State Senator Jeff Smith appears to be on his way out of office one way or another, and soon.
For those unfamiliar, Democratic Senator Jeff Smith has held is seat for the 4th district since 2007 after teaching at Washington University and University of Missouri St. Louis. Smith lost his first political bid in 2004 after being narrowly defeated by Russ Carnahan in the primary for the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2007, he made it out of the primary scrum and went on to win his current seat uncontested in the general election.
Sadly, the good times of winning an uncontested election have to come to an end.
One of our tipsters alerts us to the current troubles of State Senator Jeff Smith saying:
Mark Reardon mentioned on KMOX yesterday that one of his Reardon Roundtable regulars may be resigning his seat and that they might have news about it. It never materialized. He then noted on his Twitter page that the person in question is Jeff Smith.
He also pointed us to STLBeacon’s article on the subject: “Sen. Jeff Smith literally the talk of the town — and the state Capitol“
Basically, no one knows what the hell is exactly going on, but everyone is pretty sure Jeff Smith is out.
From STLBeacon on Friday:
The political world in St. Louis and Jefferson City is abuzz today over state Sen. Jeff Smith’s political future — and what may or may not be happening to the St. Louis Democrat.
A deluge of reports from activists and officials in both parties, from Washington to City Hall, has Smith resigning for various alleged reasons. Such a departure would be a stunning end to a promising political career that spawned an award-winning documentary a few years ago about his unsuccessful 2004 bid for Congress.
But so far, much of the dire talk has turned out to be bogus.
The Beacon later updated with some information leading them to believe that Smith’ troubles might have started with that very 2004 campaign, which you are read all about on their site (scroll down for the update)
We’ll keep tabs on this the best we can, but frankly we are a blog in St. Louis that doesn’t have a lot of time during the day to mine political connections, so if you have anything to share, send it this way!
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