ST. LOUIS—Several weeks after Mayor Tishaura Jones said the city of St. Louis was in the middle of a renaissance, Alderwoman Cara Spencer on Tuesday night said it instead was a city at a crossroads as she launched her second campaign for mayor in what could be a rematch of the 2021 general election.

The two women are the first to go public with their 2025 intentions to enter the race.

“The next mayor, the mayor who serves the next four years is gonna have a lot of work to do,” Spencer said, describing large population losses since the 2020 census and the potential loss of city revenue as the earnings tax continues to face legal challenges. 

“Despite hundreds of thousands of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars, our streets are still littered with potholes…the garbage still isn’t getting picked up….our refuse department doesn’t have all the tools they need,” she said, with a handful of city refuse department employees in their city uniforms in the audience at The Post Building. 

“Are these problems, the really really big problems….are they fixable? Can we turn this city around? You’re damn right we can,” she said in raising a toast to the audience.

Among those in the crowd were former State Sen. Joan Bray, former St. Louis Development Corporation Executive Director Otis Williams and current St. Louis Alderman Bret Narayan, although Narayan noted his presence wasn’t a sign of an endorsement since the field is not yet set. 

“I am genuinely interested in the matchup,” he said.