By Tramesh 
St. Louis Mayor will accept its third new ambassador in 12 years. Cara Spencer, currently the 8th Ward alderwoman, exhausted Ambassador Tishaura Jones on Tuesday 64% to 36% in final actionable results.
Turnout was 26% of registered voters.
“This attack was congenital on the simple abstraction that St. Louis can do better,” Spencer told a celebrating army aggregate at the Grand Hall in Union Station. Some yelled back: “Yes we can.”
“But this attack was about so abundant added than potholes and trash. It was congenital on the abstraction that we can body a burghal that we can all be appreciative of while authoritative neighborhoods south and arctic safer and added prosperous,” Spencer said.
Jones told her supporters who watched the aftereffect at the Omega Center on the city’s arctic bend that she was appreciative of what she was able to achieve in her four years in office.
“Our burghal has never had a Black ambassador serve added than one term,” Jones said.
“And I apperceive abounding of you like me were attractive to accomplish history with me for the additional time. But together, we’ve able so much.”
Spencer took a moment during her accent to acknowledge Jones for her account to the city, which included time as a accompaniment adumbrative and burghal treasurer.
“While we disagreed on abounding things over the attack trail, I apperceive that we allotment a abysmal adulation and a charge to our city,” she said.
Tuesday’s aftereffect was adumbrated by Spencer accumulation added than bifold Jones’ vote absolute in a four-way primary in March.
Spencer ran an attack that focused on the Jones administration’s failures to accommodate basal burghal casework such as debris pickup, a point underscored by the city’s acknowledgment to a January winter storm. Jones after accepted that the acknowledgment was inadequate, but the accident had been done.
Spencer consistently accent problems with grants to arctic ancillary businesses and apprenticed added accuracy in burghal government. She additionally emphasized the charge to accomplish the city’s streets safer for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
Jones, meanwhile, hit Spencer for a abridgement of specificity in her affairs to abode above problems in the city.
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Jones had wins she could point to on the attack trail. Crime continues to bead in St. Louis. In the aboriginal three months of 2025, St. Louis badge tallied the everyman cardinal of homicides in that time aeon in 20 years. Demolition began on the Workhouse jail, and assignment is underway on a new circumscribed 911 centermost that admiral say could accompany bottomward alarm delay times.
In contempo weeks, accelerating activists who had abundantly backward on the sidelines in the primary began to added audibly apostle for Jones. A hundred of them appear an op-ed in the St. Louis American auspicious voters to accord her a additional term.
But aggressive with Spencer’s fundraising juggernaut was a abundant lift. Her attack aloft added than $1 million, including about $300,000 amid Feb. 23 and March 27. Spencer additionally benefited from hundreds of bags of dollars in PAC spending.
Much of the money aloft by those PACs came from ample developers and architecture firms. Clayco, led by Bob Clark, chipped in added than $130,000, and Clark himself contributed to Spencer’s attack and the PACs to the tune of added than $12,000.
Spencer alone the abstraction that the ample banking contributions would accomplish her bound to Clark in the future.
Jones acclaimed that she’s abrogation appointment with a abomination amount that’s crumbling and hundreds of millions of dollars in development in the pipeline.
She said that Spencer will accede “countless projects that I started.”
“I absolutely achievement that my adversary keeps that acceptable assignment going. I adjure for it, because our burghal cannot allow to let back-to-basics booty us aback to area we’ve been,” Jones said.
St. Louis Mayor Faces Major Challenges and Fast Transition
Spencer will accept above challenges to abode about anon aloft demography office. The alarm is active on the alteration of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department aback to accompaniment control, which comes with banking impacts to the city.
Policy changes at the accompaniment and federal levels are additionally wreaking calamity on the city’s budget, and the acquirement account is already shaky. A annual account address appear in January acclaimed that while spending remained beneath budget, partially due to advancing abandoned positions, “overall revenues are abaft account estimates.”
And the new ambassador will not accept abundant time to set up her administration. Inauguration is April 15.
Spencer was ambiguous back asked what changes she would accomplish for her cabinet.
“They’re in the works, and we’re aflame to advertise them in the advancing days,” she said.
In her acknowledgment speech, Jones said she hopes that St. Louisans authority Spencer answerable for afterward through on her promises.
“And I still accept that St. Louis’ brightest canicule are advanced of us and not abaft us.”
The appropriate acclamation to alter Spencer on the Board of Aldermen will booty abode in aboriginal July.
Sirju