ST. LOUIS – As the dust settles from Tuesday’s races in the Missouri General Municipal Election, there’s been a rise in the trend of write-in candidates from races big to small.

“We had 20 different races where there was no candidate filed whatsoever,” Rick Stream, Republican director of elections for the St. Louis County Board of Elections, said. “That’s hardly ever happened before. Somebody’s going to win with 3 or 4 votes, and that doesn’t speak too well for that community.”

Staff will hand-count an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 handwritten votes to confirm winners.

One example shows Shell Thomas winning an alderman spot in St. Ann. Preliminary results show he won the race with 117 of the 137 cast votes.

On a smaller scale, Dan Janson is winning a Manchester alderman race with just 2 of the 8 total votes.

It’s a much different story in Maplewood, where write-in candidate and former Mayor Barry Greenberg beat incumbent Mayor Nikylan Knapper after she won last time.

He said people told him he had no chance as a write-in, yet he had to keep ordering yard signs that read “Write-in Barry Greenberg.”

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Politics

“We probably had 270-something signs out in people’s yards. I needed the recognition, people needed to know I was running,” he said. “So, that seemed to work out pretty well.”

Greenberg won in a landslide with more than 60% of votes in a 34% turnout.

Controversy surrounding the hiring of Maplewood’s new city manager, a political ally of Knapper, ultimately led Greenberg to campaign without his name on the ballot.

The issue appeared to drive much of the vote.

“They didn’t search for this city manager. They hired one without a search–someone that had zero experience in city government,” Greenberg said.

Mayor Knapper has not responded to comment.

“(This race) shows that individual people, voters, made a difference in this race,” Stream said.  “They went in and they had to actually write this man’s name on a ballot, kind of like the old days.”

The St. Louis County Election Board has until April 16 to certify election results. Following certification, Greenberg is expected to be sworn in for the second time as the mayor of Maplewood at the next council meeting April 23.

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