Ald. Lyda Krewson narrowly beat out City Treasurer Tishaura Jones in a tight Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday night. Because the city leans Democrat, Krewson’s win makes her the front-runner going into the April 4 general election.
Her substantial lead early in the night ended in a close finish, separating her from Tishaura Jones by just 888 votes.
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Krewson received 32 percent of the vote while Tishaura Jones received 30.4 percent. Board of Alderman president Lewis Reed received 18.3 percent of the vote, 21st Ward Ald. Antonio French received 15.8 percent, and 22nd Ward Ald. Jeffrey Boyd received 2.7 percent. Jimmie Matthews and Bill Haas, the remaining Democratic primary contenders, each received less than 1 percent of the vote.
According to the Board of Elections Commission, around 28 percent of the city’s registered voters showed up to the polls Tuesday. That’s up from four years ago, when only 22 percent of voters turned out for the last mayoral primary.
In the general election, Krewson will face Republican primary winner Andrew Jones, vice president of business development and marketing for Southwest Electric Cooperative; “rock ‘n’ roll Libertarian” candidate Robb Cunningham; Independent candidate Larry Rice; and Green Party candidate Johnathan McFarland.
After the results were announced Tuesday, Krewson delivered a speech to a cheering crowd at her election watch party, located at the Carpenter’s District Council on Hampton Avenue. She reiterated the main tenet of her campaign: neighborhood safety. “Far too many families know the pain of violent crime,” she said. “We’ll invest in prevention programs that work and in more and better training and a more diverse police force.”
Krewson will likely become the first female mayor of St. Louis, a point that she noted in her speech. During her campaign, she told the crowd, a few of her staffers were concerned that she didn’t look mayoral when she carried her purse. “I thought about this for a few seconds, and I said ‘As soon as we have a female mayor, it will look very mayoral.’”
During her 20-year stint as 28th Ward alderman, Krewson helped pass such initiatives as a smoking ban and a campaign to discourage panhandling. She’s attracted several developments to the city, often advocating for tax incentives, and she’s been a vocal supporter of stricter gun laws. Krewson, who raised the most money ($1.25 million) of any mayoral candidate, is the CFO of architecture firm PGAV.
In response to her loss, Jones told supporters, “I’m not going anywhere. This isn’t the end; this is the beginning.” As treasurer, she created the Office of Financial Empowerment, which helps St. Louisans manage finances, and she traveled across the nation to learn from other treasurers. She received criticism for travel expenses incurred while in her position and responded to such criticisms, among others, in a widely read letter posted on The St. Louis American‘s website.
Jones and her supporters expressed frustration that the other leading African-American candidates, including Antonio French and Lewis Reed, did not drop out of the race, suggesting that they split a shared voter base. “I’m going to be honest: The men decided to stay in this race because of their ego. And where are we now?” she said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We still have the status quo candidate that’s going to be in that office for the next four years.”
A group supportive of Jones published a post on Medium late Tuesday night titled “How To Stop A Black Woman Becoming Mayor? Use Black Men,” which expressed a similar sentiment.
In his concession speech, French told a small crowd gathered at The Palomino Lounge, “I just hope that our city can move together, move forward, move in a direction that satisfies the needs of our entire city.” French gained national attention for his social media coverage of the unrest in Ferguson in August 2014, but he struggled to translate that social capital into campaign donations during his mayoral bid.
Reed conceded his race around the same time as French. Like Krewson, the primary goal of his campaign was public safety. Reed encouraged those gathered at his watch party to work with Krewson “to begin changing the city.”
