Dude Where's the Party

In fact, the Pitch has found that St. Louis Democratic leaders openly wonder: Have Kansas City folks lost their minds?

Democratic leaders in St. Louis are mystified by their Kansas City colleagues' faith in Bond. Several seemed genuinely shocked when the Pitch informed them that leaders here are not only paying Bond lip service but also helping him get re-elected by attending fund-raisers.

St. Louis community leaders appear to have an entirely different take on the man.

Repeatedly, the Pitch was told that for St. Louis black leaders in particular, one image of Bond is seared into their memories -- that of the stocky senator, then 61, pounding a podium at a suburban St. Louis hotel on election night 2000 and shouting, "It's an outrage!"

Bond was upset that a local judge had held open St. Louis polling places three hours later than usual to address a massive blunder with voter registration records. Errors purging voting rolls of inactive voters had resulted in thousands of registered voters being turned away from the polls in an area that was largely African-American.

"There was a near riot," says St. Louis Rep. William "Lacy" Clay Jr., the then-state representative who convinced Judge Evelyn Baker that legitimate voters were being turned away.

But Bond was livid, and he ridiculed the judge's decision to hold the polls open. "Can you believe that anybody would say that a Democratic election board, appointed by a Democratic governor in a Democratic city, dominated by Democrats, would try to keep Democrats from voting?" he bellowed. (Actually, by law the board is split evenly between Democrat and Republican appointees, and the board's director at the time was a Republican. And Bond himself had appointed Baker in 1983, when he was governor.)

Within days of the election, Bond urged the FBI to investigate "a major criminal enterprise designed to defraud voters."

But even if St. Louis historically is known for voting irregularities -- the dead and even pet dogs have been known to make their way onto the rolls -- Bond's histrionics struck locals as unseemly, and his accusations of widespread fraud seemed tinged with bigotry.

"I have asked him ever since then to apologize to the people of St. Louis. He never has," Clay says.

Then there's Ronnie White.

While running for re-election in 1998, Bond, black leaders in St. Louis say, privately promised them he would support the appointment of White, a prominent black Missouri jurist, to a federal judge position. (Bond later denied that he'd made this promise.) Then, shortly after he was elected with unprecedented support from black voters, he joined forces with then-Senator John Ashcroft to cast a key vote that sank White's nomination.

"He did not mislead us," the Rev. B.T. Rice, president of the St. Louis Clergy Association, told the Associated Press at the time. "He literally lied to us."

"If you lay down with snakes," declared the Rev. Earl Nance of St. Louis, "you will get bit."

Former state Rep. Louis Ford of St. Louis said, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

"African-Americans are very upset at him," says Bernie Hayes, a columnist for The St. Louis American. And it's easy to see the difference in the newspapers that cover the black communities in the two cities. Whereas The Kansas City Call tends to run verbatim Bond's press releases crowing about the various projects he supports here, the American often sounds skeptical in its coverage of the senator's good deeds. Recently, the paper referred to him as a "highly partisan, sometimes shrill Republican."

"Yes, he has done quite a bit for [local housing projects]," Clay concedes. "But what about the other side? What about the tax cuts for the rich? What about the waste of billions of dollars to fund a war based on lies and deceit and deception? [The Republicans] have given away this country's future."

"We know his track record, and he's not fooling anybody," Hayes says. "He leaves a really bitter taste in everybody's mouth. I don't believe you're going to see any turncoats this election."

Former mayor Emanuel Cleaver told The Kansas City Star at the time that he was ³stunned² by the Ronnie White affair and that his ³spirit has been dampened considerably.² But within months, he was calling Bond ³a friend.²

Others in Kansas City believe it's counterproductive to turn against Bond because of a few disagreements.

"I respectfully disagree with those people [in St. Louis]," says Kevin Smith, Cleaver's former chief of staff, "because of the tremendous value he has brought to this state. And because of the position that he holds. I think it is something that should not be ignored.

"I'm through with partisan bickering," he adds. "I'm too old for that. That's not the way things get done today. We can agree to disagree."

To Dems in Kansas City, Bond doesn't seem like such a bad guy.

A sixth-generation Missourian, Bond was born in St. Louis in 1939 and raised in Mexico, Missouri, where he still owns property. Educated at Princeton and at the University of Virginia Law School, Bond joined then-state attorney general John Danforth's staff in the late '60s. Danforth's office was like a farm league for power -- Danforth went on to an illustrious career in the Senate, and Bond's fellow assistants John Ashcroft and Clarence Thomas climbed even higher.