A diverse new St. Paul City Council to be seated in January, 3 incumbents hold off challengers

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·6 min read

Incumbent St. Paul City Council members Rebecca Noecker, Mitra Jalali and Nelsie Yang won re-election Tuesday night against challengers. Hwa Jeong Kim also had a lead in the Ward 5 race.

Results in three council races — Ward 1, Ward 3 and Ward 7 — will not be known before a manual ballot reallocation process begins Friday. Under the city’s ranked-choice election system, results are hand tallied and ballots are redistributed in races where no candidate breaks 50% of the vote on Election Day.

St. Paul voters headed to the polls Tuesday to elect what stands to be the most racially diverse city council in city history, one likely to be led by a progressive female majority and immigrant and ethnic voices indicative of the capital city’s changing demographics.

In all, 30 candidates filed for seven seats on the nonpartisan council, which will turn over a majority of council members in January.

Including absentee ballots, 48,000 voters went to the polls. That’s about 7,000 voters shy of turnout in 2021, when rent control was on the St. Paul ballot, but still a relatively sizable showing for an off-year election in St. Paul, which sometimes draw closer to 30,000 voters. The city had 161,719 registered voters as of Tuesday morning.

Voters turned out in relatively strong numbers in Ward 3, which spans Highland Park, Macalester-Groveland and part of West Seventh Street, followed by Ward 1, which covers Frogtown, Summit-University and swathes of the North End and surrounding neighborhoods.

Open council seats in both those races had drawn a sizable and racially-diverse mix of candidates, energizing corners of the Black, Hmong and East African electorate.

Rent control, road repair, schools

Progressive candidates appeared to have the edge on Tuesday, though not always by comfortable margins. Will Hyland voted early at the Ramsey County Elections office on Plato Boulevard. Hyland said he cast his council vote with the intention of protecting the city’s voter-approved rent-control ordinance to “ensure that the rent cap stays in place,” he said. “There’s a lot of people trying to dismantle that.”

Several voters at the Highland Park Community Center on Tuesday afternoon said they were more motivated by concern over road repair and educational issues than city council elections. Several voters in a row at a polling location near Macalester College, also in Ward 3, acknowledged they knew little or nothing about the council races until researching them the night before, or even minutes before their vote.

Four openings on the St. Paul school board and a proposal to raise the city’s sales tax to fund road reconstructions and parks projects were on Tuesday’s ballot, as well.

Ward 1

In the busiest race of the night, eight candidates appeared on the ranked-choice ballot for the open council seat in Ward 1, which spans Frogtown, Summit-University and parts of adjoining neighborhoods. A winner could be declared Friday.

Anika Bowie led with 40% of the vote, followed by James Lo with 20%, Omar Syed with 19%, Jeff Zeitler with 7%, Yan Chen with 6%, Suz Woehrle with 4%, Travis Helkamp with 4% and Lucky “Tiger Jack” Rosenbloom with 2%. The seat had previously been held by council member Dai Thao, who moved out of state last year but was active on Lo’s campaign.

No one obtained the influential St. Paul Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsement before a walk-out ended the party’s ward convention last April, but Bowie at the time had led Syed in party balloting.

Ward 2

Council member Noecker, who was first elected eight years ago, held off three lightly-funded challengers in her re-election bid for the Ward 2 seat, which represents downtown St. Paul, West Seventh Street, the West Side, Summit Hill, Railroad Island and Lowertown. Noecker won with 63% of the vote, compared to Bill Hosko’s 21%, Peter Butler’s 10% and Noval Noir’s 5%.

Ward 3

Four candidates vied for the open council seat in Ward 3, which spans Highland Park, Mac-Groveland and part of the West Seventh neighborhood. Saura Jost led with 48% of the vote, followed by Isaac Russell with 30%, Patty Hartmann with 19% and Troy Barksdale with 2%. Jost held the St. Paul DFL endorsement, while Russell had garnered the backing of multiple labor unions critical of rent control. A winner could be declared Friday.

The seat had been held by council member Chris Tolbert, who had chosen not to run for re-election after 12 years.

Ward 4

Council member Jalali, one of the more progressive voices on the council, defeated conservative challenger Robert Bushard in Ward 4, which spans all or part of five neighborhoods — Hamline-Midway, Merriam Park, St. Anthony Park and parts of Macalester-Groveland and Como. Jalali won with 79% of the vote.

Ward 5

With council President Amy Brendmoen choosing not to seek re-election after 12 years in office, four candidates vied for the open seat in Ward 5, which spans the Como, North End, Payne-Phalen and Railroad Island neighborhoods.

Kim won with 52% of the vote, followed by David Greenwood-Sanchez with 27%, Pam Tollefson with 18% and Nate Nins with 3%.

Of the 30 candidates for city council, only Kim, a nonprofit director who is also Brendmoen’s former legislative aide, and Ward 6 council member Nelsie Yang carried endorsements from both the St. Paul DFL and the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America.

Ward 6

Yang, a former union organizer with the progressive advocacy organization TakeAction Minnesota, faced a single challenger, the more moderate Gary Unger, in her bid for re-election in Ward 6, which spans the neighborhoods of Frost Lake, Hayden Heights, Hazel Park, Payne-Phalen, Phalen Village and Prosperity. Yang won with 61% of the vote.

Ward 7

With council member Jane Prince choosing not to run for re-election, the Ward 7 race featured a six-way match-up that was too close to call on election night. Cheniqua Johnson, who carried the DFL endorsement, led with 41% of the vote, followed by Pa Der Vang with 36%. The race will likely be decided Friday through ballot reallocation, making second-choice votes crucial for either candidate.

Dino Guerin, who had endorsed Vang, held 14% of the vote, followed by Alexander Bourne with 5%, Foua Choua-Khang with 2%, and Kartumu King with 1%. Ward 7 spans the East Side neighborhoods of Dayton’s Bluff, Mounds Park, Swede Hollow, Battle Creek, Highwood, Conway and Eastview.

Caleb Hensin contributed to this report.

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