Below is going to be the long version of my thoughts on the 2025 Mayoral Election here in God’s Greatest City: Saint Paul. Before I write a novel, if you trust me implicitly, here is the short version of how to vote on Tuesday, November 4th:

Mayor: Vote Melvin Carter III, rank anyone else who tickles your fancy after him.

Administrative Citations Referendum: Vote Yes.

Public Schools Referendum: Vote Yes.

That’s it. Melvin, Yes, Yes. Easy ballot.

Now for the long part.

What is the context of the City right now? In what environment are we choosing our path forward?

We exist in a Post-Covid Trump context and it’s a difficult time for cities. We face growing resource burdens ranging from the devastation of the fentanyl crisis to cars that are bigger and heavier nowadays chewing up our very old roads to our elders living far longer into retirement. We have more to care for and maintain now than anyone before us. 

We also face a shrinking amount of resources. Covid brought remote work, moving office workers into their homes. The city’s downtown, our economic engine, was built and premised on their physical presence at the heart of our city. Downtown now lacks the purpose it was built for and that is reflected in our tax base. 

Further still a Republican Federal trifecta is stripping away every dollar they can sneak past the courts and our own split state house balances their budget by leaving their own work to counties and cities and reducing the Local Government Aid designed to help us carry their burden. Shit rolls downhill as ever. We raise our taxes to keep the lights on and the tap working while the Feds and the State tell you they’re cutting you a bargain.

This summer a special election was held in August in Ward 4 to replace my friend and mentor who stepped away because her job was killing her. The race was a 4 way. Chauntyll Allen, a school board director who didn’t really campaign. Cole Hanson, a DSA candidate. Carolyn Will, the small c conservative in the race. Finally Molly Coleman, a progressive lawyer and closest facsimile to Mitra Jalali’s previous leadership.

Ward 4 is the second highest turnout Ward in the city and it sent a particularly clear message: Saint Paul wants more of the leadership it had. Molly, endorsed by Mayor Melvin Carter, won in the first round; which in the context of a 4 way Ranked Choice Vote is a landslide. Carolyn Will earned 2nd with the standard 20% of any city election that votes conservatively. Cole Hanson at 3rd with 17% despite a strong campaigning effort. 

Finally, and perhaps least importantly and most educationally is the eternal presence of the Summit Avenue Regional Trail (SART) issue. A decision that was fully resolved in 2023 by the previous Council remains at the center of discussion in the city because of the retired, monied tenacity of Summit Avenue’s most tiresome bikelane haters. Tiresome though it may be, it has provided an extraordinary shorthand for who understands Saint Paul and who doesn’t. SART has been made into an election issue in two election cycles now. In 2023 every council candidate across the city who threw their lot in with the opposition to SART lost. Now in 2025 a repeat in the Ward 4 Special election: Every candidate, save Molly Coleman, either opposed, triangulated, or hedged on the SART issue and it had serious consequences for them. It is not the most important issue our city faces, but it is settled law in the hearts of voting neighbors.

There’s two pieces of advice I give every elected I advise, the first being “Why are you doing this? Get a normal job.” Secondly and more importantly for this discussion: 

“Happy people do not write.” 

It’s why the Silent Majority trope is so well loved and well abused by politicians. The ones who tell you the Silent Majority is Silently Fuming are liars. We’re Americans and we love to loudly complain. The ones who tell you the Silent Majority is actually pretty happy with how things are going understood Newton’s first law. A body in motion stays in motion. That isn’t to say change is impossible or undesirable but it is to acknowledge that most people are comfortable or confident in the rate of change we are currently experiencing.

The final piece of context I want to acknowledge is the reality behind the narrative of “Stagnation” that has been pushed by certain polities. I think it’s bunk. 5 years ago in May I was drinking MPD brand tear gas through a Covid mask. Fundamental realities about our city and our culture were being rewritten on a monthly basis. The world stopped and it has been restarted not by accident but by tremendous effort. To say our city is stuck is to ignore the defining events of the new era of politics and American life we find ourselves within. A reality you can only ignore with an immense amount of money or privilege. If understanding what happened then is not a part of your understanding of what is happening now you are simply wrong.

Saint Paul is in a moment of Resurrection. We are trying to find the world from before 2020 and discovering it is no longer there. What you feel in the politics of now is the tension between those still searching for what we lost and those trying to find what we are now.

1,000 words in we will now finally talk about the election:

MAYOR:

Melvin Carter was the guy who got this city through the earth rending moments of Covid and the Murder and Reckoning of George Floyd; and he did it a lot better than the City and the Mayor next door. The blinding spotlight on Minneapolis could have easily revealed an equally petulant, cruel, and poorly managed police department next door in our city. For myriad reasons SPPD walked away from that moment not sterling, I witnessed a couple of colossal failures, but miles more competent than the wretchedness of MPD. Melvin’s leadership and relationships was one of those reasons.

In Covid he was a team player. City staff coordinated well with other entities and parts of our city turned into life saving infrastructure for the entire metro area. I got my first vax in Roy Wilkins in line with a family from Oakdale and a couple from New Brighton. We cared for them and each other in the City Melvin led.

Now we’re figuring it out in the New Reality and Melvin is doing it better than most of his Mayoral cohort. Downtown and development projects across the city are blinking back to life after Post-Covid desolation and Rent Stab market revolt. Saint Paul does its part protecting its residents and providing resources under this ghoulish Federal Administration. The streets get plowed and mended. The garbage gets picked up even if you have enormous feelings about it. The water from your tap remains the best in the nation alongside our Parks system. And what I think is the biggest feather in his cap as Mayor is his work on gun violence. Go check the stats in Saint Paul for yourself. You will not believe them if I just tell you.

Melvin’s got 4 challengers this time but only one of note. Two earnest and eager but politically uneducated and untested neighbors in Adam Dullinger and Yan Chen. I have met and enjoyed the company of Adam Dullinger, but he’s doing the classic throw your hat over the fence to learn the ropes instead of learning the ropes to climb the fence. Yan Chen has said some… wacky things when she was running for council that I have been unable to forget but is not a serious enough candidate to warrant a serious critique. Mike Hilborn is the Republican in the race. Mike is not the interesting part of his own campaign. That would be his treasurer who lives in Hudson Wisconsin and was also the treasurer for the erratic and eccentric, the criminal and congressman: George Santos. What a get. Makes me laugh every time I think about it.

The final and most serious challenger is State House Representative Kaohly Her who arrived bafflingly late to the race and whose pitch appears to be “I will do what Melvin does but better.” which, good, I agree, Melvin is a great match for the city’s values but I won’t stand up from a cheeseburger that I am enjoying because someone told me there’s a cheeseburger two miles down the road. Representative Her’s campaign finance reports also bear the dollars and support of some local characters that I would describe as wildly out of step with the City’s values. She has also failed the “Bullshit Test” of Summit Avenue Regional Trail.

Further I think it takes a lot of brass for a state or a federal elected to critique a municipal leader while they solve their own money woes with our LGA (local government assistance) and tax dollars. This city’s strength is a big part of what solves their problems and frankly I wish it worked the other way. The state and the feds should be solving municipal problems. They have more power and more resources. Melvin Carter never spent $100,000,000 on a jet fighter that’s allergic to rain. Melvin Carter never let hundreds of millions of dollars walk away with fraudsters. Municipal government does the most with the least and I got one hell of a chip on my shoulder about it.

Rank Melvin Carter first on your ballot. 

ADMINISTRATIVE CITATIONS:

Administrative Citations is an edit to our City’s Charter/Constitution that will allow us to levy fines against people who violate the law. You should vote YES.

Why Yes: You should vote Yes because this gives the City a middle ground on enforcement between “Asking Nicely” and “Criminal Citation”. If you built a razor wire fence along a residential sidewalk you should not be thrown in jail, but also you’re probably the kind of jerk that would throw a letter asking you to remove it right in the trash. The city should be able to tell you “Get rid of it or you’re paying us $500 dollars every month til it’s gone.”

God willing we can use Admin Cites to financially pummel the CVS at Snelling and University into something that isn’t a gaping wound.

This one is really a No Brainer. It is a power that every other city in the state for sure and probably the entire country has. This is correcting an obvious error in our Charter.

Why No: If you think that you should be able to do whatever you want with your private property regardless of the context surrounding it: Vote No, but moreover you should watch some videos about Seasteading. You’re going to love the concept.

SCHOOL BOARD LEVY INCREASE:

Voting Yes for this referendum is an easy choice financially and morally. I do not have any of my own children but if the children of this city are raised stupid we may as well not bother having a city at all. What’s the money for if we’re not going to spend it making their lives better?

Why Yes: You do not need to look very hard to see that Saint Paul Public Schools are operating at a deficit. Ask any parent of an SPPS student and they’ll tell you where they could use more staffing, an air conditioner, a laptop. 

Former Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty crippled school funding from the state all the way back in 2003. The state has not deigned to rectify that problem in the interim 22 years. Hypothetically speaking, a state representative running for Mayor would have a much stronger case had they done that at some point.

Why No: This will unequivocally be the largest tax increase you experience this year. Additionally you could vote No if you hate children.

That concludes 2,000 words of my thoughts on Saint Paul right now. If you read this far: