Primary voters will narrow Mankato mayor field from three to two

Jul. 24—MANKATO — With three candidates running for mayor, voters in the Aug. 9 primary election aren't deciding who Mankato's top elected official will be in January. But they are deciding who won't be.

The primary election will eliminate one candidate, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the Nov. 8 general election ballot.

Running are first-term Mayor Najwa Massad; Toby Leonard, who made an unsuccessful run for mayor in 2018; and John Martin West, who lives on Broad Street.

Massad

From the outside, the past four years didn't look like a particularly fun time to be a city leader.

Mayor Najwa Massad, however, said she never considered retiring after one term, insisting she's greatly enjoyed being at the helm despite the pandemic and all of the controversy and difficulty it carried with it.

She runs through a lengthy list of recent events that encapsulate the fun part of the job — reading to kids, ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings, visiting new businesses, welcoming conventioneers to the city.

"Growth is unbelievable. I believe the year before we did 500-some permits for remodeling and new construction. This year, we're over 700 already. We're thriving."

So year four of her first term is going well, just like year one. Years two and three, though, were doozies. Massad was just reaching her initial anniversary as the first woman elected as Mankato's mayor when the pandemic hit.

Like elected officials nationally and internationally, municipal leaders had never experienced anything like it. Businesses and schools shut down, the economy plunged into a deep downturn, unemployment skyrocketed, everything from homeless shelters to day care centers were trying to figure out if they could continue to safely operate.

Despite dire municipal budget projections, the city found ways to lend a hand.

With many businesses shut down by state order, the city developed zero-interest and interest-deferred loan programs to keep entrepreneurs afloat.

It put a moratorium on water shutoffs for unpaid utility bills. It laid off staff, deferred sales-tax-funded construction projects and tapped reserves to avoid property tax hikes.

"It proved what the city could do," Massad said. "And I learned from that."

She had some personal experience withstanding tough times, immigrating with her parents at age 5 from Lebanon, moving back to Lebanon as a young woman to marry her husband, John Massad, building a life there until a worsening civil war prompted them to return to Mankato in the 1970s. Here they started over and eventually built a family business focused on restaurants and catering.

Even with all of those experiences, she struggled with the intense division in the community over a proposed municipal mask mandate for indoor public places.

"The mask mandate was probably one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in my life, and I've had a pretty crazy life," she said. "I've been through war. I've been through other things."

Ultimately, she supported the policy on the basis that it would help in some way to keep residents safe, which she considered a primary duty of a mayor. Her reasoning was similar when she joined the majority on the council in supporting an increase in the legal age for buying tobacco and other nicotine-containing products from 18 to 21 — another contentious issue.

The new mayor also found herself asking then City Manager Pat Hentges to delay his planned retirement for a year. And she was on the council panel that oversaw the first city manager search in a quarter century — one that resulted in the hiring of Susan Arntz.

Reactions to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis brought large protests to Mankato, although virtually none of the rioting or clashes with police seen in other cities.

Even when the worst phases of the pandemic had passed and employment was soaring, the problems didn't stop. Labor shortages have been widespread, including for municipal jobs. Inflation is hammering the city budget and driving up costs of construction, prompting some delays in planned projects.

"So what do you cut? What do you have to raise? We don't want to raise taxes," Massad said. "So we're trying to do the best we can not to."

But economics can't be denied. She talks about a recent trip to the supermarket, being excited to see the Rainier cherries, a family favorite, had arrived. Then she looked at the price.

"$11.99 a pound. $11.99?! You can buy a steak for that!"

She knows residents are dealing daily with similar price shocks, and she believes they will be understanding as the city strives to maintain its service levels and hold the line on taxes even while dealing with those rising costs.

In spite of the anxiety the job continues to bring, Massad said she didn't hesitate to seek reelection.

"The first four years, you're learning. I'm still learning," she said. "I don't believe one term is enough for any person to do the best that they can because of the learning process."

Leonard

Toby Leonard said his background in science and his libertarian political leanings influence his approach in running for mayor and offer a hint of how he would do the job if elected.

His campaign themes are efficient spending, long-term infrastructure planning and market-based strategies for controlling the cost of rental housing.

"First of all, just kind of reduce government waste ... use government and taxpayer money wisely," he said of his No. 1 issue.

Secondly, Leonard said, Mankato should focus on infrastructure — particularly long-term infrastructure planning.

"We just want to make sure our infrastructure is stable and ready for the future," he said.

Lastly, he wants to find ways to boost the amount of rental housing in Mankato in the belief that a larger supply will mean a stabilization or decline in monthly rental rates.

Leonard is making his second run for the mayor's office. In 2018, he finished third among four active candidates seeking the open seat in a primary election.

Massad and Bukata Hayes advanced to the general election ballot in November. Leonard, who won 11% of the vote in the primary, ran something of a write-in campaign in the general election but wasn't a factor in the race.

A security counselor at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center, Leonard lives on Fourth Street and teaches firearms safety courses as well as operating a gun business, which he said focuses primarily on museum pieces and collector items.

Leonard said he served as an operating room specialist assisting with surgeries while in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He's lived in Mankato for about 30 years, earning a variety of degrees from Minnesota State University and teaching at times at South Central College and in MSU's Upward Bound program.

"A lot of my skills are logistics and planning," he said. "I'm a methodical planner, so it's not just a kneejerk situation."

While Leonard is complimentary about the city's long-term planning for major infrastructure such as the sewage treatment plant, he wants to make sure mundane infrastructure is also systematically repaired, pointing to a collapse of the storm sewer on Fourth Street.

And he mentions the rise in gas prices, wondering if the city's transit system could be transformed into a more attractive option.

"Let's see what we can do to make public transit more user-friendly."

His proposals for helping ease the cost of renting in Mankato might involve the biggest change in city policies. Leonard said he's not persuaded that government-subsidized large-housing complexes — a focus of current and past councils — are the best approach.

Instead, he would look to boost the amount of private rental housing in Mankato by eliminating hurdles to building or converting structures into apartments, particularly smaller rental housing initiatives that are how landlords typically get started in the business. That includes the process for obtaining a rental license.

"How can we make it more efficient and easier for landlords?"

He opposes the city's rental-density ordinance, which caps the number of rental homes in most residential neighborhoods at 25% on any given block.

"That is one of the things to look at," Leonard said of the 25% cap. "Either up it or remove it altogether."

His overall goal is to increase the number of landlords, which would result in more units on the market that should ease monthly rent levels.

"Instead of trying to control the rents, maybe we can free it up so more landlords get involved," Leonard said.

Finally, the city should try to steer new rental housing to places where tenants will have access to transit, shopping and other things they need, he said.

"If we're putting them on the outskirts of the city, we're putting low-income people in a place where there isn't services."

West

The phone number John Martin West listed with the Minnesota secretary of state when filing his candidacy for Mankato mayor is a non-working number.

The Broad Street house that West listed as his address in his filing with the state is owned by Horizon Homes Inc., an organization that "provides long-term residential treatment services to adults 18+ who have a serious and persistent mental illness and are in need of daily mental health services and support," according to its website.

The Free Press provided Horizon Homes staff with contact information to pass on to West in case he wanted to do an interview about his mayoral run.

West does not appear to have a campaign website. A LinkedIn page for "John West" in Mankato describes him as a "formerly homeless" community organizer who also worked in the past for a public radio station in New Mexico.

"I specialize in community organizing among persons typically considered 'hard' to organize due to societal marginalization and stigmatization, guided by my understanding of the principles of Satyagraha (generally mistranslated into English as 'nonviolence')," West wrote on the page.