St. Louis County voters cast ballots Tuesday to pick a successor to Sam Page, choosing between Democrat Jake Zimmerman and Republican Dennis Hancock in a race dominated by talk of a looming budget crisis. An early unofficial results page showed Zimmerman well ahead, with Green Party candidate J.D. McFarland also on the ballot.
Zimmerman, the county assessor from Olivette, ran against Hancock, a County Council member representing District 3, according to St. Louis Public Radio. A results page from St. Louis Call Newspapers showed Zimmerman with 70.20 percent of the vote (131,845 votes), Hancock with 28.30 percent (53,151 votes), and McFarland with 1.50 percent (2,810 votes). Those figures were described elsewhere as unofficial, and St. Louis County contests were not considered closed until every polling place had reported, since voters could cast ballots at any location in the county, per a separate results page from STLtoday.com.
A Budget Crunch Awaits the Winner
Whoever takes office inherits Sam Page's final budget and a financial picture both candidates called difficult. The station's reporting noted both men agreed that Page's successor will have to make hard financial decisions, with the county's reserves running low and the federal pandemic aid that once propped up its finances gone.
Page's proposed 2027 budget carried a $65 million deficit without new revenue or one-time funds, even after eliminating 139 positions, the same outlet reported. Page had already cut operating spending from roughly $1 billion to $930 million and closed the county's last public pools, while leaning on Rams settlement money he said would run out within a couple of years. St. Louis County police were also short at least $5 million in payroll funding this year, and Page had pushed new revenue to close that gap, saying the county government could not keep operating on what he called its 1970 budget.
Candidates Split Sharply on Taxes
Hancock argued the county's trouble was self-inflicted. “I've said for a long time that the county doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem,” he told the same outlet. He opposed tax increases outright, including a property-tax measure for senior services, according to St. Louis Magazine, and promised to reduce spending on what he called unnecessary things while delivering what he described as plain, ordinary competence. He also said government is not meant to serve everyone in every way.
Zimmerman took a different line, saying it would make sense for the county to tax online purchases, even though voters had already rejected that idea. Voters turned down a similar online sales tax twice in the past four years, most recently in August, per St. Louis Public Radio's reporting. Zimmerman also identified a costly, malfunctioning county revenue computer system as an example of waste and said he does not have all the answers, telling voters who want a candidate who does to look elsewhere.
Fallout From a Failed Senior Services Measure
The budget fight carried echoes of Proposition U, a measure voters rejected by roughly 30 points in August. Hancock had voted against even placing Prop U on the ballot. Zimmerman said he had not taken a public position on the measure before the vote but argued its passage would have made the next county executive's job easier, attributing its defeat to what he called a real trust deficit with county government.
Zimmerman also pushed back on the idea that merging the city of St. Louis into the county could close the budget gap, calling that notion nonsense, and said responsibility for the budget ultimately rests with the County Council, arguing the work requires going department by department and line item by line item.
Council Tensions Shaped the Campaign
The dysfunctional relationship between the county executive's office and the County Council hung over the race. Hancock named public safety as his top issue, while Zimmerman said fixing the relationship between the executive and the council was his single most important priority, according to St. Louis Call Newspapers. Hancock had opposed Page in nearly every budget fight as a council member, and the council had pushed to remove Page over his continued work as an anesthesiologist and an alleged violation of a charter full-time requirement.
That council also spent roughly half a million dollars in Rams settlement money pursuing a failed charter measure meant to compel department heads to answer its inquiries. A separate council budget fight cost $2.8 million intended for jail inmates' medical care, according to a county health director's warning in May. Hancock said the council was not responsible for that lost funding.
The two men also disagreed over what to do with the county's headquarters building. Hancock favored keeping the current building and bringing it into fire-code compliance, telling West Newsmagazine, “I believe the best solution is to stay in our current building and do what is necessary to be compliant with the fire code.” Zimmerman said he was open to whichever option offered taxpayers the best deal.
Political Backdrop and Endorsements
Zimmerman, a former state representative who has served as county assessor since 2011, won a three-way Democratic primary with 46 percent of the vote. He later met with police and firefighter unions that had endorsed rival Brian Williams during that primary, but said he promised those unions nothing in return. Hancock, a former Fenton mayor, was seeking to become the county's first Republican executive since Gene McNary was last elected in 1986, St. Louis Magazine reported.
Election-night coverage from KSDK included a live results show hosted by Mark Maxwell between 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., also available through the station's streaming app on Roku, Fire TV and other smart TV platforms. With the county's reported returns still labeled unofficial, final certification will determine whether Zimmerman's wide early lead holds as the county moves toward tackling the deficit both candidates spent the campaign warning about.
