In a little more than a month, 8th Ward residents will go to the polls to elect a replacement for the aldermanic seat vacated by Cara Spencer when she was elected mayor. But not everyone is happy with the way the city’s Democratic Central Committee is putting their thumb on the scales of the special election.
That’s because the central committee is blocking some candidates’ access to the Democratic Party’s Voter Activation Network, a database that includes a wealth of maps and other information about past voter behavior. It also contains information collected by previous canvassers as to what issues particular voters care about. It’s a huge asset, especially in a campaign that will likely come down to who can do a better job knocking on doors across the ward, which hugs the Mississippi River and stretches from downtown on one end to a sliver of Carondelet on the other. And generally, it’s available to all dues-paying Democratic Party members.
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Not so in this election. Right now, the only candidate in the race with VAN access is Shedrick “Nato Caliph” Kelley, who won the nomination of the St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee. That’s even though at least three candidates—Alecia Hoyt, Jami Cox Antwi, and Jim Dallas—are Democrats who’d normally be able to access the database as well.
The central committee has been the source of numerous power struggles in the last decade, many of them stemming in part from its power to fill aldermanic vacancies. Historically, only candidates endorsed by the committee in a special election to fill a vacancy could run with the all-important “D” next to their name, although that privilege is now in dispute due to the city’s 2020 switch to non-partisan, approval voting.
But VAN access has generally not been in dispute, some city politicians say—until now.
Hoyt has been a small business owner for 20 years, but this is the Benton Park resident’s first time running for office. “I’ve been a politician for about three weeks now,” she jokes. An activist who believes in better access to green spaces and streets that are safer for kids and pedestrians, she was motivated to enter the race because she felt like her activism was hitting up against “diminishing returns.”
She says she purchased access to the voter database from the state party on May 1 for $500. Then, on May 7, she got a call from someone who worked in IT for the state Democrats, who told her that her access was being removed.
She was able to get her payment refunded, but says the move felt “really undemocratic” and “dirty.” She says, “To me, this sort of stacking the deck, feels like the antithesis of the democratic process.”
Antwi is also a lifelong Democrat, running in the Ward 8 race as an independent. She works in community development and affordable housing and says she wants to see aldermen better address vacant buildings, both in residential neighborhoods as well as in the commercial areas downtown. “My biggest goal is wanting to build up the ward and making it the kind of anchor of St. Louis that I think it should be,” she says.
She calls the central committee’s decision to deny other candidates access to the database “sad” and “unprecedented.”
“Candidates should be trying to talk to as many people and as many potential voters as they can through the entire ward,” she says. “When you don’t have that tool, it makes it harder for you to make sure you’re finding every voter.”
Another Democrat in the race, retired actuary Dallas, says that he has his own database sourced from public information, and “things are going well.” Dallas has been active in his Soulard neighborhood, serving as president of the Soulard Restoration Group and working to expand the neighborhood’s CID. “My business background, along with my neighborhood leadership, makes me well-suited to be alderman for ward eight,” he says. “Especially as we deal with revitalizing downtown in dealing with executives and business people downtown. Because half of downtown is in ward eight.”
As for Kelley, he was out knocking doors when he took our call. He says that he’s proud to have the committee’s endorsement and didn’t know other people would be blocked. “I can understand the frustration,” he says. Kelley ran unsuccessfully against Spencer in 2023, with the backing of then-Mayor Tishaura Jones. He says he wants to focus on public safety in a broad sense—which means better handling everything from crime to sinkholes to tornadoes.
The chair of the city’s central committee didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Several elected officials share Antwi and Hoyt’s criticisms of the central committee for blocking access to the database.
Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier said that the move lacked integrity and that it would ultimately be voters who won’t hear from candidates who will lose out: “The problem is that it actually punishes the people.”
“On the state or local level, it doesn’t matter—it’s dangerous to do these things on any level,” Sonnier says. “These are not the methods that we should be using in an electoral process. If we do, we are not actually being democratic.”
Says Alderman Bret Narayan, “If you’re a member of the Democrat party, you should have access to VAN.” He added that the whole issue stems from what, to his mind, was essentially an oversight in 2020’s Proposition D, which made most—but not all—city elections nonpartisan. Narayan adds that the central committee’s move in effect makes VAN less useful to Democrats in the future, because canvassers working for Hoyt and Antwi won’t be able to add information to it while campaigning.
With less than five weeks until voters go to the polls, Hoyt says she isn’t going to fight the decision. There isn’t enough time. She’s just going to run the best race she can. She also stressed that she doesn’t hold any ill will towards Kelley himself. “I’ve met Shedrick. He’s nice. We share a lot of the same values.”
