Juneteenth organizer Carla “Coffee” Wright challenges Claire McCaskill in crowded Senate primary

Carla “Coffee” Wright is running in the August 7 Democratic primary against U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who did not have a primary challenger in her most recent reelection campaign in 2012 but has six this year.

“The value to challenge an incumbent in a primary is to let them know not to take us for granted,” Wright said. “Don’t take the people that you say you represent for granted. You need to stay on your toes, and we are watching. When a certain class or the masses of the people feel like they’re being ignored, their issues are being ignored, we don’t see you unless its election time and then you want to kiss the babies and shake hands, then you have to know that you will be challenged.”

Wright – who has never run for office before – actually canvassed for McCaskill during her campaigns in 2006 and 2012, but thinks the incumbent needs a challenge in 2018 and no more experienced black politician stepped up to file.

“She has been in that seat for 12 years, so she has had a lot of time to do something. If she gets it again, that will be 18 years. So when is she going to step up? If she can’t step up, then move on and pass the torch,” Wright said. “We need more people stepping to grab these positions because we cannot continue to be left behind because we want to appease another party.”

Wright has never even stepped foot inside the U.S. Senate before, though she did stop outside the building while protesting Ferguson to say, “Hands up, don’t shoot!”

A St. Louis native, Wright has campaigned all over the state, visiting the Ozarks, Branson, Kansas City, Phillipsburg, and Boonsville. When she visited Boonsville, she and her videographer were the only blacks in the room out of 300 to 400 white people, she said.

“I walked up in there as though I was at home because, first of all, there’s one race and it’s called ‘human,’” Wright said. “We are all more alike than we are different, and we are all supposed to be fighting for justice and democracy. I’m just a sponge for the underdog. I do not like seeing people being walked over or mistreated or left out. I don’t care who they are.”

Out of 21 candidates in both primaries for U.S. senator, Wright is the only black candidate, though her own extended family is multiracial. Her campaign is inclusive of everyone and reflects mainly on the working class and the poor.

“The poor and the working-class are the majority,” Wright said. “If you don’t look at race, and you just look at the poor and the working-class, we are the majority.”

On her platform, her number one core value is to impeach President Donald Trump.

“I am for impeaching Donald Trump 200 percent, and I wish Claire would speak up and make a national statement that she’s for impeaching Donald Trump and I would have more respect for her as our senator,” Wright said. “When we keep dealing with all these injustices and nobody is speaking up for it, nobody’s doing anything about it, that’s what fuels me to say, ‘I got to keep going’ because I’d be turning around in my grave.”

She also is campaigning to increase the minimum wage, end homelessness, build affordable housing, rebuild cities, pass universal healthcare, establish community control of police, legalize marijuana, abolish the electoral college, and enact proportional political representation by race.

“We are not getting proportionate political representation,” she said. “It’s 100 Senate seats, and if African Americans are 13 percent of the population of the United States, then I think we should be holding 13 percent of the elected positions. I don’t think it’s asking for too much.”

Currently, there are three black U.S. senators: Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA).

Veteran human rights activist Zaki Baruti, leader of the Universal African Peoples Organization and longtime campaigner for proportional political representation, helped to encourage Wright to run for the U.S. Senate, and at first she was against the idea.

“I know how politics can be nasty, and I didn’t want to play dirty so I had to think about it,” Wright said.

Wright also campaigns for a policy change dear to her heart: establishing Juneteenth – commemorating the end of chattel slavery in the U.S. – as a national holiday. She is perhaps most widely known locally as a Juneteenth organizer. She held her first St. Louis Juneteenth Parade in 2016, with Dick Gregory as the king and Frankie Muse Freeman as the queen. What possessed her to make it public was “ignorance.”

“Probably seven out of 10 people never heard of Juneteenth, and I can tell by the way they pronounce it,” she said. “They’ll say ‘June 10th?’ That's the first thing that comes out of their mouths.”

Juneteenth has been an official holiday in the state of Missouri since 2003. The local parade did not become official until Wright paid for an annual official parade celebration in 2016.

“I decided I’m going to make it official. It's going to go on record that St. Louis will have an official Juneteenth parade,” Wright said. “I participated in other states, and I wrote the Juneteenth National Anthem. Here I am saying it all over in California, Chicago, and New York.”

Wright grew up on the North Side of St. Louis and went to high school at Beaumont, Northwest, and St. Stephens. She tested out a year early and graduated in 1982, then went to St. Louis Community College to study early childhood education and earned her associate’s degree.

She has worked as a real estate investor, a recruiter for pharmaceutical companies testing medications, a substitute teacher, as an advocate for abused and neglected children for the Salvation Army and Marygrove, and as a community networker who assists in the search for missing people. She has two children and one grandchild. 

“I don’t require much as far as finances,” she said.

That personal philosophy also is true of her campaign for one of the nation’s highest offices.

“All I need is votes,” she said. “Money is great; if I can get more donations that would help me to be able to spread the word. But once everyone knows that I’m in the race, then it’s their choice. In the spirit of David and Goliath, I’m running on morals versus millions.”

The Democratic primary will be held Tuesday, August 7. Wright is listed first on the ballot; McCaskill is last. The other Democratic candidates are Angelica Earl, Leonard Joseph Steinman II, John Hogan, Travis Gonzalez and David Faust.

For more information on Wright and her campaign, visit www.coffeewrightussenate.com or call 314-201-7711.

Ashley Jones is an Emma Bowen Foundation editorial intern at The St. Louis American, supported by a grant from the Democracy Fund.