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Missouri Democratic Party chairman won't seek another term

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jo Mannies
Published November 14, 2018 at 10:11 PM CST
Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber is stepping down when his term ends Dec. 1, 2018.
Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber is stepping down when his term ends Dec. 1, 2018.

Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber says he will step down when his term ends Dec. 1.

Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Webber
Credit Jason Rosenbaum I St. Louis Public Radio
Missouri Democratic Party chairman Stephen Webber is stepping down when his term ends Dec. 1, 2018.

Webber told St. Louis Public Radio that he has sent a letter to members of the Democratic State Committee, notifying them of his plans. A new chairman will be chosen Dec. 1, he said.

Webber is a former legislator from Columbia. He has drawn praise for his hard work campaigning for Missouri Democrats, even though the party suffered a major loss with this month’s defeat of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Webber led aggressive recruitment efforts, but the party still failed to make significant gains in the General Assembly, where the GOP has huge majorities.

Webber did not discuss his longterm plans. In a text, he wrote,  "My only plan right now is to wrap stuff up at the party, catch my breath and eat some food that's not from a gas station."

Republican Party chairman Todd Graves has not indicated whether he plans to seek another term.

Follow Jo Mannies on Twitter: @jmannies

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Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
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