Two years after Ferguson, recriminations roil race for Missouri governor
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.— It has been two years since a white police officer fatally shot black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, touching off days of rioting, but the political repercussions from the incident have only intensified, fanned by a governor’s race in which all four Republican candidates are pledging an aggressive law-and-order approach.
Their TV ads show images of angry protesters and burning buildings and vehicles. They denounce “lawlessness” and “chaos” while promising to “secure our streets” and “enforce the law.”
Absent from the ads is any reference to community complaints after the Brown shooting that police discriminate against black residents. The candidates also show no indication that they believe black students were justified in launching protests over racial issues that toppled the administration of the University of Missouri last year.
In police incidents, “I don’t want it to be a fair fight for our police; I want them to be able to show overwhelming force,” one of the candidates, former U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, said in recent debate remarks echoed thematically by her rivals.
The campaign approach appears to be playing well with the mostly white rural and suburban residents who will comprise the majority of voters in the Aug. 2 Republican primary.
“The people I hang with, they want the law and order,” said Bruce Buwalda, a suburban St. Louis party leader.
Strong talk has been common nationwide amid a seeming surge in international attacks and deadly domestic incidents, including the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, and the subsequent shootings of police by black men in Dallas, the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin and Baton Rouge, where the shooter was a Kansas City resident.
A similar theme pervaded the Republican National Convention this past week, where the slogan for the opening day was “Make America Safe Again” and presidential nominee Donald Trump declared: “I am the law-and-order candidate.”
But the political recriminations have been especially strong in Missouri, where the Brown shooting in August 2014 honed the nation’s attention on racial relations with police. Brown, 18, was shot after struggling with an officer who confronted him in a street after a convenience store theft. A state grand jury declined to press charges against the officer, and the U.S. Justice Department later cleared him, concluding that evidence backed his claim that he had acted in self-defense.
The governor’s race is wide open because Democratic incumbent Jay Nixon, who was sharply criticized following the sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, has run into term limits. Attorney General Chris Koster, the most well-funded Democrat seeking to succeed Nixon, has avoided debating his lesser-known opponents and has yet to run ads.
The more intense Republican primary includes Hanaway, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, former Navy SEAL officer Eric Greitens and former Marine and businessman John Brunner. All have criticized Nixon for not being more publicly visible or forceful in Ferguson or the University of Missouri when protests occurred.