You may also be interested in reading the Call’s endorsements in other south county races and the vote on two amendments to the St. Louis County Charter in Tuesday’s election.

The Call has long looked at divided government as a good thing. A board — any board, whether it be County Council, a school board or the Missouri Legislature — that has too many voices in one political direction is almost never a good thing.

And that’s one of the key reasons why the Call endorses County Executive Steve Stenger in the Democratic primary Tuesday, Aug. 7, over his challenger Mark Mantovani.

But more than anything else, we support Stenger for another term because he gets things done, despite a hostile County Council.

He started an accountability portal that shows every county check being written in real time. He’s cut costs where needed without cutting services.

He has implemented continuous improvement and strategic planning across county departments, initiated pension reform and taken real steps to counter the opioid epidemic with Missouri’s first quasi-statewide prescription-drug registry. Although he’s a Democrat, he’s hired Republicans.

We’re intrigued by the idea of a Mantovani term as county executive, but we’re hesitant to endorse him for two reasons. Although he has a distinguished resume in business, he has no experience in county office, or any political office.

It can take years to learn the ins and outs of running county government, and then he’d be up for re-election.

Secondly, this newspaper has long stood hard and fast against any type of city-county merger between St. Louis County and St. Louis city.

Mantovani’s central campaign issue is that he wants the city to re-enter the county as a municipality, on equal footing with all other county municipalities.

The reasons we don’t like that idea could fill an entire column, and we don’t see county voters supporting it either.