One shocker and other key takeaways from Twin Cities elections

Easily the biggest surprise of Tuesday’s municipal elections is that St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter lost his reelection bid to Kaohly Her, a DFL state representative who had previously worked in his office. Even in a Trump-fueled wave year for Democrats, where explicit socialist Zohran Mamdani comfortably won the New York City mayor’s race, a center-left challenger defeated a supposedly popular incumbent in St. Paul. 

Her was little-known before this summer, announced her campaign late, and ran largely on vibes rather than policy differences, making her margin a remarkable achievement. Six months ago, Carter’s reelection seemed a fait accompli; instead, Tuesday’s results upend the tight-knit world of St. Paul politics. Over the years, political gravity increasingly centered on the mayor’s office, and it will be fascinating to watch Her’s appointments, approach and policy ideas play out during a challenging time.  

This is not to downplay Her’s impressive campaign, but the result says more to me about Carter. For one thing, he seemed to treat this election as a given. This is to say that he campaigned like he often governed: largely superficially. I often heard criticisms of Carter’s time in office suggesting he was more interested in press releases than the hard work of administering city bureaucracy. He leaned heavily on his charisma and headline-grabbing pilot projects, while neglecting more difficult challenges like the downtown office market. In a city with low turnout and an often cranky electorate, it turns out that relationships can trump style.  

Related: In an upset, St. Paul voters choose Kaohly Her over two-time Mayor Melvin Carter

In this light, Her’s unflashy persona and fiscal track record offer high contrast. She reached out to a wide variety of constituencies and spent months personally knocking on doors. Six weeks ago, a friend in Highland Park told me how Her had rang her doorbell and spent a half-hour chatting in her living room; my friend was quite impressed. Her also raised a great deal of money, including large sums from conservative interests like the Chamber of Commerce, the real estate community and homeowners of Summit Avenue.

Carter’s campaign was more leisurely, making some nice ads and sending out press releases nearly every day. I suspect he was hoping that the remarkable drop in crime across the city, helped by his low-key emphasis on youth programming, would earn him votes. One of his largest accomplishments was enacting a new citywide sales tax that is just now resulting in long-overdue street reconstructions. Raising taxes is always a mixed bag for politicians, but the comfortable passage of the city’s public schools levy increase suggests that Her’s victory wasn’t simply an anti-tax wave.

While Carter’s tenure and campaign didn’t get the job done electorally, it’s worth remembering he was dealt a tough hand. The literally cratering fortunes of downtown are not the fault of any one person, though Carter did not make it much of a priority. Over the last two years, he had to deal with the chaos resulting from Madison Equities demise, and then this summer’s inexplicable cyberattack. 

Carter’s attempt to have it both ways on the 2021 rent stabilization ballot measure also looks like a mistake. After its passage, he had to almost singlehandedly force through a series of amendments to the restrictive policy, resulting in compromises that satisfied almost nobody and made him few allies.

Related: Will Minneapolis follow St. Paul on rent control?

I’m reminded of how third terms are a tough sell with voters. The shine is usually off a candidate by then, especially if they play hardball with potential allies as Carter’s administration was increasingly wont to do with multiple vetoes of City Council measures. Ironically, St. Paul is moving to even-year elections in 2028, which might have salvaged Carter’s campaign as citywide turnout was modest and highly uneven. 

This means that voters will be back in three years to weigh in on how Mayor Her has fared. Given St. Paul’s tax base struggles, I predict it won’t be easy to avoid raising taxes and cutting services. Perhaps, as Carter suggested in his concession speech, he has left the city on a better path and in a good place for the next administration. I certainly hope so.

Minneapolis: More of the same — divisive

Meanwhile, Mayor Jacob Frey won a third term leading Minnesota’s largest city, something that runs against the long-standing conventional wisdom on the Twin Cities mayors. People always told me that Carter was popular and Frey was disliked, but in truth the two mayors have been more similar than they seemed. They are both young, ambitious progressive centrists who give good speeches and have tended toward top-down politics. To me, their differences in media perception reflected more about the economic and political landscapes of the two cities than anything else. 

This contrast in politics played out here, too: Carter was challenged from the right, whereas Frey was challenged from the left. While money flowed into an insurgent campaign in St. Paul, in Minneapolis an enormous amount of money was spent on boosting the incumbent. In the end, it’s left Minneapolis right back where it was before: mired in toxic disagreement.

This is an unfortunate outcome for city governance, where burning political bridges can prove counterproductive to solving problems. When I started my career in journalism, such as it was, I was a volunteer for KFAI community radio’s (long defunct) half-hour nightly news program. Ann Alquist, our experienced news editor, would send me on a story once a week to cover some local issue, and I’d record audio and turn around a news segment for a 5:00 broadcast.

One week I interviewed a south Minneapolis council member and asked why so many votes at City Hall were 7-6 when everyone was basically from the same political party. They patiently explained to me the system of horse trading, where council members and the mayor continually form new coalitions. Sometimes you agree and work together, but when the next issue comes along, you might be on opposite sides and fighting. City government is almost always like this, a delicate balance.

Related: Frey secures a third term as Minneapolis mayor, defeating democratic socialist Omar Fateh

Over the last decade, Frey’s PAC-fueled approach to politics, combined with rising Democratic Socialists of America activism in Minneapolis, has turned those kinds of collaboration into something akin to the logjams of congressional partisanship. If the next four years are like the last four, the result will likely be a city that’s governed more poorly, and Minneapolis will continue to lack the local pragmatism it needs to thrive. In an era where cities are literally and figuratively under attack by the federal government, that’s not a great outcome. 

Park Board change in Minneapolis

Another fascinating result from Tuesday’s vote was a sea change on the relatively obscure  Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB), elected and budgeted independently of the rest of the city government. In general, the Park Board has a precarious structure that’s a poor fit for grassroots politics: The hours are long, the pay is low, and you get little institutional support. 

But the last four years have seen a lot of unrest for Minneapolis’ award-winning parks, which have an operating budget larger than the city of Duluth’s general fund.  The wave of new left-leaning Commissioners represent an opportunity to see how progressive the park system can become. That offers a distinct contrast from the institution’s historic legacy of reflecting the interests of wealthy homeowners above other priorities.

Of course, Frey can veto Park Board resolutions just as well as he can those of the City Council, and I expect that he will. The election results set up a government landscape that will create showdowns between the Park Board and left-leaning members of City Council and the mayor and his council supporters. Minneapolis will likely be as divisive as ever, and that’s a small tragedy when cities need to be working with all cylinders in concert.  

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