Feature

FOR YOUR APPROVAL

Four mayoral candidates enter. Two leave. A new system of voting hits St. Louis March 2

Politics in St. Louis can mean many things — frustrating things, mostly — but until now, there had always been perfect clarity about what it meant to win the rimary, or first round, of a local election: It meant everything.

That’s because the city’s elections are like a joke that everyone’s in on, all setup and no punchline. Only one party exists in the city as a serious political or governmental force, meaning all battles of policy take place inside a Democratic tent that has its own bounds of left, right and center — alignments that at times only vaguely resemble their national counterparts.

On paper, the city maintained a two-stage election process, with voters winnowing the field in the primary to one candidate per party, followed by the finalists battling it out in the general.

Functionally, though, the election ended at the primary with the Republican candidate serving as little more than an afterthought in the general election. That’s how you get nine Democratic mayors of St. Louis going back more than half a century. The last Republican mayor left office in . In , when former mayor rancis Slay won his first term, he beat his Republican opponent with 87 percent of the vote and spent the next three consecutive elections walloping Green Party candidates by huge margins.

So the partisan farce of the general election has gone on for decades but in that system is gone, replaced with two-stage “approval voting” system that adds a new instruction to the ballot: “Vote for AS MANY names as you approve of in each race.” n arch , for the first time in the city’s history, a new kind of election will end with the top two vote-getters going head-to-head in a runoff on ril . lso a first There are no Democrat or Republican identifications on the ballot. Party labels have been erased, resulting in a non-partisan showdown for the leadership of a deep blue city whose voters went 82 percent for Joe Biden.

No such landslide is expected here. Three candidates — Lewis Reed, Tishaura Jones, and Cara Spencer — are established characters in the Democrat-controlled city government. Andrew Jones, a business development and marketing executive for a local energy com any, ran for mayor in as a Republican and was roundly defeated by Democratic primarywinner Lyda Krewson.

In November, Krewson opened up the race when she announced she would retire from politics after the end of her term. Now, for the second consecutive election, St. Louis is guaranteed a brandnew mayor and administration.

The stakes couldn’t be a higher: Between historic homicide counts, dwindling population, an imperiled school system and jails in crisis, St. Louis is at a crossroads of critical junctures. In separate interviews with the Riverfront Times, all four candidates detailed their visions for a city bursting with problems and potential — while making the case for why voters should approve them on the March 2 ballot.

No one knows for certain what this untested, unprecedented primary will produce. What it will mean, then, is up to you. — Danny Wicentowski

This week’s election introduces a new two-stage “approval voting” system that adds a new instruction to the mayoral ballot: “Vote for AS MANY names as you approve of in each race.”

CARA SPENCER:THE ALDERWOMAN

Cara Spencer, 42, began her tenure as 20th Ward Alderwoman in 2015, at a time when ewis eed was finishing this third term as board president and Tishaura Jones had already spent four years as a state representative and was well into her new job as city treasurer.

Spencer’s opponents may have decades more political experience, but she’s quickly built a reputation as a city watchdog against the mishmash of economic development priorities that have long to ified the city’s legislative body. It’s an arena where the go-to strategy involves pouring tax incentives into development projects that, in the process, deprive the school system of revenue. wo years after she took office, Spencer ran headlong into the attempt to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

“It was just so emblematic of how the city goes about its business, in a vacuum, siloed off and with a short-term game in mind,” Spencer says. “We go in without any sort of risk analysis, or even valuation of the project.”

“Instead,” she fumes, “we took the easy route.” he air ort rivati ation fiasco ended in 2020, with Lambert remaining under city operation. Along the way, it became an example of a kind of collaborative dysfunction that turns St. Louis government into a wasteful, pointless spectacle.

It also demonstrated what a St. Louis mayor can do, and what chaos they can produce: The aborted ight to rivati ation started in late as one of the final acts of outgoing mayor Francis Slay, who entered the city into an agreement with free-market enthusiast Rex Sin uefield in turn, the billionaire hired the high-priced consultants needed to prepare, market and eventually lease St. Louis’ airport to a third-party owner.

The idea, supposedly, would net the city billion and fi all its economic problems. A successful lease would also trigger a lucrative ayback for Sin uefield and the consultants — a cast that grew to include a certain former St. Louis mayor and private-sector attorney named Francis Slay.

Slay’s role, along with the seemingly legalized kickback scheme to Sin uefield, horrified S encer. That’s not the sort of deal a St. Louis mayor should make, she says.

“The mayor should run an agenda, a set of priorities, a clearly articulated vision for the city,” she says, explaining that her agenda would tackle public safety with “a regular accounting of policies and revisions” as the city worked to reduce violent crime and “increase an investment in our community that needs it most.”

Further distinguishing Spencer from her opponents, the alderwoman has run a notably aggressive campaign towards Lewis Reed.

“The Reed record? Cronyism, corruption and crime that’s out of control,” intones a 30-second ad that started airing last week. The narration continues as news clips about airport privatization and the city’s homicide rate ashing by. he ad abruptly pivots to crime victims talking about their losses — “Politicians like Lewis Reed had their chance,” one man says, after describing the death of his son — and ends on Spencer facing the camera, delivering her pitch: “No matter where you live in St. Louis, I’m committed to keeping you safe.”

Reed’s campaign shot back, accusing Spencer’s campaign of using “darkened, grainy image and racial fear tactics” and “a sad old racist trope — blaming Black leaders for crime.”

Spencer defends the ad, saying that Reed bears responsibility for failing to address the rise in violent crime during his long tenure in government. Even before the current campaign, Spencer and Reed had publicly tangled on airport privatization and, that same year, the city’s approval of a $64 million bond to renovate the Scottrade Center for the Blues, consigning city dollars to benefit a team currently worth $530 million.

Still, Spencer says she supports Cure Violence, the recently launched anti-violence strategy principally backed by Reed, though she believes it would work most effectively paired with “focused deterrence a strategy brie y iloted in St. Louis in 2012. The plan involves focusing police and other resources on the small number of people in an area “at high risk for being involved in violent crime.”

As with many things about St. Louis, Spencer laments the lack of planning that pervades the city’s efforts to affect the quality of life for some 300,000 residents. Reed, she alleges, has proven himself an obstacle, not a problem-solver.

“We have no discernable agenda,” she says of the board under Reed. “It is dysfunctional beyond my wildest imagination. He has been at the helm all these years, and what do we have to show for it?”

Still, the next St. Louis mayor is going to face challenges much bigger than past clashes.

There’s the issue of the Workhouse, which Spencer supports closing. The next mayor will also face the aftermath of the pending closure of seven schools, despite having no direct control over the St. Louis Public Schools system.

Solutions will take a lot of planning, requiring long-term moves and thorough analysis, Spencer says. All four candidates agree on that — but Spencer argues that she’s the one who has most proven she’s not just principled but is willing “to do the work.”

St. Louis has a wealth of problems that’s certain. ut where there’s a plan — and a mayor to guide it — there could very well be a way. Spencer wants to be the one to get it there.

“We have got some real structural issues, and the fact that the region hasn’t grown in four decades is problematic,” she says. “I have tremendous hope for St. Louis. We have phenomenal architecture, our human capital is fantastic, our culture, the people who live here and just the amenities that we have — we’re sitting on a goldmine.”

TISHAURA JONES: THE TREASURER

No one was more af icted by St. ouis’ old election system than ishaura ones.

In arch , the all im ortant Democratic rimary swelled with seven candidates, stretching the election to its absurd breaking oint as five sitting ublic officials among them lderwoman yda rewson, oard of ldermen President ewis eed and ones, the city treasurer vied to see who would be the first St. ouis mayor of the st century not named rancis Slay.

In such a divided field, rewson needed ust ercent of the vote to beat ones, who missed the mayorshi by a hair’s breadth of votes. ones’ su orters groused at what could have been if only their candidate had com eted against rewson directly, or at least in an election that didn’t feature as many candidates as days in the week. our years later, ones is coming off her third win as treasurer. In the same election, St. ouis re laced the lay dynasty in the .S. House of e resentatives with activist and rotester ori ush. oters also reelected im ardner to circuit attorney des ite a strong o onent and bitter o osition from St. ouis’ largest olice union. It sends a strong signal, ones, , says of the contests. he eo le who showed u for that election believe in the leadershi of lack women to lead our city and region forward.

Still, ones acknowledges that she can’t hel but view the struggles of rewson’s administration through the what if lens of hindsight.

It was that way on the morning of ebruary , when inmates in ity ustice enter overtook two of the downtown ail’s units, smashed fourth oor windows and sei ed the attention of a stunned city with homemade banners and small fires.

Hours later, ones took to witter to address the u rising. Had I been ayor back in , she wrote, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in today.

In an interview, ones granted that the revolt had been receded by months of ressure over andemic crowding, with conditions worsened by the stalled legal system that lengthened the stays of those awaiting trials and court hearings.

Still, she stands by her statement. In an alternate St. ouis under a ones administration, she says We would have been tackling the root causes of crime more aggressively since . We would be reventing eo le from even entering the system in the first lace, and working with the ircuit ttorney’s ffice on some real, tangible criminal ustice reform.

In that universe, it would have been ayor ones, not rewson, to face the burst of rotests in late after the ac uittal of a co charged with murdering a sus ect. We wouldn’t have been kettling’ rotesters, ones continues, referring to a olice engineered mass arrest that encircled rotesters and uninvolved downtown residents during a night of demonstrations. hose swe t u by riot olice included an undercover officer named uther Hall, who later sued the de artment over a brutal beating delivered at the hands of his fellow officers. his is why the city had to ay uther Hall million, she adds, unctuating her oint. In her view, the status uo of ublic safety in St. ouis has to sto , not ust because of the tangible losses in settlements and embarrassment, but because of what it costs in trust. f course, ones isn’t running to be the mayor four years ago. he St. ouis of today has enough roblems. s with all the candidates, her latform highlights ublic safety. ike the lan ut forth by fellow candidate and alderwoman ara S encer, it features a rollout of a focused deterrence lan, though ones’ latform describes a model to wra olice services into a community first strategy that would include social service roviders, rosecutors, faith organi ations and local businesses to stem the city’s violent crime. ut ones has distinguished her cam aign on other issues. She has made decriminali ing se work a written art of her latform, and her lan for reallocating the Workhouse budget includes redirecting millions of dollars to substance abuse rogramming.

Des ite the setbacks, ones maintains the Workhouse needs to close. Still, with the riminal ustice enter in crisis (including Public Safety Director immie dwards’ revelation that the locks don’t necessarily lock , she has concluded that can’t ha en as fast as reviously lanned. he ail’s delayed closure is ust another e am le, she says, of the way St. ouis kicks the can down the road, a dynamic that com ounds failures as city leaders wait to react to whatever ne t thing they haven’t re ared for. When we talk about the things that are laguing St. ouis, we seem to have an either or, or scarcity mentality, ones says. We need to have a mentality that we can handle and concentrate on multi le things at a time. o ones, the solutions aren’t hiding in new lans or commissions she lists several re orts ublished by coalitions and non rofits over the ast si years, thousands of ages of analysis devoted to olicing, economic develo ment and the racial ine uities between the city’s south and north. hat’s the aralysis of analysis, ones ui s. What we need to do is take those calls to action, ut them together in a strategic lan and go forward with dates and deliverables.

Some challenges still loom unaddressed. ones cites the seven lanned school closures amid an ongoing decline in student o ulation. St. ouis, she says, has not been a good artner with our school system.

While the mayor can’t change school olicy directly, ones says the mayor’s office needs to be an actual resence in the school system and its future, a genuine artner, not a distant voice that wanders into the classroom long after the bell has rung.

It’s the call to service that ones says would make her mayorshi unlike anything in the city’s history, and not ust because she’d be the first lack woman to lead it. Peo le always say they want change, but they don’t, she says. So, we have to be transformational in our a roach, and that’s about leadershi .

It’s like that ible verse, she suggests, the one about ressing toward the mark. How do we kee ressing forward ou ust have to kee ushing, she adds. ecause we know that bigger, and better, is indeed ossible.

— Danny Wicentowski

LEWIS REED: THE PRESIDENT

Lewis Reed, 58, might be St. Louis politics personified. In , twenty years after first taking office as a th Ward ldermen, he won an un recedented fourth term as resident of the oard of ldermen. It’s a osition he com ares to second in command of a massive cor oration though it is uni uely owerful in its own right. rom his erch in ity Hall, eed has managed to carve his own ath, controlling committee assignments and the ow of lawmaking while also holding one of the three key votes on the city’s ultra owerful budgetary board. ut while he is one of the most owerful figures in government, eed says he understands residents’ worries about the historic rise in homicides and the distrust between crime victims and olice. He acknowledges that constituents are frustrated with a government he’s been art of for decades.

It’s a frustration that he says he shares. etting new things ado ted and im lemented in the city is something you can actually get done in that mayor’s office, he says. Part of the challenge is breaking through some of these traditional ways and the ingrained things that have ke t us stagnating for so long. eed ushes back on any notion that he’s underused the ower of his resent office. In a government system reliant on coalitions and soft ower, he says that as board resident, you don’t have the ower to enter into a maga ine subscri tion on your own.

hings would be different in a eed administration, eed says. He mentions the long struggling efforts to de loy body cameras to the city’s officers, which had stalled for years before rolling out at the end of last year. he mayor could do that in a day, he charges. s board resident, he says, I’ve done everything in my ower to lay the groundwork to ut these things in ractice. nd if you have a mayor that has no understanding, it’s taking someone and lo ing them in the seat of an , and they have no idea how to y a lane. hen again, eed tends to be his own ilot and his mercurial style has alienated otential allies in the city’s legislative and e ecutive branches. or instance, in the city’s contentious e loration of air ort rivati ation, eed layed wildcard as he bounced between obstacle and booster, his machinations se arate from those of ayor yda rewson. fter rewson officially killed the rivati ation effort amid o osition that the lan would gamble the city’s most valuable asset while ouring millions into the ockets of conservative billionaire e Sin uefield eed led attem ts to resurrect it as art of a scheme to force the city to lease the air ort’s o erations in e change for, su osedly, billion in im rovements to north city. he lan never got off the ground.

Still, eed maintains that he can marshal the owers of the office to action. I think it’s clear that my leadershi style lends itself better to coalition building, he says.

ut when conditions change, eed believes that walking away from a coalition you hel ed build can be the right thing to do. ake the efforts to close the Workhouse, the city’s maligned medium security ail, which costs the city million to run annually. While both ishaura ones and ara S encer say atly they would close the facility if elected, eed has traced a di ying ath of ositions irst o osed, eed later oined the activists and s onsored the unanimously assed board bill to close the Workhouse by the end of last year. hat didn’t ha en. mid rison officials’ concern about overcrowding during a andemic and a succession of riots and u risings at the city’s other ail, eed sna ed back to what he argues is a more ressing reality avoiding the s read of infection and otential unrest in the ails than the one backed by criminal ustice reformers. he world has changed, eed says, nyone who says they would automatically go in Day and close the Workhouse couldn’t be more irres onsible.

What remains unchanged for eed, through his decades in government and multi le mayoral runs, is his focus on violent crime. He s ent years boosting the ure iolence rogram, which rolled out this year with teams of violence interru ters de loyed to the city’s most violent neighborhoods. eed often talks about the effects of violence on his own family. In , his brother was murdered by unknown gunmen in oliet, Illinois, where eed had grown u among eight siblings. In , eed says his ne hew was found shot, killed and left burning in a dum ster in the city of St. ouis. ne year later, his son was held u at gun oint and nearly robbed close to the family home in om ton Heights. I’ve co hosted candlelight vigils for all these families. I’ve attended the funerals. I take that stuff very, very ersonally, he says. Praying by my brother’s hos ital bed as he assed away from a gunshot wound to the head I know what that feels like. nd I don’t want families to have to go through that. ut the killings continue. he homicides recorded in nearly broke the single year record set in , while some ercent of cases go unsolved. eed says he wants to see an e ansion of the ure iolence rogram to sto killings before they ha en he also su orts additional funding for the ustice for St. ouis amilies und which rovides , awards for ti s that lead to homicide arrests.

He acknowledges, though, that things need to change in St. ouis. he city can’t afford to re eat its last decade of violence and ity Hall gridlock.

St. ouis, he says, needs a gut rehab. his is what drives me to run for mayor, he continues. he city is very, very slow to change. nd it’s going to take someone sitting in that e ecutive role that has the understanding, the motivation and ethic to change it. — Danny Wicentowski

ANDREW JONES:THE BUSINESSMAN

Andrew Jones says he has the skills — a particular set of skills — St. Louis needs in its next mayor.

“Pretty much like the movie Taken, where the gentleman said I have a unique set of skills to put me in a position to help lead the city in the turnaround that’s needed,” he says, one of three times he would reference the Liam Neeson action thriller while speaking to the Riverfront Times.

Jones is an outlier in the fourway race for mayor. He’s the only candidate who isn’t in city government and the only registered Republican, although that’s a political distinction he detests.

In a wide-ranging interview, the 60-year old businessman discussed his thoughts on the city’s crime problem, Confederate monuments, the recent jail uprisings and his faith in the ‘bootstraps’ model for reaching Taken-level success.

Jones, a Metro East native, grew up in a typical working-class family in East St. Louis and attended Catholic school until college at Lincoln University and later Washington University, where he is currently working toward another master’s in economics. He plans to obtain his Ph.D. in economics “before I’m gone from the planet,” he says.

Jones now lives in the Botanical Heights neighborhood and serves as vice president of business develo ment at the non rofit ower company Southwestern Electric Cooperative. He ran for mayor in 2017 as the Republican candidate and lost by 50 percentage points to then-Alderwoman Lyda Krewson, but he otherwise has little political experience. Instead, he relies on his can-do attitude to sway undecided voters.

“My background has been one of success, one of actually pulling oneself up by their bootstraps … As I spoke earlier, in the movie Taken, ‘I have a unique set of skills’ that puts me in a position to be able to help turn this city around.”

Pressed on whether the “pull oneself up by their bootstraps” model really works for everyone (critics argue that it ignores systemic inequalities and puts the blame on oppressed people for not being more successful), Jones says that “if I am a rat catcher in India, my plight is set in stone,” but because of the “phenomenal” system in the United States, anyone in this country can be successful if they simply work hard enough.

Jones includes those who “grew up as a Black person in the United States of America,” like himself.

“I believe my ancestors would be turning over in their graves, looking at the lack of productivity that current Black folks to a large degree have put themselves in,” Jones says.

Jones says St. Louis is currently “at the point of falling into an abyss,” comparing our plight to that of infamously bleak Gary, Indiana. He blames the city’s current leadership, “or lack of leadership.”

Jones insists if he had been mayor the past four years instead of Krewson, he would’ve handled many things differently. Off the to of his head, ones’ first ma or change would’ve been Krewson’s response to taking down confederate statues. He contrasts the situation with reminders of Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

“If we go to Auschwitz, no one’s talking about tearing down any of the buildings that were associated with the deaths of millions of Jews … Jews are there, they’re looking in remembrance, and understanding what happened. … Others that travel and go there, even if they’re sub-groups, Germans or whatever you wanna say, they go to Auschwitz, they look, and they pay reverence to the fact in history that this took place,” he says.

Instead of a “knee-jerk” reaction, Jones says he would’ve assessed whether the statues should be taken down, and that public opinion wouldn’t have much weight in the decision-making process.

Jones also believes the recent prison protests at the St. Louis Justice Center would’ve gone down differently if he were in charge. In fact, he says they wouldn’t have happened.

“We would’ve never gotten there, because my No. 1 position is that we should not close the Workhouse because we have not had data to substantiate closing the Workhouse. I’ve said it four years ago; I’m lamenting it now, when everyone’s saying we should close it,” he says.

Activist organizations have put together detailed reports on the closing the year old ail officially known as the Medium Security Institution — including budget breakdowns for redirecting funding towards better staffing at the new downtown jail and social programs to combat the roots of crime as they ush city officials to move forward with closure plans. Through the pandemic, the city’s jail population decreased sharply and the majority of remaining detainees were shifted to the City Justice Center.

Jones says that he would have kept the Workhouse fully operating to head off any overcrowding at the City Justice Center. He claims that this would have prevented the protests. Advocates for detainees say the inmates were revolting against a range of problems, including inadequate COVID-19 protections and harsh treatment by guards. ity officials deny those incarcerated in the jail have been mistreated and align with Jones on the theme of overcrowding.

“Four years ago, if I had been mayor, I would’ve taken care of that issue so that we could move on to the more pressing things, like providing optimum municipal services to our citizens,” Jones explains.

Jones, who along with Board of Alderman President Lewis Reed has been endorsed by the St. Louis Police fficers ssociation, has made ending violent crime the focus of his campaign, saying that “after you get that done, everything else falls in line.”

However, when asked how he would accomplish that, Jones struggles for s ecifics. He says increasing police funding and backing the blue could be vital. Jones also says that most violent crimes in St. Louis are committed by a small group of people, all of whom are involved with drugs and gangs. He believes that current city leadership knows exactly who these offenders are but they’re too afraid of political backlash to have them arrested.

In ones’ telling, city officials worry about pushback after “all the things that happened this summer, from people burning and rioting in all of these cities because of George Floyd’s issue and the other things that have happened. They don’t want that backlash.”

If he had the opportunity, Jones says, he would arrest them all on his first day in office, as these criminals “can’t be saved by social workers” or even “Dr. Phil.” It’s unclear how he would make that happen.

Jones’ positions break sharply from the platforms of the other candidates in the race, particularly Alderwoman Cara Spencer and Treasurer Tishaura Jones who support closing the Workhouse and have advocated for criminal justice reform as opposed to a police crackdown. While promoting conservative Republican talking points (largely the same platform from his 2017 mayoral run), he insists he is a non-partisan candidate.

So far, he’s tracking behind his opponents. A recent poll by Democratic consulting group Show Me Victories showed him in last place with 5 percent of respondents naming ones as their first choice.

Jones is undeterred. He says, “I will continue to be successful at any endeavor that I get involved with.” — Riley Mack