Glenn Bartels from South County asks, "Mantovani. I probably only know what I’ve heard in probably the last month since he’s been running advertisements. To Mr. Mantovani, how is he going to change things compared to what Mr. Stenger has done?"
Businessman Mark Mantovani believes his leadership skills make him the best qualified for the job.
"The current level of leadership is just not adequate relative to the opportunities afforded to the region. We need bigger thinking, more innovation and we need someone who will engage in the community in a different way," says Mantovani.
Mantovani claims, his ethics are different from his opponent.
"I believe my integrity is at a different level. I have no interest in creating big campaign funds during the course of my administration as the County Executive has so I believe we have a wholly different ethical component with respect to how we see public service," says Mantovani.
Incumbent Steve Stenger says, his record speaks for itself.
"Bring 5.7 billion dollars of economic development to our county which is really unprecedented for STL County in that short of a time period. And all of the jobs that economic development generates. We’re talking about 30,000 jobs retained and added," says Stenger.
Stenger says, their differences begin at the party level.
"I’ll just say it, we are in a Democratic primary and Mark Mantovani is a Republican. And he’s in the Democratic primary. Frankly I think he’s in the wrong primary. This is an individual who gave 20000 dollars to Eric Greitens while he was trying to deliver Right to Work to our state," says Stenger.
We asked Mr. Mantovani to respond to that accusation.
"I am certainly a Democrat. A Democrat is someone, in my view, defined as a person who cares about the middle class, cares about providing service to the population across the community. In respect to the contribution to Eric Greitens, I clearly missed it. When I became aware of his candidacy, he was a moderate and he continued to move to the right in his campaign and even more so after he was elected," says Mantovani.
Stenger says, Greitens was openly supportive of Right to Work when he was a gubernatorial candidate and because of Greitens, Right to Work is now a distinct possibility.
"We don’t need right to work and that’s a dramatic difference between Mark and I," says Stenger.
On this topic, Mantovani believes the two candidates agree on this issue. Mantonvani says he's against Right to Work too.
You can watch the full the full interviews with the candidates below.
Full interview: St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger
Full interview: St. Louis County Executive candidate Mark Mantovani
