Alderwoman Megan Green, D-15th Ward, has done a lot of campaigning over the last 29 months.
Between October 2014 and April 2017, Green ran in three elections to secure a full term representing the ward, which covers parts of the Tower Grove South and Tower Grove East neighborhoods. Pretty soon after that last election, she set her sights on higher office. In the race for president, her main opponents are incumbent Lewis Reed and State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis. (You can find Reed’s episode of Politically Speaking here, and Nasheed’s episode here.)
“I’m running for president of the Board of Aldermen basically because I feel like the status quo in our city is not working, and our city, in order to move forward, desperately needs some different leadership at the top of the board,” Green said.
Green is a native of upstate New York who came to St. Louis in 2005 to participate in the Coro Fellowship for Public Affairs. She’s currently pursuing a doctorate in education policy at St. Louis University.
Green sees a path to victory in the anti-establishment mood in the city. “Whoever wins this race is going to have to step outside their traditional base of support and build coalitions across groups of people who may not always be on the same side of issues. And I think we’re in the best position to do that because of running on an anti-establishment, anti-corruption agenda.”
- Green is the only candidate who has pledged to vote against any proposal to privatize the operations of St. Louis-Lambert International Airport. Years of research, she said, show that turning a public asset into a profit-making venture rarely works out for taxpayers or the workers.
- Green’s anti-establishment platform includes a pledge not to take donations from corporate campaign committees, which leaves her at a steep fundraising disadvantage. “Corporations don’t vote; people do,” she said. “We’re at the point in this campaign where we’ve had over 1,100 donations, 66 percent of them from individuals who actually live in the city. And every time someone does that, they’re going to come out and vote for you.”
- She said she plans to use the report of the Ferguson Commission to set the agenda at the Board of Aldermen, and to set committee assignments. “The first part has to be sitting down with each individual alderman to see which one of these things are you interested and committed to working on, and then let’s make committee assignments based on that, and prioritize what we’re going to do as a collective body each year,” she said.
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Music: "Renegade," by Styx
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