Will Alderwoman Cara Spencer be St. Louis’ next mayor? | COURTESY OF CARA SPENCER’S CAMPAIGN
This spring, in an unprecedented election, the city of St. Louis approved two progressive mayoral candidates. On April 6, either CARA SPENCER or TISHAURA JONES will be the city’s next mayor. Which one is best suited to the remarkable moment in which we find ourselves? BY DANNY WICENTOWSKI
W
e already know several things about St. Louis’ next mayor. She is a single mom with a
school-aged son in the region’s struggling education system. She supports redefining public safety in ways the city’s progressives have long dreamed of. She’s spent years as part of a city government whose legacy of big promises often crashed into bigger disappointments — and now, in the shadow of that legacy, she is asking voters to believe in her ability to overcome it. In the broadest strokes, the two candidates on the April 6 general election ballot, Treasurer Tishaura Jones and Alderwoman Cara Spencer, could be placed within a similar area of the city’s progressive political spectrum. But the time for broad strokes and abstractions is over.
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
The winner of the April 6 election will have just two weeks to breathe and prepare before April 20, the day current Mayor Lyda Krewson leaves office for a retirement from politics. How did we get here? In the four-candidate March 2 primary, Jones placed first and Spencer
MARCH 31-APRIL 6, 2021
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second in a never-before-tried form of democracy — with voters marking their “approval” of as many candidates as they wished, and the top two moving on to face each other in an equally unprecedented April 6 general election. For generations, the general election was the part of the pro-
cess where the drama died, a meaningless round that, in the absence of any serious third-party or Republican challenger, acted as a formality for the winner of the chaotic Democratic primary. This year, for the first time in the city’s history, this traditional formality has been transformed into a very real round two of Jones v. Spencer, and a tangible continuation of their efforts to separate themselves in the eyes of voters. It’s a mission they each struggled to accomplish during the primary, as they campaigned not just against each other but against the more moderate sensibilities of Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed and the pro-police conservatism of Andrew Jones. Jones and Spencer are not out-
