There Are 10 States Where Only White Candidates Have Won Statewide Office
Nearly two centuries after Missouri gained statehood as part of a compromise over slave ownership, no black candidate has ever won a statewide election there – a barrier Robin Smith is trying to overcome but seldom discusses publicly.
According to an analysis by the Associated Press, Missouri is one of 10 states since Reconstruction where only white candidates have won contests for president, senator, governor and other nonjudicial offices elected statewide. The others are Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming and Mississippi, which had the nation’s first two black senators in the 1870s when those seats were chosen by legislators rather than popularly elected.
Just making it to the general election puts Smith, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, in rare political company. The only previous black candidate to have won a major party’s nomination for statewide office in Missouri was Alan Wheat, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas City who lost the 1994 Senate race to John Ashcroft, the former Republican governor. Ashcroft’s son, Jay Ashcroft, now is running against Smith.
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