St. Louis Mayor Blasts White Voters For Turning Their Back On ‘Black Women In Power’ After Losing To White Candidate

Jones feels the city will face consequences after recently relieving a number of Black politicians of their duties

After her losing he re-election bid to a white woman, Tishaura O. Jones, the mayor of St. Louis, said white voters on the city’s South Side abandoned support of Black women in power the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Jones, who lost by a massive 28 percentage points to Cara Spencer last month, was elected as city’s first Black woman mayor. in 2021. She blamed white South Side voters and Black voters from the North Side for having unrealistic expectations of her.

“My dad always told me—and it’s an old phrase—that ‘Black women have to work twice as hard to get half as much,’” Jones said. “Well, I feel like we work five times as hard to get nothing in return.”

Her loss is being labeled as one of the worst performances by an incumbent St. Louis mayor in the last 50 years. Jones’ 2021 race saw vast support from the north, but results from the 2025 race, including white progressive neighborhoods, told a different story. Both neighborhoods showed outstanding support for Spencer, who lost to Jones in 2021.

Voters had their reasons. In addition to missteps of a grant program, residents were fed up with Jones’ moves of city services, such as trash pickup and filling potholes. The handling of a January snowstorm was added to the list of grievances.

Spencer promised to get the city “back to basics.”

But Jones insists there is more to the story, highlighting that voters failed to consider the drastic drop in crime. During her tenure, the homicide rate decreased by 40% from a 2020 record high to a 10-year low in 2024.

“That’s what the people wanted back in 2021. And then they moved the goalposts to potholes and trash and snow removal,” she said. “And if you can’t give me a reason or something that I have particularly done, then the only default is race.”

Despite the change, Jones told NPR’s St. Louis Public Radio that she feels “liberated” in her loss, giving her room for the first time in more than 20 years to refocus her attention.

“It’s been interesting not having to have an opinion on everything that happens on either level, the state, local or national level,” she told interviewers Rachel Lippmann and Jason Rosenbaum. “Now I can just pay attention if I want to, or tune it all out if I want to.”

Jones feels the city will faces consequences after recently relieving a number of Black politicians of their duties.

After former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush lost re-election in 2024, former Comptroller Darlene Green lost re-election in April 2025, and former Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner resigned due to controversy in 2023, Jones feels “St. Louis needs to have a conversation with itself about why it no longer trusts Black women to lead.”