning her own backyard by a substantial margin, particularly if she fails to run up the score with with white voters, or fails to make serious inroads with Black voters this year. An ideal for her is probably to win nearly every ward she won in 2019, and then all of Reed’s wards on top of that—I qualify this with “nearly every” because Coatar’s ward is in the first category, and I doubt Green can win it against him this year for obvious reasons. Then again, who knows?
In any case, definitely keep this one—and Green—on your radar. And if she doesn’t win, look out for her next re-election campaign to the Board of Aldermen next year. As it happens, the candidate registration period for the Board of Aldermen falls just after she’ll learn whether or not she’s the next Board of Aldermen President.