St. Louis Mayoral Candidate Collects Bullet Casings From Her Street, Opposes Spy Planes

Cara Spencer [00:00:00] If we can get the virus under control where it's happening most, which is in urban areas, that's where the transmission is taking place. Get the, get the vaccine out quickly to stem the tide. We can get back to doing business. We can get our economy up and running again, and we won't have to continue to invest and the COVID relief because we'll be functioning again as a community.

Vance Crowe [00:00:23] I'm Jeremy Ash, a retirement community, CEO, living in Eureka, Illinois, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We have one of those rare political interviews that I do every once in a while when I encounter a politician that I find to be particularly intriguing, I invite them on the podcast. I don't ever really want this show to be about politics. There's so many different shows about that, that it doesn't seem all that important to me. But I met a woman that is 40 years old and lives in the city of St. Louis is an Alder woman and has decided to run for mayor. If you know anything about the city of St. Louis, this is no small thing that she has taken on. I would say this puts a pressure and a spotlight on you and a competition that is really unbelievable. And really, whoever gets that top mayoral spot is the CEO of the city of St. Louis, which has a $1.3 billion budget. So this is a major role, and I was excited to have Cara Spencer on. We talked about all sorts of things, and at one point she actually holds up a pint glass filled with gun casings, and it is, it's kinda shocking what she has to say. So I'm glad you're here for this interview. We're gonna get to that in just a second. But I wanted to let you know that just the other day, we held the as the Crow Flies Book Club in virtual reality, and it was a blast.

Vance Crowe [00:01:55] It was so much better, and the whole group agreed than just getting on a Zoom call and talking. And a lot of that has to do with when you have a VR headset on, the audio changes based on where you're standing. So we built an underground bar where we got together, hung out in the bar for the first half hour, and then when we did the book club discussion, we were in this special room and we had a great time. If you're interested in doing this, if you wanna participate, you don't even have to have a VR headset, you can get into the room on your desktop. But if you do and you wanna try it out this month, we are reading the book, alas Babylon, which is the story about what happens to a group of people after nuclear war has happened, and they've gotta rebuild society. It's gonna be a fun read and an even more fun experience to get into the VR world. So if you're interested in doing that, you can always DM me on Twitter, or you can join the Articulate Ventures Network in that network. We're doing all kinds of interesting things in the next day or two, we are going to have two brothers, the Ring Brothers are going to get on and give an amateur lesson on butchering, because once a month we take people's amateur love of something, something that they don't do all the time professionally, but they've developed a skill and they wanna share it. And we get together on Tuesday nights and we share those skills. So it's a fun one that is gonna be a full house. And if you're interested in meeting people and talking about everything from ham radio to how to butcher an animal, check it out. They're not always that prepper ish. This one just happened to be that way.

Vance Crowe [00:03:27] But I hope you'll join us. And if you are one of the companies that is around saying, Hey, is VR gonna be good for us to meet remotely? Or is there some way that we should be preparing ourselves to use this technology in the future? Know that the executive producer, Ben Anderson and I have been working around the clock to try and learn this technology to get better at it, to make it more user friendly. And we've started putting on workshops and field trips. So if your business is thinking about getting, dipping their toe into this world, or you just wanna have a great experience for a group of your employees, let us know by going to Articulate Ventures slash vr, all the links will be down below. I'm so glad that you're here. And now enjoy this conversation with St. Louis mayoral candidate Cara Spencer, Alder woman Cara Spencer, welcome to the podcast.

Cara Spencer [00:04:19] Thanks for having me today.

Vance Crowe [00:04:21] So interesting interview today, because we don't normally have very many politicians on the, but I was very curious to talk with you after I heard you giving a talk about why you wanted to be mayor of the city of St. Louis. And so I was excited when you accepted the invitation because I think we're at a very critical time in our nation's history where mayors are going to be more important than they probably have been in the last few decades. What, what prompts a person in today's day and age to decide they wanna run for mayor?

Cara Spencer [00:04:53] Well, you know, I never pictured myself being in public service, to be honest with you. You know, in a general sense, I am the first in my family to get a college degree. I studied mathematics at a state university here in Missouri. Following that, I worked in the private sector for about a decade and a half doing mathematical modeling for big companies, primarily pharmaceutical companies worldwide, had the great opportunity to travel around and, you know, always made St. Louis my home. I love St. Louis. We are a legacy city with phenomenal assets, but we're failing to capitalize on them. We're failing to grow in any meaningful way. I have a son, we live here together in St. Louis, and the violence is out of control, the racial segregation, we have some real structural issues that are preventing us from being the city we can be. So I ran for Office for Alderman, which in this unreformed city is very similar to a city council person and a and, and a different, you know, a different context. And I've been serving down at the Board of Alderman for about six years and just decided it's time to take our city in a new direction. And so I filed a run to serve as the sort of CEO of the city of St. Louis.

Vance Crowe [00:06:12] So what is a mayor in St. Louis responsible for doing?

Cara Spencer [00:06:16] You know, St. Louis is what's considered an Unreformed city government structure. So the mayor is the, like I said, the CEO, but there is a, a trifecta of elected officials who have the real budgetary power in the city of St. Louis. And that the budget is set by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which is made up of the mayor, the comptroller, and the president of the Board of Alderman. So the mayor really has the most staff, and so really directs a lot of that. But it is a dispersed set of powers that, at least on a budgetary sense, the mayor, however, does really direct the administration of city services across all departments, you know, hires and appoints commissioners to every single department and really directs how the city goes about its daily business and really sets the tone. Even though the city of St. Louis makes up only about 10% of the entire St. Louis region being the historical city, you know, this urban core of the region. The mayor really convenes a lot of the discussion and really sets the overall tone for how we're moving forward and projecting ourselves in a national sense and an international sense.

Vance Crowe [00:07:35] So if, if you're in competition with other people for mayor, what do you, what, what makes you somebody, what, what makes you stand out? Why, why do you think you should be mayor?

Cara Spencer [00:07:45] Sure. Well, I'll start by saying I'm the only candidate in the race that hasn't already run for mayor and lost. And, you know, I, I bring that up not to take a dig at my opponents, but really just to highlight that I am a new way of doing business. I have taken on significant citywide issues with a tenacity, with a work ethic, and with a real digging into the details of things and the facts, understanding the real structure of some of the deals that have been positioned before voters in the general public here in the city of St. Louis, and have always been on the right side of issues, not just on the issues side of things, but really digging in, I mean, in politics now, it's easy for a political position to be taken, you know, stand on the right side, but what do we actually get outta that? What are we actually doing? What are we accomplishing? And so I really stand out as somebody who is willing to dig in to the issues, develop, not just a position on those things, those solutions presenting, presented to us, but driving new solutions and understanding how other cities, other municipal governments are addressing these major problems and weaving those solutions into the system that we currently have in St. Louis, to see how those things would fit in for our community.

Vance Crowe [00:09:09] You know, as I think about political office, I, I think everybody, well, I don't know about everybody, I'll just speak for myself. I went, you know, to college and was very idealistic. And then you get done with college and you kind of develop a political nihilism that I don't think has exactly worn off. In fact, I would say for me, political nihilism has, has deepened, but at the same time, I, I want to say like somebody has to go in there. You want to have a good person in there. And yet it seems like such a pit for somebody to get involved in. Oh my God. Do you have that perception that it is a pit that you're climbing into? Or do you not have the nihilism?

Cara Spencer [00:09:47] It is a pit, no doubt about that. I mean, in St. Louis is one of the poust pits, I suppose, with most people and problems in it. We have 279 municipalities. I'm a city alt, a young, I'm a council person. I'm one of 679 elected officials in St. Louis. It's unbelievable. So what happens in a city where the governance structure is so deconstructed and the power dynamic is spread across so many people, you have individuals fighting clawing for relevance in a political structure that is just so fractionated, and it is a pit. But I am committed to St. Louis. I'm born and raised here. I love this city, and I want this community to be one where my son, who's now nine, when he is of, you know, age to get a job, can find an opportunity here and continue to live here. And right now, we are sputtering out a relevance. Our population has stagnated for four decades. If we do not change course now, who's gonna do it for us? It's just not gonna happen. I look ahead at the enormous amount of opportunity as we see major shifts in human capital throughout the world, following a global pandemic like COVID-19, and looking ahead at climate migration and what that means for a Midwestern city along the largest body of free flowing fresh water in the United States. The opportunity is endless. Not to mention the technology hubs that we have here, the, the intellectual infrastructure that we have to capitalize on the in the upside is enormous.

Cara Spencer [00:11:28] And you're right, it is a pit and it's going to take somebody who understands the, the deficits that we have and how to operate in such a dysfunctional political system. And I've had the opportunity to do a lot of that at the Board of Alderman

Vance Crowe [00:11:45] When, when I think about 600 some odd elected officials for one city, particularly a city of like what city

Cara Spencer [00:11:51] Region? That's the region.

Vance Crowe [00:11:52] Okay. The whole region. Okay. But what are the locus of power? What is it that people are fighting over it? Is it all budget? Is it the authority over police? What, what power are people trying to reach for

Cara Spencer [00:12:04] All of the above, you know, I mean, so a lot of times you have elected officials who are looking to retain their seats and they're looking for a microphone or looking for some power over any number of things, you know, and that's where you see a lack of the solution to sort of combined City County, for example, and have a combined set of governance structure. You see those in elected office really fighting that be to retain their relevance. But right now, one of the interesting opportunities I'm seeing throughout the St. Louis region is a real paradigm shift in that those individuals who are in elected office who would stand to lose little, their parochial power, if we do combine in some meaningful way, are championing that precisely because they have come to realize that failing to do so is gonna result in the same old stagnation that has plagued us for the last four decades. And I think, you know, they're looking at their own children who, many of whom have left the St. Louis region for greener pastures, for more robust economic environments, and, and where they can seek more gainful employment than here in St. Louis. That's not to say we don't have opportunities, we absolutely do, but we have got to start growing them if we're going to be a place that can thrive.

Vance Crowe [00:13:24] So let's talk a little bit about Coronavirus and the government's response to it. As you look at the way that mayors ended up having a role in being able to determine what's open, what's closed. Sure. Was this a power that you understood before it happened that mayors had? Or is it something that surprised you?

Cara Spencer [00:13:44] No. Well, I should say, you know, under, I work closely with the policymakers. I mean, I am a policymaker currently, but you know, when we saw this hit, when we saw the pandemic hit the United States, the board, many of us at the board of Alderman went to the mayor's office and were, you know, demanding sort of what the city was gonna do. We understood that the federal government was failing, was failing its citizens. It was very clear from somebody paying attention. So we knew that our state and our local governments were gonna have to take action. You know, I think we were turning a blind eye to really how serious it was at the, at the national level. And here at the city, at the municipal level. We were doing the same as the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee at the Board of Alderman. I called on our, you know, i, i, I pushed for regional response. I, I will not take credit for that. I was not the only one pushing for that, but certainly was behind the creation, behind the effort to create the Regional Pandemic task force, which is a regional group of healthcare advisor professionals in the field to help guide the political apparatus. Under no circumstance should somebody who's seeking reelection be making decisions on public health, you know, with the future of their own political wellbeing at the center of their decision making, not us on an accusation at the current administration. But, you know, I do have worry, we do worry that when those, those decisions are made politically, they are outside the best interest of the general public.

Cara Spencer [00:15:19] So having professionals, the pande, we, we created a regional task force made up of, you know, folks from the regional healthcare systems and professionals in the area of disease control, et cetera, the universities, the phenomenal universities we have here in St. Louis to really guide what we can and should be doing as a community. Now, the political apparatus in the city and county, and St. Charles County didn't always agree to adhere to those, and that was a breakdown, but it was a move in the right direction, and it helped center the conversation about some of the restrictions. It was not perfect, but it did move us in a better direction than we were heading, which was making those decisions in silos.

Vance Crowe [00:15:58] And so, being a part of that apparatus, making these decisions, were there any powers that you thought you should have had that, that people thwarted or said you didn't have that you, that you wanted to exert?

Cara Spencer [00:16:11] No, I mean, I think right now, one of the big questions is the vaccine rollout, you know, and having the vaccine rollout, having the funding, for example, on the, from the federal side come through the state, and we had to inter interact with the state of Missouri. And that really caused a problem for the urban areas, those areas that have a high number of very susceptible high risk individuals. And the problem with that was that the state of Missouri is a different political party than the city of St. Louis. And there was a breakdown, and we got our vaccines after St. Louis County and many other areas in the state did. And that is a problem, especially because you see the surge in cases happening in our urban areas, and those surges are, you know, numbers that impact the entire state and drive down the ability of our, for our community at large to continue economic activity. So, you know, so long as there are continued even pockets of, of, of dissemination of the virus, you can't go back to business as usual. So failing to give the cities where people live in close, close proximity, the tools they needed to really address the issue had a major negative impact on Missouri's economy as a whole. And that was, that continues to be a problem.

Vance Crowe [00:17:38] So as the, what was the, the committee that you were on, the health, what did you call that?

Cara Spencer [00:17:44] It's the Health and Human Services Committee at the Board of Alderman. So the legislative body, the board of Alderman, or the city council, if you will, has various committees that consider policies in different areas now. And I, I am the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee at the Board of Alderman.

Vance Crowe [00:17:59] So it's an interesting place to be at, right, because you actually have to brass tax decide when do masks come off? When is the pandemic over? When

Cara Spencer [00:18:09] That's not, that's not exactly true. Okay. I I, I don't have, I don't have that authority currently speaking. There are two, you know, the director, the health commissioner has that authority to make those proclamations and, and determinations. And so does the mayor's office. Where the policymaking body comes in place is, if we were to put in, for example, a city municipal ordinance, that's a much more cumbersome process than, you know, a direct order from the mayor or from the director of health as chair of this body. I have not wanted to undermine the authority figures in the room because I think that could do more damage to the general public moving through a pandemic than it could do help. However, when we have had issues, for example, we have seen, you know, questions related to whether or not we are vaccinating or testing those and incarcerated individuals, I call the hearing right now, we saw the city receive its first shipment of vaccinations last week, and vaccinating healthy young people as opposed to elderly people. And the tier that the government, the federal government is recommending, we distribute those vaccines. So learning that over the weekend, we saw that come out in some of the media outlets on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Over the weekend I called for a hearing, which is scheduled for Wednesday, the closest I could do it with, with the sunshine laws in place so we could hear just what we're doing.

Cara Spencer [00:19:45] My role as the chair is to identify issues and bring those people to the public to answer questions and to really understand what's going on. And that's precisely what we'll be doing on Wednesday. With regards to the vaccine rollout.

Vance Crowe [00:19:59] Do you think the public was surprised by how much authority the, the city or county governments were able to, to exert when the pandemic happened?

Cara Spencer [00:20:10] I do. I think there was some level of surprise there. I mean, people have been so tuned in on the national side of the political side of, you know, the, what's going on in DC and the state, you know, we have a lot of deficit. You know, the state of Missouri is always last in a lot of investment types, whether it's health, whether it's infrastructure, et cetera. So, you know, I think, I think residents in general look to those larger government entities, those that collect a lot more taxes than the municipal government does, as those authority figures. And I think there was a surprise there on what kind of authority a municipal government can have over a business. You have to shut down, you know, that sort of thing. And we've shut down several businesses here that weren't in compliance with COVID rules, and that that is a surprise.

Vance Crowe [00:21:02] So tell me about that. What, what makes that something that felt like the right decision to make,

Cara Spencer [00:21:09] To shut the businesses down? Yeah. You know, to be frank with you, I have not been in the decision making room on those issues. I do think, however, we have, you know, when the general public doesn't realize how, you know, I, let me take a step back. In order for us to function correctly, we have to protect our citizens. And the question is, should we have restrictions at all? You know, I think in a, in a world in which everybody was educated equally and could make those decisions on their own and would not impact the health and wellbeing of others with their own actions, then yes, we could do that. This is a different situation. We needed to protect our most vulnerable, we needed to make sure that our hospital systems weren't overrun. And there did need to be some protections in place simply because the general public was not taking reasonable steps to protect themselves in those around them. Did the, did the city of St. Louis, did the region do enough to educate its residents to prevent shutdowns of businesses? In my opinion, the answer is no. So we failed to really educate our public in a, in a, in a meaningful way that allowed them and gave them the tools to make they their own decisions. Therefore, we had to impose more restrictions on the operations to protect people and to get the economy up, you know, running again in a, in a normal way. So, you know, the fact that recently last week, the city of St. Louis closed down five businesses for failures to adhere to those guidelines.

Cara Spencer [00:22:41] I will say that, you know, we do need, when we, when we put in restrictions and people and business owners are failing to adhere to them, it is important that the city, that the government that puts those in place takes action. Yes. It's the same thing. If we tell people you can't shoot guns in the city and you shoot guns and you don't do anything about it, it only makes the problem worse. So,

Vance Crowe [00:23:02] Well, I don't know that it's fair to compare it to shooting guns in the city to running your business, but I take your point that, that if you've created a rule, then it's, it's, it's, it's not very, it's pretty disingenuous to not apply the rule if you've already have it.

Cara Spencer [00:23:16] I think the most important thing is really to give those businesses the tools they need to succeed in the guidelines. You know, the small, the, the, the impact this has had on businesses is unprecedented, and it is gonna be incumbent upon the city and all levels of government to come in and make sure that our businesses have the tools they need to get through this. At the end of the day, I am very concerned about how those funds will be distributed, you know, with this next aid package, whether it's 1.3 trillion or whatever the compromise between Biden and the Repub, you know, the Republicans are at the end of the day, but that needs to be administered in a way that is gonna jumpstart our economy, you know, and, and make sure that we're, you know, gonna be able to get through this in a fiscally healthy way. That's, that's a very important piece. I, you know, I mean, our physical health is important, but, you know, we, we could be devastated economically. I don't think that's gonna happen. I think we're gonna be able to pull through this. But, you know, making sure that, yeah, I mean, making sure that when we have, when we have those guidelines in place, there have only been a handful of businesses that have really been egregious. But that is, that is disappointing, especially when they're posting videos online and it's a, when, when it's Afra, you know, flagrant just, you know, disregard for human safety is, is problematic.

Vance Crowe [00:24:44] So there's an interesting, I, so I spend a lot of time in the agriculture world, so people that are living in much less dense environments, and I think that one of the things that's very difficult for them to understand about the city is that it seems like the closer you get to dense environments, the, the balance between safety and liberty changes. So I, what is your kind of political theory about how you balance the safety of residents with the liberty that people have for being in a free country?

Cara Spencer [00:25:14] It is a very tough question, Vance, right Now, I mentioned to you on the front end of this, I was, you know, doing a run in my neighborhood. I run every morning, usually earlier than I was able to today, but I pick up bullet casings in the streets of my neighborhood. I just happen to have this sitting on my desk as I normally do. But this is, I've collected these in my neighborhood since June.

Vance Crowe [00:25:36] Those

Cara Spencer [00:25:36] Are bullet casings. Seriously. You know, and the reality is that those, many of those bullets are shot by children. The majority, I don't have the figures yet, but I do know a good number of the carjackings that take place in the city of St. Louis. And there are a lot of them are done at the hands of children. You know, I was held up myself assaulted at gunpoint by a young man who had simply turned 18 the week before. You know, the, the reality is when our children who haven't fully developed, you know, they don't have a fully front, fully developed frontal lobe, are carrying around guns, and we don't have paths. We don't have an underlying economic environment that has a job, a livable wage for them at the end of their educational career, we, we are putting ourselves in danger. So, you know, I do think it's time for the city, the state, to have some level of protection from children and guns and to protect the children themselves. So do I wanna take away civil liberties of people? Absolutely not. Do I wanna prevent people from owning guns? I don't. But I do wanna give our law enforcement the tools they need to remove the guns from the hands of children who should not be carrying them. And I think we have to walk into these civil liberty questions very carefully.

Cara Spencer [00:27:08] You know, the other solution that the city is considering right now is drones, spy planes, not drones, excuse me, spy planes. Have you heard about this? Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:27:17] Yeah, but go on. My audience hasn't, this is a great time to bring it up.

Cara Spencer [00:27:22] So, you know, we are the number one city in the nation for homicides. Violent crime is through the roof and, you know, failing to address whether or not children should have guns. What is, what is the solution? The city of St. Louis is considering contracting with a private operator to put spy planes in the air 18 hours a day to capture images of everything, including your backyard and through your windows. And that individual company, that private operator would own those images and presumably have rights that we can't even guess at right now to do, to, to, to use that information. And that is an egregious abuse of civil liberties in my view. And if we do not have protections, unplaced to protect the information we're collecting about our citizens, we have no right to be collecting it. Period.

Vance Crowe [00:28:18] Yeah. I actually got that sent to me by a drone operator who told me, you know, the amount of money that you'll spend in fuel alone running these drones is going to be so astronomical as to if you are trying to put it forward as this is an economical way to police your citizens, you're playing a game that's, that's, that doesn't seem to be with all the cards showing,

Cara Spencer [00:28:40] Well, they're not drones, they're planes. And so the fuel is even higher than if you were just using drones in this particular proposal van. But you're right, and I, you know, to me, if we don't at least have a protection of the information we're gonna be collecting about our citizens, we have no right to be collecting it. I'm not for it. We did pass, it's scary to think that we would be allowing a private company with one principle. You know, we don't, you know, to obtain information that has only been piloted in one other city with mixed results on whether or not it was even useful and that we would be playing around with our citizens' private information and such an egregious abuse of civil liberties is crazy. Now, on the back end, you have to say, okay, now what do we do about crime? How do we start to address this? Okay. You know, should we allow children to have guns in the right of, in the public right of way? Can we start by saying that in a general sense, no, we don't want this. How can we take away, how can we, you know, make sure that when police are responding to, to, to something going on, that they have a reasonable expectation that the children that they're engaging with aren't armed. You know, that's where

Vance Crowe [00:29:55] This is so baffling to me that you're saying this. Like, I, I'm shocked. I I have no, I've never even heard this argument before, that the, that the challenge that we're facing is that a huge percentage of the guns that we're facing are in the hands of children,

Cara Spencer [00:30:09] Children

Vance Crowe [00:30:09] That are not able to predict the future children. Or like, I, I've never heard this before. This is very interesting to me.

Cara Spencer [00:30:15] Children, I'm working on getting the statistics from the police department, but you know, anecdotally speaking and from speaking to law enforcement agents speaking to law enfor, you know, the, the cops, they'll tell you, you know, carjackings, carjackings, killings, you know, we just arrested a couple people, teenagers who were, you know, killed a woman in front of her kid in her car, car, you know, a few blocks from my home earlier this month. You know, it's really, really truly horrifying. And so, you know, when you, when you have this, it's gotten so pervasive, the gun ownership model, it's just so pervasive that, that our children are involved. And what happens when you arrest a child and send them to juvenile, they're released. You know, we don't have a good system for dealing with that. So when, when the social fabric is breaking down in such a, has broken down in such a significant way, you know, we have a city that's 30% poverty. We have a school system that was unaccredited for many years, just got its accreditation back, and it's really struggling to make sure that, that our children are educated. What is the solution? We can say, well, you know, the parents aren't there, so, you know, what can we do through our hands up at it? But at the end of the day, the city of St. Louis, whether you like it or not, is the economic engine of the state of Missouri. We have a tremendous amount of agricultural interest and a lot of folks that live outside of the city. But at the end of the day, when you look at the revenue that comes into the state, it's right here.

Cara Spencer [00:31:48] And if we allow St. Louis to fail, it'll take Missouri with it. Now, on the other hand, if we start to address this and say, let's work with our urban partners here, and let's figure out how we can partner on some things, we say, we don't wanna take the guns out, out, out of the hands of our, you know, kids in ball of our Missouri. I don't, I agree with that. That's fine. You know, that's a totally different environment. But how can we deal with it here? It's just like when we are looking at contaminations in the air and dem demolitions of buildings. I worked to put in a bill a couple years ago that requires that if you have asbestos in your building, you have to wet it and you have to have certain protections in place because it's an urban environment. That building that you wanna demo is immediately next to another building. That same building, if it was in Texas, Missouri, okay, with a population of, I'm guessing 700 people, that building is a half a mile from another building. So if you wanna demo and it's got asbestos in it, you know, what, what do you know, what does, what should the rest of the community care? It would, you know, contaminate your soil and there's gonna be issues. But, you know, there's only so much we can do. But in an urban environment where that, that level of contamination's gonna spray out everywhere, that's a different set of circumstances. And should you have the right to spew those contaminations into the air, contaminants into the air, I don't know that you should.

Vance Crowe [00:33:18] So, you know, you were talking about one of the challenges in a city, and the thing that leads kids to making bad decisions is they don't have a path to success. What do you think the city has within their power to grow jobs or to grow an environment where jobs become more plentiful? Yep.

Cara Spencer [00:33:33] We get, in order to do that, we have to make our our city a place where employers wanna come and base. We have to have two things. We have to have a workforce that's educated and ready to work. That means educating our kids. Two, we have to, you know, in order for them to move here, now, even with an educated workforce, nobody wants to relocate to the number one homicide city in the nation. We have to address crime. You know, nobody wants to pick up bullet casings on their neighborhood streets on a, on a daily basis. It's insane. So we have to be serious about addressing violence, and we have to start taking down those numbers that have been on an upward trajectory for the last decade. And in order to do that, we have to bring in professionals who know how to do that. Look at other ways that cities have addressed it. And there are lots of cities that have successfully addressed violence and bring those programs and those individuals who've helped do it in Oakland, you know, Boston, major cities that have addressed violence, bring 'em here, let's do it here.

Vance Crowe [00:34:38] My, my kind of political theory is the, or the belief that I have is, I wanna think kind of fractal localism, right? The closer you get to my house, I want to have more communal control. And the further that you get away from that, I want less and less government control. But I recognize that there needs to be some, so for example, in my house, I'm a communist, everything's shared. And when I get outside of my house and I'm with my friends and family, I'm probably more of a socialist. I get to my county or my city and I'm more of a Republican, right? Like, as I move further and further out, I want there to be less and less government. Although there are some things that the government it needs to do, right? The policing, for example.

Cara Spencer [00:35:18] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:35:18] Do you have a similar style of political thought? Like what is your hypothesis about the structure and, and function of government?

Cara Spencer [00:35:28] I think government should be there to protect and be a safety net for our most vulnerable and get out of the way of, of creative thought and creative endeavors. I mean, you know, part of why St. Louis is so interesting in a lot of ways is 'cause we, you know, especially where I live, you know, the Cherokee Street district, you know, it's kind of do as you want. It's, you know, you, you have the ability to kind of try new things and if they failed, we have a very forgiving community and a broad sense in St. Louis. And that kind of encourage people to think outside the box. That's a very good thing. But I do know that leaving chi guns in the hands of chil when you have problems like violence, you know, government standing outside of the, outta the way, getting outside of the way, it's not gonna solve that. That's not gonna go away on its own. You know, poverty is not gonna be an issue that's just solved 'cause we just get out of the way it's gonna grow. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:36:30] This is an interesting tack that you're taking on the path to, to, you know, through your candidacy, because we just went through a year of people really pushing back on police all around the country, and there were a lot of people saying, the police have too much authority, they're too dangerous. How do you bridge that divide between an urban environment that is intimidated by the police and a police force that probably feels like they're not getting the support that makes them wanna come to work every day?

Cara Spencer [00:37:00] Yeah, I mean, or, you know, and take action when they need to. You know, I mean, can you imagine not just, is it scary being a police officer in St. Louis because of the violence, but now you have a pandemic and we're not even making sure that all of our first responders, I mean, the, there was a lot of issues going on. I have an unwavering commitment to having those difficult conversations. So I represent one of the most challenged districts in St. Louis, certainly in the south side of St. Louis, like I meant, you know, I've about 40% poverty, 30% vacancy in my neighborhoods that I represent. These are real challenges. And there's a lot of distrust between the community I represent in the police department. And the way I've bridged it is having those conversations time and time and time again, and recognizing that both sides have merit. And, you know, and to a police officer, if they say, well, I'm a good cop and there's no reason to mistrust me, kind of helping that side see that, look, there's been decades of this, you know, and it's not your fault, but the city of St. Louis isn't even answering. It's 9 1 1 calls reliably. So when a resident witnesses something wants to share information with our law enforcement, we're failing to pick up the phone. Can you imagine if you are seeing gunfire and you call 9 1 1, you get a busy signal, you get a recording that says all operators are busy, please stay on the line. Someone will be with you shortly. There's gunfire. Someone will be with me shortly. No thank you. That's what happens.

Cara Spencer [00:38:32] And 25% of all emergency level 9 1 1 1 calls, you get a busy signal, you get a recording. So the reality is there is recent to distrust the system, the, the police department's employer, which is the city, is failing to pick up the trash sometimes in your neighborhood. They don't have a, a schedule for when you're gonna be paving your street. Just this weekend we were out cutting down trees without giving any warning to people that, you know, tree that's been in front of their house for 50 years. We just chopped it down and left it in the street for the weekend. You know, these are issues of, I mean, you're, you're looking at me like I'm crazy. This is what happens in a city that has such a high level of poverty and needs to address its underlying function. And so it is the responsibility of the city who collects your taxes. You don't have a choice. We do collect them to return that investment that we're forcing you to make in a way that engenders your trust. Otherwise, you as the customer are gonna choose to live somewhere else and give your tax dollars to another city. And that's what's happened in St. Louis. We've hollowed out our core. Now where the rest of the government's function is, is to recognize we got a problem here in St. Louis people, and if we want the rest of the region to flourish, if we want the state to be a robust state entity and have that tax money, we're gonna have to fix this. We're gonna help them fix it. And if we keep believing it into their own devices, it's gonna get worse, then we're all gonna be in trouble.

Vance Crowe [00:40:06] So as a mom that has already been carjacked, like, the question to me comes to mind, why are you still there?

Cara Spencer [00:40:17] Well, couldn't you tell from the front end? I'm a little crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:40:22] I mean, it's a, it's, but it's a, it's a question worthy of, of, of answer. Because you know, like if, if I was talking to another person that said, Hey, my 9-year-old might get shot on their way in from the car, you know, what, how is that, how is it responsible to be staying in the city? If that's the, if that's the world under which you're, you're seeing Sure.

Cara Spencer [00:40:42] Well, let me, just to clarify, I wasn't carjacked, I was assaulted it, You know, semantics, but it wasn't in my car. But, you know, like I said, fans, I'm from St. Louis, I love this city. I live in a home that was built in 1870 overlooking the Mississippi River. And that's a phenomenal, I mean, I have a doubled lot here. You know, we have a great life. We have restaurants within walking distance and a thriving cultural scene. The, the history of St. Louis is second to none. And the potential here is astronomical. It's hard to walk away from a city with such phenomenal bones, with the intellectual infrastructure that we have here. So I am bullish on St. Louis, and I know that the political apparatus that we, that has been running the show, you know, hasn't done a gang. It hasn't done a, an excellent job, you know? And so, you know, when I see that we've sputtered along for the last few decades, just imagine if we replace those typewriters with computers and we get our city operating in a 21st manner, the upside is unbelievable. Who wouldn't wanna take the helm and move

Vance Crowe [00:41:56] Our city

Cara Spencer [00:41:57] In a direction?

Vance Crowe [00:41:57] I'm, yeah, I'm with you on the, the joy of St. Louis. I lived all over the world, including like DC and New York. I spent a bunch of time in Europe, and when I came to St. Louis and all of a sudden my mortgage was less than half of my rent in Washington DC and I was, you know, I had a backyard and a brick house and neighbors and restaurants. I loved it. So I'm totally with you. I, I'm find myself being flipped around on the way I thought this conversation would go. And I think that that speaks probably to my nihilism about the political situation, because as I think about the role of a mayor, right, you're trying to make it so people can afford houses or that they can get jobs. And part of the problem is that you are facing the tide of national government, which, you know, you made the mention there's gonna be, what, three or $6 trillion just added again, to the economy. And as a mathematician, you might be a good person to, to ask this, what is a trillion dollars? How does anybody even understand that? And then how do you be a mayor in a city where money, where, where the value of the dollar must inevitably go either up or down, but it's not going to stay the same when you're adding a trillion in,

Cara Spencer [00:43:11] Well, the, yeah, the one, the trillion dollar proposal that the Biden administration is considering right now, I'm not as up to speed on all the ins and outs of that particularly, you know, in some, in some way, because I don't know what the val you know, what the end of the result is gonna be. I wanna see investments in our cities. And I know that might not speak to your audiences, but you know, the reality is the cities, if we can get the virus under control where it's happening most, which is in urban areas, that's where the transmission is taking place. Get the, get the vaccine out quickly to stem the tide. We can get back to doing business. We can get our economy up and running again, and we won't have to continue to invest in the COVID relief because we'll be functioning again as a community. That's what I wanna see. And then, you know, I, it's imperative for me to know whether or not we're gonna be giving out stimulus to individuals or we're going to be shoring up the government, the basic functioning of our governments, you know, we have to bail out businesses, but at the end of the day, cities are businesses too. The city of St. Louis is a billion dollar a year entity. That's our revenue on a regular basis, $1.1 billion. Part of that is an airport that the city owns. A significant amount of that is, we have a water department and we have a, a few other things that we handle as a municipality. And you know, we have to, it's important to understand that bailout is a lot of money, but where is it going to go? I would like to make sure that our business community is able to come back and full force so that when, you know, we've been all caged up for a year, I, you know, the citizens of St.

Cara Spencer [00:44:54] Louis wanna get out and spend the money that they do have, that they, those who continue to be employed through the pandemic have seen some savings built up. And I want people to spend it here in St. Louis. So that's, you know, but it really is gonna depend what that one that, whether it's 1000000000001.6 or whatever it ends up being, where those funds are gonna be allocated for the recovery.

Vance Crowe [00:45:20] What comes after a trillion?

Cara Spencer [00:45:24] Oh my gosh, is it a a I'm embarrassed that, I dunno the answer to this.

Vance Crowe [00:45:29] That's why I think this is,

Cara Spencer [00:45:30] It's a,

Vance Crowe [00:45:31] I think it probably is a quadrillion, but like that's when I start saying like, I, I ask people all the time, write down what a trillion looks.

Cara Spencer [00:45:38] It's a quadrillion, isn't it?

Vance Crowe [00:45:39] I think so. I mean, but the question then is that quad

Cara Spencer [00:45:42] Quadrillion and then it's a, a Quint trillion Quint quintilian, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:45:48] So this is maybe part of my like political nihilism, right? We are talking about numbers that are so large that no human mind can even understand them, let alone be able to distribute them within the matter of a few weeks or a few months. So in some ways it feels like when we talk about a trillion dollar stimulus, it's like we're talking about magic money, that that will be like floating around in the world. And yet it's real because it's, its consequences are real.

Cara Spencer [00:46:16] You're right. You know, I mean, Vance you, right? I mean that's just like, you know, it's hard for a human mind to wrap its head around, you know, even 300,000 vaccines, how, you know, the city of St. Louis has 300,000 people and we need to get every one of them vaccinated. But without a real tiered plan of prioritizing where those need to go, it's mayhem. And that's what you saw take place over the weekend. You know, the city got 3,900 vaccines and didn't have a constructed approach to how it was gonna make sure that the most impacted people Got it first. You know, the part, part of the thing, part of the situation here is, if I get it, I am a 40-year-old woman who's white and healthy, you know, I'm not gonna die from COVID. I'm just, probably more than likely not. But if my mom gets it, she might. So, and she will probably end up in a hospital or under medical care during that experience, that illness. And that's gonna overrun our healthcare system if we have too many people, you know, if, if the regular general public of, you know, 20 to 40, 50 year olds are getting COVID, it doesn't really impact our underlying economy. Well, what does is when we, you know, let those vulnerable populations get it and overrun the hospitals. So that's why it's important for an ec for the economic activity of a community to make sure that the most vulnerable people get it first.

Cara Spencer [00:47:51] So that we have no, no, no danger of overrunning our healthcare system. That is where we are failing right now.

Vance Crowe [00:47:59] So if you were mayor and what, what would coronavirus being overlooked, like how would you know when Coronavirus is done? And then second, once it's done, what would you do? What would you arrange the city to do as a way to mark that event?

Cara Spencer [00:48:16] How we know, you know, I, I think, you know, first of all, making sure that the public is getting vaccinated in a clear, constructed, organized way. And that's not happening. So, you know, coronavirus isn't over until the majority of people have either been vaccinated or had exposure and we're not seeing the spread. So reducing those spread numbers, we are seeing that go down, which is a good thing. But when the hospital systems, the medical systems are in no longer danger of being overrun, then the economy can start to get back to normal. And that is where we need, that is where we need to be laser focused on. And how do we protect the most vulnerable citizens so that they're not, that we don't have unnecessary deaths in our community. And then, you know, what does the city gonna do to when we, when we, when we get, what was the second,

Vance Crowe [00:49:10] Well, when Coronavirus is done, you know, like we tossed John Glenn up into the orbit and he went around seven times and we threw ticker tape parades in every city in the United States. Right? So what do you do to celebrate a moment where you've gotten past some global pandemic and how do you use that celebration to make the city better?

Cara Spencer [00:49:29] Oh, I mean, we should celebrate, you know, I mean, I would love to see us celebrate outside and a, you know, celebrating our own awesomeness. You know, the music, the culture that we have here. We have phenomenal musicians from jazz to, you know, spoken word and, you know, rock. We, we just have an incredible amount of creative individuals here. So celebrating ourselves and being able to be around each other. I mean, I consider myself somewhat of an introvert, but even I am at my wits end, you know, with, you know, just seeing the same people every day. So I'd love to be out and celebrating a healthy gathering of human, human beings.

Vance Crowe [00:50:12] I back, back when the coronavirus first started, I interviewed a guy named Jeffrey West, Joffrey West, who's famous for how do cities have emergent properties. He's a phenomenal philosopher out at the Santa Fe Institute to think about how do cities grow. And his point was, you should have festival after festival after festival and try and make it so you have as many people coming together as possible. And I was talking with my buddy Travis Liebig, and then just a few other people, Robbie McGee being one of them. And they have an idea that I think i, I want drop to you, and if you get to be mayor, I think we should try and do this, which is to have either a Formula one or an indie car race in the city of St. Louis that goes all up and down the various streets and shows off the city. I think this is very, very interesting idea.

Cara Spencer [00:50:59] Hmm. How would you do that in a city? Is it like the, the bike, the, you know, we do this, the bike race every year, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:51:06] I think you would just, you know, decide on a day and you'd block off just like you do with the bike races where they kind of block off those parts and do it like you're an Italian city that is running these races. I mean, it brings so many people in and everyone has that kind of need for speed and the adrenaline and the excitement. And you could have art festivals, you could somehow combine it with metro areas. Like I, that's my, that's my push right now.

Cara Spencer [00:51:30] I love it. I think it's a great idea. I had never honestly thought about it. I mean, especially going down by the arch and kind of weaving into some of the neighborhoods, I think it's fantastic. Huh? I love it.

Vance Crowe [00:51:45] Okay, Cara, I'm so grateful for your time today. If people wanted to learn more about your candidacy and what you stand for, what should they, where should they go to find that out?

Cara Spencer [00:51:55] They should go to my website, Cara Spencer, C-A-R-A-S-P-N-C-E-R, the number four mayor.com. And we've got some information out there. We'd love to have your support, your input, and we'd love to continue the dialogue. We got four weeks left till the election, and so if you're a resident of the city of St. Louis, of course we'd love your vote.

Vance Crowe [00:52:16] Well, I have to tell you, I mean, I've said it a couple of times. I came in with, I was excited to talk to you 'cause I had heard you speak, but I, I think you have a level of hope that I, I deeply hope can, can push other people to get involved and to know how to, how to improve the city that we're living in and, and is, as you said, is the anchor point for the entire region.

Cara Spencer [00:52:38] Well, Vance, I really appreciate the opportunity. I, I'd love to hear some feedback from some of your listeners. And I do, I'm bullish about St. Louis, we have a bright future. We've gotta address some of the structural issues, but watch out. I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna be elected mayor, and, and we're gonna turn this city around.

Vance Crowe [00:52:57] Well, best of luck. Thanks, Kara.

Cara Spencer [00:52:58] All right. Have a good day.