ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ST. LOUIS — Four years ago, Janis Mensah thought Tishaura O. Jones could be the progressive mayor the city needed.

Mensah remembers helping organize events and attending protests with the future mayor, and feeling so hopeful.

“She was saying all the right things,� Mensah said.

But after Jones got into office, a lot of those things didn't happen. And, step by step, Jones began to lose the very parts of the coalition that brought her to power.

She disappointed activists with support for police raises, fights with jail watchdogs and breakups of homeless camps. Missteps with a grant program riled North Side business owners, and a fight with the wife of a prominent pastor irked some North Side pastors. Residents all over, from north to south, boiled about the state of city services, from trash trucks that showed up days late, to potholes left open for months.

And that was before the big snowstorm hit in January, and streets were covered in ice for weeks. The city's response got such poor reviews, Jones publicly apologized, multiple times.

The results have been bad. Missing door knockers. An emboldened challenger. A big fundraising deficit. And a distant second-place finish in the March 4 primary, 35 percentage points behind Alderwoman Cara Spencer.

It was enough to make the April 8 runoff. But it was a big fall for the incumbent: Turnout in the north, which came out for her four years ago, was abysmal. The southern wards around Tower Grove Park, which she swept last time, went hard for Spencer this time.

Then, last weekend, the St. Louis Democratic Central Committee, the official grassroots of the party Jones has represented for 23 years, broke with decades of precedent to endorse her opponent.

Mensah, too, has given up on the mayor. “With the way her relationship is with the people who got her elected, I’m just not sure who is left in her corner,� Mensah said.

Lana Stein, the retired University of Missouri-St. Louis professor who wrote the book on St. Louis politics, said it's not over yet. Jones still has a few weeks left to campaign, and she has seasoned advisers who know how to tear down an opponent.

“But,� Stein said, “I would be surprised if Cara did not win.�

Jones has rejected the suggestion that anything is final. She points out that there are still weeks left to convince voters. She says the primary system, in which voters could mark ballots for as many candidates as they liked, is different from the general election, in which voters will have to make a final choice between her and Spencer. She is hopeful that the primary's third-place finisher, Recorder of Deeds Michael Butler, will lend his support to her cause.

Rosetta Okohson, Jones’ campaign manager, noted that turnout was low in the primary and more people — and potential Jones voters — will be coming out in April.

She said the campaign will spend the days between now and then reminding people of good things Jones has done for them.

“I know the snowstorm had everyone in a tizzy, but there were three years' worth of work that happened before,� she said.

Can the Jones camp regain the activists that propelled it to victory in 2021?

"I'm asking them to get involved," Okohson said.

“But, also, the show must go on.�

Losing support

Four years ago, Jones was the favorite. She had nearly won the previous election. And she had a message tailor-made for the city's progressive moment, promising to tackle the city's racial divides, to revive impoverished neighborhoods, to rethink crime fighting with less reliance on police, and to do more for the city's most vulnerable.

More than 100 progressives, including Mensah, signed a letter endorsing her. Dozens of Black pastors signed a letter of their own. Even Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, her chief rival, said at a debate that if he couldn't be mayor, he would want Jones in Room 200.

On Election Day, the North Side came out in droves for her, some big southern wards followed, and Jones became the city’s first Black female mayor. She quickly cut the police budget, closed the Workhouse jail on the north riverfront, and used federal pandemic aid to send $500 checks to thousands of poor residents. Supporters were thrilled.

Then her campaign promises were tested by the day-in, day-out job of running a city. 

That summer, a rash of shootings and mayhem around downtown had business owners threatening to leave. In response, the new mayor called a press conference to announce plans for more police officers downtown.

Activists were taken aback. A slew of organizations calling on Jones to “stand firm in her earlier commitments to reject the status quo and to repudiate the idea that more police equals more safety.� But the city added the officers anyway.

Then Jones' new city counselor appealed a judgment against police officers accused of conducting illegal mass arrests during a protest — despite a Jones promise to hold police more accountable in the city. The Rev. Darryl Gray, a leading police reform advocate, called a press conference to complain. “This city deserves a lot more than it’s getting,� he said.

Activists who thought they would be partners in government felt like they were losing touch.

The agitations multiplied from there:

In early 2023, Jones, looking to stave off a state takeover of the police department, announced big raises for police officers. Activists were disappointed; they wanted money shifted elsewhere.

Later that year, a watchdog board she created to clean up the city's remaining jail accused her of stonewalling their investigations even as a slew of inmates died in custody. “It was really just a disingenuous lip service and no real action,� Mensah, who was at that point a jail board member, said in a recent interview.

Then, in October 2023, the mayor ordered the clearing of a homeless encampment outside of City Hall. Activists, who considered such actions cruel and expected them to end under Jones, came out in force to protest and forced a brief delay.

But the next day, the tents were gone and a fence lined the grass outside City Hall’s Market Street doors with signs reading, “Park closed for restoration.� The mayor criticized activists for getting in the way.

Keith Rose, a longtime advocate for progressive causes, said that was his breaking point.

“I keep hearing that the mayor lost this election during the snowstorm in early January,� he said. “But she lost my support, and the support of a lot of people, on Oct. 2, 2023, when she sent the police to destroy the tent encampment and blamed social workers and activists for what happened.�

Even the Workhouse went sideways when Jones suggested putting tiny homes for the homeless on the site. Activists didn't think anyone should be living on such a reviled site in an industrial area. Then the administration announced late last year that the jail would be demolished in December. But December came and went. The mayor's office now says demolition is scheduled to begin Tuesday.

“When the city continues to say they're going to do something, and then does something else, it's hard to not lose credibility,� said Z Gorley, a spokesperson at law firm ArchCity Defenders, one of the pillars of the city's progressive movement.

'No black/white issue'

Jones has also frustrated North Side residents with the slow pace of promised investment, perhaps best exemplified by a small business grant program funded by a chunk of the $500 million in federal pandemic aid.

Several North Side business owners were exasperated, first, by years of waiting for the grants. Then, when the grants came out, some of the biggest were going to big-budget nonprofits, like the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. Others were slated for businesses listing addresses in vacant buildings and empty lots.

But in the meantime, business owners have shown up at election forums holding signs denouncing Jones.

Prince Carter, of King Prince BBQ, heckled her when she called Harold’s Chicken, on Union Boulevard, a favorite hangout.

“They’re closed!� Carter said from the second row. “They’ve been closed over a year.�

Mike Jones, who owns a copy shop on Delmar Boulevard, said he had switched his vote to Spencer over the matter.

“They had all this money,� said Jones, no relation to the mayor, “and I didn’t get one red cent.�

Tameka Stigers, who owns a hair salon and leads a coalition of businesses calling for changes in the grant program, declined comment to the Post-Dispatch. But on Facebook, she compared reelecting Jones to keeping money in a corrupt bank. “Don't be fooled,� she wrote. “This ain't no black/white issue. It's a moral one.�

Others, like Arthurine Harris, of north St. Louis, are wondering where all of the money has gone.

“Driving through St. Louis, I don’t get the feeling that we’ve received a half-billion dollars,� she told the mayor at a recent forum.

Jones has also alienated some of the North Side pastors  four years ago with her push to oust the wife of Gray, the activist, as the city's personnel director.

When Jones appointed Sonya Jenkins-Gray in 2022, Jones spoke of her warmly, as a partner in modernizing the hiring process in a short-staffed city. But she spent the past few months working to fire her, and finally did so Thursday. Her staff has said Jenkins-Gray made a subordinate drive her, in a city vehicle, to Jefferson City during a workday in July to catch her husband with his ex-wife, a clear lapse in judgment.

But Jenkins-Gray has decried the charges, saying she made a mistake taking a city car, and reimbursed the city $170.30 for mileage. The mayor, she has said, is trying to get revenge on her husband for endorsing a challenger to U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Jones ally, last year.

And for at least a few of the clergy, that has been troubling.

“It’s a mixed bag with the clergy,� said the Rev. Rodrick Burton, of New Northside Missionary Baptist, though he himself declined to publicly endorse a candidate.

The Rev. Duane Burch, president of the region's Clergy Coalition, cautioned that no one minister speaks for everyone. And he said he was not aware of any dissension.

He, like Burton, also declined to make a public endorsement.

'Tell them to tell their family'

Jones has also gained new detractors, perhaps none more prominent than the billionaire founder of construction firm Clayco, Bob Clark.

Clark was irked when the city rejected a plan for one of his companies to build a cement plant in north St. Louis. In return, his companies have donated more than $180,000 to a political action committee supporting Spencer, fueling a fundraising surge for the challenger and huge ad buys that will be difficult for Jones to match.

As of eight days before the primary, the last date for which data is available for all campaign accounts associated with Jones and Spencer, Spencer's committees had $436,000 on hand, compared to $171,000 on Jones' side. 

And in neighborhoods north, south and central, voters have told the Post-Dispatch that Jones has lost them with city services.

Voters like Lauren Green, of Tower Grove South, and Rachel Ruskin, of Princeton Heights, said they voted for Jones last time because they wanted to see more diversity in government.

But then they saw refuse trucks throwing recycling out with the trash, and the streets covered in snow and ice for weeks. They changed their minds.

Helen Money, of Walnut Park, is so frustrated with the broken roads and derelict vehicles that wait months for a tow that she’s not even going to vote.

“I’m so disappointed in the mayor,� she said.

The mayor has had defenses for all of the dissent along the way:

Companies were threatening to leave downtown before she announced the extra police presence there.

City lawyers appealing judgments against police have a duty to defend the city and its treasury.

The City Hall homeless encampment was a public health hazard, with people freely using drugs and overdosing.

The North Side grant program is being fixed. Most of the bad awards have not been paid out. Dozens have been rescinded altogether.

She is working to hire more employees to shore up city services.

And she has budgeted millions of dollars to repave roads.

“I feel the potholes, too,� she says.

Last Saturday, Jones pulled up to Barrett Brothers Park, on Goodfellow Boulevard south of Natural Bridge Avenue, with about two dozen supporters preparing to go door to door to talk to voters and try to turn things around.

In a brief speech, she offered them some material: Crime is way down. Millions of dollars have been invested into programs to help young people be safe, get jobs and stay out of trouble. She also mentioned the plans to pave main roads, including Goodfellow.

Then she got down to brass tacks. The next few weeks, she said, are about raising more money, getting more volunteers, and finding a lot of votes — 20,000, to be exact.

“The people that you're talking to,� Jones said, “tell them to tell their family and friends.�

“Thank you for coming,� she added. “I love each and every one of you.�

On Wednesday, the political arm of Action St. Louis, one of the other pillars of the movement that supported Jones last time, endorsed Jones again.

But the endorsement came more than a month later than it did last time, and it acknowledged concerns.

“We want to be clear: our endorsement is not a blanket approval of every decision made by this administration,� it read. “Over the past four years, there have been real frustrations, missteps, and moments where the community has demanded better.�

It also wasn't quite sure Jones would win.

“Regardless of who is in office,� it said, “we will always organize, advocate, and hold leadership accountable.�