Post-#Ferguson Coalition Stumbles As South City Voters Power Spencer’s Landslide Victory
South St. Louis Comes Out Big For Spencer, Even In Former Jones Turf
This past Tuesday’s landslide victory for Alderman Cara Spencer’s mayoral campaign brings numerous changes to the city’s political scene into focus. The city’s first Black woman mayor failed to extend her historic administration into a second term, falling short by 28%. This loss was significantly wider than her margin of victory over Ald. Spencer in their 2021 matchup. As in any situation with such a stark reversal in fortunes, multiple factors contributed to Tuesday’s result. While Ald. Spencer’s financial advantage certainly played a part, it is insufficient to explain her campaign’s wide margin of victory. The results left little question whether St. Louis voters were ready for change.
Much of Spencer’s victory is based on big turnout numbers in the city’s mostly-white, vote-rich southwestern wards. These wards have long been the power base for centrist white citywide candidates. In recent years, progressive voters in the neighborhoods around Tower Grove Park have provided a counterweight to the more conservative wards to their west. As in the March primary, vote totals show that many of these southeastern voters shifted from Jones to Spencer in this year’s rematch. The 6th ward includes the Tower Grove South and Shaw neighborhoods, formerly Jones strongholds in the 2017 and 2021 mayoral elections. In this year’s contest, the area swung decisively towards Spencer, who netted almost 64% of the close to 5200 ballots cast in the ward. While the 6th Ward’s vote total continued to match turnout in numbers in heavy-voting southwest city, the shift to Spencer meant that the ward was no longer helping Mayor Jones counter more conservative neighborhoods. Spencer paired winning over these liberal voters with her support in high turnout neighborhoods west of the Tower Grove and Kingshighway. This could be seen in the 2nd ward, which turned out over 5200 votes, despite not having an aldermanic race to increase turnout. Likewise, the 4th ward had no aldermanic race, yet its voters cast close to 4900 ballots.
The converse of this is that voters in North St. Louis did not turnout to support Jones reelection. A significant erosion in her near southside support base, combined with low turnout in northern wards led to a dramatic reversal of the 2021 election results. The 11th and 14th wards each cast under 2000 ballots while their neighbors in the 12th and 13th wards failed to exceed 2700 ballots cast. This means southern wards produced roughly double the votes of their northern neighbors. It is also worth noting that Spencer got the votes of over 30% voters in all but one of these northern wards. The exception was the 12th ward, where she still garnered almost 29% of the vote. Compared to 2021, when many of these northern neighborhoods gave Spencer less than 20% of their votes, it is clear that Spencer’s campaign gained major ground in north St. Louis. Between the northern wards’ significantly lower turnout and smaller margins, Jones couldn’t depend on these parts of town to stop Spencer’s southside momentum.
Another related factor discussed during the race is the city’s demographic change. Recent years have seen an acceleration of Black households leaving the city. This likely played a part in Mayor Jones’ loss of electoral support. The city’s shift to being plurality-white marks a major change in the city’s political landscape. While this was also true during Mayor Jones’ successful campaign, increasing Black population loss meant this trend gained strength over her term. Given the fact that Black voters were more likely to support Jones’ reelection, compared to white voters, it is likely that the city’s ongoing demographic change contributed to the low turnout in majority-Black wards and the mayor’s decisive defeat.
It is also important to note that Mayor Jones’ and Comptroller Green’s losses mark the end of a more than forty-year-long stretch of Black representation on the city’s powerful Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Also, in another major shift, all three new members will hail from South St. Louis. This development aligns with south St. Louis’s increasing portion of the city’s vote.
Post-#Ferguson Coalition No Longer Effective
Related to this is what appears to be a waning effectiveness of the protest politics that followed #Ferguson. The network of activists and nonprofits that have been so influential in the past few election cycles found themselves unable to move the electoral needle. After the mayor’s March drubbing, social media filled with passionate posts about the work Mayor Jones had undertaken. Many of these allies’ posts, along with Mayor Jones’ personal social media posts, cast the race increasingly along racialized lines. Many posts also invoked the language and frameworks that rose to popularity among progressive voters in recent years. In the closing weeks, the social media surrounding the mayoral campaign became more focused on activist themes. Many of these were mainstreamed during and after the #Ferguson protest movement.
Beyond social media posts, many artists and musicians who rose to greater notoriety during #Ferguson fervently supported Mayor Jones’s reelection effort. Tef Poe released a series of highly publicized “diss tracks”, while artist Damon Davis posted a piece depicting Ald. Spencer as a puppet on strings. Given the lack of significant erosion in Ald. Spencer’s final margin of victory, it is unlikely that these pieces of protest art moved many people to the polls. While these artists have been successful in prior political activism, it does not appear that their late involvement impacted the race’s outcome.
Given this loss of effectiveness, it appears that former congresswoman Cori Bush’s loss was the first in a series of elections, indicating that the #Ferguson protest movement no longer has the electoral might it once did. Bush and Jones are not alone in having benefited from this trend. It also powered Bruce Franks’ defeat of the powerful Hubbard family, Ald. Rasheen Aldridge Jr.’s early election victories, and President of the Board of Aldermen Megan Green’s rise to citywide office. It also played a significant role in the turnover in the city’s Democratic Central Committee that occurred in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Related to the coalition’s potentially diminished power is the disorganization of the nonprofit network that came to political prominence in the years after #Ferguson. Following the unrest that gripped the region in 2014, Action St. Louis became a major player in city politics. The organization was born directly from the protests that gripped the region, and its leadership included many of that prominent movement’s most prominent media figures and organizers. In recent cycles, the organization’s explicitly political “Power Project” subsidiary has been a major player. Through this arm Action St. Louis has been able to pay canvassing crews that were a major boost to the organization’s political allies. Coming into this cycle, the organization’s website indicated that it was in a rebuilding phase, with numerous experienced staffers no longer listed and important positions appearing on the organization’s hiring page. While the organization’s leadership seemed to have more deeply engaged in the weeks following Jones’ primary loss, it could only muster a fraction of the resources that it has in prior elections. There were other early signs that the nonprofit network that had previously boosted Jones’ candidacy was disorganized. Chief among those is that the “People’s Plan 2.0” never got off the ground. In the last mayoral election, The People’s Plan effort formed a coalition of nonprofits that promoted a policy framework largely mirroring the Jones’ campaign’s positions. While there was early talk of a “2.0” version of this effort, there was little follow-through, and the public outreach portion of the campaign failed to launch. This was a prelude to the coalition members’ now-apparent inability to muster the field resources to match their contributions in the past few election cycles.
If the post-#Ferguson activist coalition can no longer muster the votes to win citywide, it will change the city’s electoral landscape. Political watchers will have to wait and see if these organizations can regroup and return to prominence in upcoming local elections. It is possible they could reorganize in opposition to the incoming Spencer administration. Their proven effectiveness as opposition messengers, shown during former mayor Lyda Krewson’s term, points to a potential pathway forward. Given Ald. Spencer’s landslide victory, it is unclear if they will mount a similarly aggressive effort. If they aren’t able to rally, the chapter of St. Louis politics driven by the protest movement stemming from the 2014 death of Michael Brown Jr. may be coming to a close.
