When Tishaura Jones walked out of City Hall in April at the end of her term as mayor, it was the first time she had not held a local political office in more than 20 years.
Jones first entered the arena in 2002 after being appointed the Democratic committeewoman for the 8th Ward, which at the time took in parts of the neighborhoods north of Tower Grove Park such as Shaw. In 2008, voters in the old 63rd District sent her to Jefferson City as a state representative; four years later, she won the Democratic primary to replace longtime Treasurer Larry Williams.
In 2021, she became the first Black woman to become mayor of St. Louis.
But though she was enthusiastic about seeking a second term in Room 200, Jones called her exit from the world of St. Louis politics “liberating.”
“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 St. Louis Public Radio’s Rachel Lippmann and Jason Rosenbaum in a recent interview. “Now I can just pay attention if I want to, or tune it all out if I want to.”
She added that she misses not having to drive herself and getting the opportunity to talk to and check in with her staff every day.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rachel Lippmann: What was the biggest thing you were just not able to do in your four years as mayor?
Tishaura Jones: The Monarch facility on MLK. This was a project I was passionate about because I saw the potential for it to really change the landscape of Martin Luther King Drive and the neighborhoods that surround that facility.
Our workforce development agency was going there. So was the Office of Violence Prevention, the Northside Economic Empowerment Center, as well as the [Land Reutilization Authority] and some companies we were able to recruit to actually start their business there.
Lippmann: Do you know what the fate of the Monarch may be?
Jones: I have not heard because, as I talked about earlier, I’m just tuning a lot of things out right now.
Lippmann: What were your proudest moments during your time as mayor?
Jones: There are too many to name, but I would say our progress on public safety. It’s an all-hands-on-deck strategy, and we were able to not only make progress there but expand that progress to the rest of the region through the Save Lives Now Initiative.
Being able to bring Chief [Robert] Tracy here as the first outside chief in our entire city’s history and seeing the progress that he has made with the police department to really transform it and make it better than it already was.
Lippmann: Do you think you were given enough credit for your accomplishments?
Jones: Absolutely not. But I did take a lot of the blame for the things that weren't my problem.
That’s inherent with the job. There are people who still don’t understand what the mayor is responsible for, what she has the power to control and how government works. I believe there is a level of education that has to be done here because we have so much information at our fingertips but yet we still don’t know the basics about how local government works.
Lippmann: In the areas that you as the mayor were responsible for, what is the biggest regret? What is something that you didn’t get done, or you realize, maybe I should not have approached the problem from this angle?
Jones: I don’t want my activist friends to be angry with me, but paid family leave is more difficult in practice than it is in theory.
I still support it wholeheartedly. But we didn’t put in the types of guardrails to make sure that we implemented it effectively so people didn’t take advantage of it. We found out that there were a couple hundred of employees taking paid family leave to stay out of their jobs when they could have been working.
And then I would say that we didn't push hard enough to do things a little faster, not realizing that I would only have four years to get some things done.
Lippmann: What were the moments that you would never want to live again?
Jones: The moments I spent with families that lost loved ones to gun violence and then my family losing four members to gun violence during my four years as mayor. The New Year’s Eve vigils are quite touching and tear-jerking, and I would continue to do them, obviously. But they’re just hard. Those are hard moments, to look a family in the eye and there’s nothing you can do.
Lippmann: What do you think the results of both your race in 2025 and the 1st Congressional District race in 2024 say about the strength or the place of the progressive political movement in the St Louis area?
Jones: I would say that there is a reckoning that needs to happen, especially when it comes to the leadership of Black women in the Democratic Party and in the progressive movement. They want our votes, but they don't want our leadership. And we need to have a serious conversation, and a hard conversation, as to why.
Jason Rosenbaum: With your loss, the three people who were at the Arch in 2020 – you, Cori Bush and Kim Gardner – are no longer in office for different reasons, and all those people have been replaced by people who are not Black women. Darlene Green lost as well. Is there a broader message here?
Jones: I think St. Louis needs to have a conversation with itself about why it no longer trusts Black women to lead.
I can’t answer that for them, but there is, I would say, an unhealthy and unrealistic level of expectation when it comes to Black female leadership, not only in St. Louis but across the country. There’s the old phrase, "Black women have to work twice as hard to get half as much." Well, I feel like we work five times as hard to get nothing in return.
A friend of mine who also just lost his reelection, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi, once told me that being a Black mayor in this country is a balancing act between white fear and Black expectation, and that’s essentially what we saw in this race. Even though I brought crime down to historically low levels, what was the sentiment? “We don’t feel safe,” whatever that means.
The data clearly said that crime was at its lowest levels in decades, and that's what the people wanted back in 2021. We decreased crime, and then they moved the goalposts to potholes, trash and snow removal.
Rosenbaum: Why don’t you think you did as well in 2025 in majority-white progressive wards in the city as you did in 2021?
Jones: You know, even when my team had conversations with white voters in south St. Louis, they could not give us a reason why they didn’t like me or why they were voting for Mayor Spencer. And if you can’t give me a reason, or something that I have particularly done, then the only default is race. And then let’s go to north St. Louis. Those are Black expectations. We had neighborhoods that had not been touched in decades, but there’s no patience there. The expectations there are so high to deliver and deliver immediately to address the decades of neglect in four years, which is impossible.
Rosenbaum: Are there any people that you see on the horizon that could fill the void left by you and Cori Bush?
Jones: No.
Lippmann: What are the people whose names might pop up missing?
Jones: Consistency. People flip-flop. They tell you they’re going to vote one way and then vote another way, or they tell you that they’re going to be with you and they aren’t. I don’t play like that. If I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. Your word is your bond. It’s the only thing that’s worth any value in this.
Lippmann: You and Mayor Spencer were able to meet during the short transition period. What were those conversations like?
Jones: My team and I told her that we were going to provide memos of what they were working on, and the Cabinet would do the same, and I gave her a tour of the office. The whole meeting lasted maybe 20, 25 minutes.
Lippmann: Any other advice you want to offer to the new mayor after the first weeks of her administration?
Jones: No. This is the government that St. Louis voted for. This is her time to lead, so I’m going to step out of the way and let her lead.
Lippmann: What’s next for Tishaura Jones?
Jones: I’m looking at a few different avenues like consultation. I might write a book, maybe start a podcast. I’m almost finished with a children’s book I was writing while in office. It’s a cute little book that’s inspired by my mother.
And then, you know, being a mom. My son is 17 now. He’s going to be going off to college in a year, and I want to make sure that the transition is as smooth as possible for him.
