The drone poised at Broadway and Providence Road is ready for a bird’s eye tour of Columbia’s 4^th Ward. The excursion starts its sweep over Old City subdivisions, whose legacies often go back a century. The flight then moves west and southwestward over less thickly settled, more suburban areas lying within a few miles of the Missouri River Valley. With a recent election in mind comes a review of the colors red and blue and the impact of neighborhood organizations that determined the final outcome of a heated three-way race.

            Although the 1949 Home Rule Charter for Columbia eschewed the declaration of political party affiliation among members of the City Council, it doesn’t take long for voters to determine the position of each member on the ideological aisle. It’s a matter of left or right, or blue versus red in more current parlance. Blue identifies those who are socially sympathetic, namely “liberal,” while red identifies people who are more conservative and somewhat less socially empathetic. In the recent tussle, the incumbent was identified as red, and the challenger and winner was considered blue. A third candidate — a “spoiler” if you will — was spectrally somewhere in between.

            With somewhat less then 20 percent of the electorate even bothering to vote in the April 2 municipal election, the political tenor of the Columbia City Council has moved sharply to the left. With the 4th Ward as a laboratory for study, the leftward swing to the blue was a tribute to a well-organized effort among nine neighborhood associations (out of 81 across the city at last count) and four historic Old City subdivisions. Anger and the desire for change got out the vote among the blues in Precincts 4-C, 4-D, 4-E, 4-F, 4-H, 4-I and 4-N. Wins for the incumbent in Precincts 4-A, 4-B, 4-G, 4-J, 4-K, 4-L and 4-M were helpful but not enough keep the ward in the red.

Voice from the neighborhood

As our drone sweeps across the 4th Ward and crosses from the Old City out into the newer suburbs, political tendencies based on electoral results go from blue to red. The blues came out in force to back the winner in the Park Hill, Westmount, Westwood and Quarry Heights subdivisions. These subdivisions form the cradle of some of the city’s oldest neighborhood associations: Park Hill, Westmount, Quarry Heights, Westwinds Park, College Park, Rockingham, Historic Sunset Lane, County House Branch and the really big dog, Historic Old Southwest. 

            Controversy over widening most of Stewart Road marked the coming out for neighborhood associations some 30 years ago, and the Old Southwest aggregation was particularly vocal at the time. Installation of curbs, gutters, stormwater drainage and a concrete pavement came amidst controversy about width of the street. Stewart Road’s comparative narrowness today makes it somewhat more perilous for non-motorized users forced to contend with an increasing number of fissures and cracks and clumps of loose material.

            Political representation of the 4th Ward has swung sharply to the left due to the aggressive, well-organized efficacy of neighborhood associations across the close-in Old City portion of the sprawling constituency. Stung by an otherwise unsuccessful effort last year to realign ward boundaries to favor red interests, the blues got out the vote across the Old City area bolstered by the sheer efficacy of long-in-place neighborhood association communication networks.

 

From blue to red

Our drone moves southwestward and crosses newer subdivisions that supported the red candidate’s close but unsuccessful re-election bid. Here’s an area of newer homes, larger lots and vacant land ripe for more development, perhaps pushing further westward to bridge Perche Creek. Red precincts came close to re-electing the incumbent, but the suburbs are penalized by having fewer neighborhood associations and less organized communication networks. 

            That’s the shape of things this time around in Ward 4. Although the politically blue group can reliably depend on support today from the Old City neighborhoods closest to the city center, every new home and subdivision as well as annexation as Columbia spreads further out represents an opportunity next time around for the red interests to return to power and to maintain the city’s progressive forward march.