Explore how a pivotal youth baseball game inspired Michael Butler’s quest for a fairer St. Louis.
As a kid playing baseball at Matthews-Dickeys Boys and Girls Club, St. Louis mayoral candidate Michael Butler recalls members of the opponent team cheating and getting away with it.
A shortstop, he remembers opposing players would slide into second base with the cleats deliberately up trying to hurt him. At third base, they purposely through dirt in his eyes, preventing him from making a tag because he couldn’t see the ball.
Butler cried to his dad, who told him that cheaters never win, and life isn’t always fair.
“Something broke in me that day,” he fondly reflects on. “I decided that I wanted to make life fairer for everyone. I was nine years old.” Fast forward to today, the experience of fairness as a young is driving his campaign for mayor.
“I’m running for mayor because I want to make life more fair for everyone in the city,” he firmly expresses.
Butler joins three other candidates seeking primary wins in the March 4th primary election. The others are: Incumbent Mayor Tishaura Jones who was elected in 2021 and is running for a second term, Ward 8 Alderwoman Cara Spencer, who lost to Jones for mayor four years ago, and energy executive and perennial candidate Andrew Jones. The top two vote-getters in the primary will advance to the April 8th general election.
Butler currently serves as the Recorder of Deeds for the City of St. Louis (2019-Present) and is the former Chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party (2020-2023). He is the first African-American ever elected in both positions. A native of St. Louis, Michael also represented part of St. Louis City (District 79) in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2013-2018. He and his wife, Erin, have two children, Kimber and Karis.
According to his “Mike for Mayor: Leadership You Trust, Progress You See” website, he says he brings bold leadership and a commitment to real solutions. He’s focused on building safer neighborhoods, revitalizing our communities, and strengthening St. Louis from the ground up.
His mayoral platform includes:
Crime reduction – “Our city must equitably enforce its traffic laws while recruiting and retaining quality police officers and continuing to support programs that address the root causes of poverty and crime.”
Reduce vacant housing – “Revitalizing our communities means tackling vacant housing head-on.”
Improve government services – to ensure paved roads, on-time trash collection services, pedestrian safety, and digital online government services.
Spending the RAMS money – Eliminate the Delmar and Gravois Divides – by reducing vacant housing by creating a local housing fund that gives the best incentives to build new housing and renovate existing homes in neighborhoods with high vacancy; invest in local youth programs and increase funding for community schools and wrap-around services for students; improve downtown by increasing funds for housing and safety with an intent focus on improving quality of life in our region’s center.
As the city’s Recorder of Deeds, Bulter’s job is to provide vital record-keeping services to the public. The documents in our office touch virtually every resident and business that lives and operates within St. Louis city limits. The office offers one stop to access birth, marriage, death, land, and historical records.
According to his website, the “noticeable impact” he has made during his tenure includes: a $700,000 revenue increase annually, a productivity increase of 25%, modernized office by bringing in 80% of services online.
If elected mayor, Butler’s pledge to bring fairness “to every city resident” responding to hazardous weather conditions will be on his agenda.
January’s wintery weather brought a mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and extreme cold. Residents were enraged as side streets were not treated, especially as rising temperatures melted the icing roads but refroze as temperatures dipped below freezing causing slippery and treacherous conditions.
“Our government has not been fair to its citizens” when only certain streets get treated creating unsafe neighborhoods in others, he says. How is the problem fixed?
“The first thing is that you have to have the political will to make it happen,” he says. “And I commit as mayor to salt and plow side streets, the residential streets for our city.
“We’ve got to put money into a special budget projects fund about $400,000 every year that’s going to accumulate over five to six years,” Butler continues. “And when we have these big storms, about $2 million will go to pay private contractors that will help in addition to our trucks and city services. It’s going to take about $1.8 million to $2 million to clear every side street when we have one or two catastrophic events like this in a harsh winter.”
Butler says most of the money for the special projects fund will come from the $600,000 cut from the city’s budget. “We will restore some of it,” he says.
Butler’s political career was launched when he worked as a legislative aide for State Senator Robin Wright-Jones and later as a Legislative Assistant to State Representative Mary Wynne Still. He also worked as an educator in the St. Louis Public School System. In the private sector, he worked in management with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in business management from Alabama A&M University and a Master’s degree in public Affairs from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
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