“Organization trumps money,” Tishaura O. Jones reflected on her victory Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for City Treasurer.
Jones, who raised the least money of the four candidates, won with 13,817 votes (34.9 percent), soundly beating Fred Wessels with 10,411 votes (26.3 percent), Jeffrey Boyd with 10,092 votes (25.5 percent) and Brian Wahby with 5,250 votes (13.3 percent).
“We knew with a four-person race, it would be won in street,” Jones said.
“Number one, we knew we had to turn out our base, so we organized by taking pages from the playbook of grassroots campaigning.”
“We” on her campaign team most significantly included her father and campaign manager, Virvus Jones, the former activist Comptroller.
“It takes a concerted ground effort when you are last in fundraising,” Virvus Jones said.
“You need some money, but more than anything you need to know how to spend your money. We started with a bicycle budget and ended up with a Chevrolet budget. We were ready to win with a bicycle budget, but as the campaign matured we got some attention from people who helped us build a Chevrolet.”
The Jones campaign worked closely with the triumphant Wm. Lacy Clay campaign for Congress, as well as the Vernon Betts’ campaign for Sheriff, which narrowly lost, and Judy Baker’s unsuccessful campaign for Lieutenant Governor.
“We all had almost the identical footprint to cover, so we made alliances and that made it easy to put our heads together,” Tishaura Jones said.
Like Clay, she ran a positive campaign in a race marred by negative attack messages.
“We know St. Louis is tired of dirty tactics, and we predicted Wahby and Wessels would sling mud at each other,” Tishaura Jones said.
“We didn’t predict Jeffrey would sling mud at us. But St. Louis deserves better, and we wanted to make sure our message was above reproach. Win or lose, we wanted to run a clean campaign.”
Her campaign focused on potential latent in the office of Treasurer, which banks the city’s money, while her opponents initially focused exclusively on the Parking Division administered by the office. She was surprised her focus on the financial powers of the office didn’t earn her a more favorable look from the Post-Dispatch, which used Russ Carnahan’s campaign message against predatory lending to tar his opponent, Clay, and then later Jamilah Nasheed in Missouri’s 5th Senatorial District campaign.
“I thought it was a little hypocritical to hit Clay for his alliances with the rent to own industry and not apply the same litmus test to the Treasurer’s Office and what it can do against predatory lending,” Tishaura Jones said.
Her campaign manager addressed this with the lead editor on the Post’s editorial board, Tony Messenger.
“He said the issue doesn’t apply to all races,” Virvus Jones said.
“I said that it’s odd then to apply it to Congress and the state Senate when the Treasurer is the banker for the city who has more leverage over banks than one state senator or one congressman. It’s odd the Treasurer – who decides where the city’s money will be deposited and makes an evaluation of banks – is the campaign you ignored when applying this issue.”
Now Tishaura Jones must win the general election in November, which is a formality in a Democratic stronghold like St. Louis. She already is thinking about her transition team, with an eye out for an attorney to hire as chief of staff and “some good financial minds,” she said.
She also knows she will have work to do in reforming an office long held by the same official, Larry Williams, whose leadership of the office has stirred controversy.
“Quickly after the transition I want to do an audit and be transparent about the things we find and what we are going to do about them,” she said.
She also gets to leave Jefferson City, where she has been serving as state representative and assistant minority floor leader, for home – with her eye on the prize of more time with her son, Aden, age 4.
She said, “My son is saying, ‘Mommy won! Mommy won!’ I am trying to explain that Mommy is working hard to get a new job so she can be home with him more.”
