3 days ago
Is Carter vulnerable? State Rep. Kaohly Vang Her explores run for St. Paul mayor
With little more than three months to go before the election, state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her, a former policy director for St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, is exploring a run for mayor and asking fellow lawmakers for their 'support or neutrality,' according to political organizers with knowledge of her campaign. It's a decision that would put her on a political collision course with her own former boss.
Her, 52, did not return calls Thursday or Friday, but others at St. Paul City Hall or with connections to state lawmakers said they were confident she was preparing to announce a mayoral run.
Given growing frustration with the many challenges facing the state's capital city, Her isn't the only candidate taking a run at the two-term incumbent mayor who easily won his first two elections.
The filing period runs July 29 through Aug. 12, and Carter announced in January every intention of running again, despite some criticism he appears disconnected from City Hall.
Declared mayoral candidates include Yan Chen, a University of Minnesota biophysicist, and Mike Hilborn, a Republican business owner who runs a power-washing, Christmas tree lighting and snowplowing company. The St. Paul DFL, which is in the process of reconstituting itself, has opted not to endorse in the ranked-choice election, which is non-partisan but typically draws strong party interest.
Voters will rank candidates in order of preference, and there will be no political primary to pare the field. Also appearing on the Nov. 4 ballot are questions about a St. Paul Public Schools levy and whether to empower the city council to impose administrative citations, or non-criminal fines.
Born in Laos, Her came to the United States as a 4-year-old Hmong refugee and was raised in Appleton, Wis., where her father worked in a paper plant and her mother as a teacher's aide. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and finance, as well as a master's degree in business administration from Northeastern University.
She was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives representing District 64A — which spans the Union Park and Summit-University neighborhoods of St. Paul — in 2018 and won a fourth term in 2024. Among her first initiatives in office, she helped launch the first Minnesota Asian Pacific Caucus at the State Capitol. She served as Carter's policy director during his first term in office, from January 2018 through Sept. 10, 2021.
'She does great work for St. Paul up at the State House, and Mayor Carter does terrific work for our city in the mayor's office,' said St. Paul City Council Member Saura Jost on Friday. 'With that being said, I've already committed to supporting Mayor Carter for re-election.'
Interim Council Member Matt Privratsky, recently appointed to the council by Carter, said he was 'proud to support Melvin in his re-election.'
The five other council members and representatives for Carter could not be reached for comment Friday.
The mayor once was seen as a rising star within the Democratic Party and a potential candidate for a Washington appointment. That was before a rise in homelessness, homicides and carjackings early in the coronavirus pandemic, which sent remote workers away from a downtown already short on retail and commerce.
Carter himself spends limited time each week downtown in his mayoral offices. He moved his family a few years ago to a house at the city's eastern edges, closer to suburban Maplewood and Woodbury than the embattled Midway or the Rondo neighborhood where he grew up.
When former Vice President Kamala Harris lost her presidential bid in November, the chance of Carter being called down to D.C. fizzled, as did funding and backing for many of the city's progressive priorities, from social spending to EV charging stations and geothermal heating.
No matter who is elected mayor, St. Paul will be left with no allies in the White House and a dwindling number at the Minnesota State Capitol, where lawmakers declined to fund a new ice arena at Grand Casino Arena (formerly the Xcel Energy Center) for the Minnesota Wild and offered the city limited other new benefits in the last legislative session.
If anything, the Carter administration has at times appeared at loggerheads with state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, chair of St. Paul's House delegation, who has complained of not having calls returned.
'I'm not voting for him a third time,' said Steve Subera, a product marketer from St. Paul, in response to an inquiry about the mayor on social media. 'The downtown (situation) is on his watch. Grand Casino Arena is in limbo and it doesn't appear he has any influence with (state Sen. Sandy) Pappas or Perez-Vega.'
Relations between Carter's office and the St. Paul City Council appear equally up-and-down. The mayor's office last year spent weeks, if not months, in a budget battle with the council, leading to a series of line-item budget vetoes by the mayor and an attempted last-minute budget override by the council.
With two 2025 city budgets on the table, it was unclear to many observers which one had legal sticking power through the first months of the year. Following that and other bruising political fights, Council President Mitra Jalali — who was mostly seen as sympathetic to the mayor — resigned in March.
Other problems are mounting in the capital city.
Carter once spoke glowingly of getting upstream of crime through better street lighting, increased library access and free youth activities through the city's many rec centers.
Then the price of metal went up, as did the cost of everything else, and an epidemic in stolen copper wire left sections of the city bathed in darkness as street lights went cold. In January 2023, a city rec center staffer shot a teen in the head, and the location was closed for weeks.
Run-ins between library workers and aggressive visitors, some of them homeless and on drugs, have forced security changes. The Rondo Community Library on Dale Street now closes at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and entirely on Sundays. Workers and patrons say the library's proximity to a Green Line light rail station hasn't helped. The train, once heralded as a potential engine for economic development, now is viewed as a liability even by some fans of public transit.
Homicide and carjacking numbers have fallen considerably since the height of the pandemic. Still, demographic projections forecast sluggish population growth in St. Paul in the years ahead, a trend reflected in lackluster apartment construction over the past few years. Entire office buildings and even some apartment buildings in downtown St. Paul sit vacant, or have fallen into foreclosure, as major tenants such as Wold Architects and TKDA have fled westward to Minneapolis and Bloomington.
Property tax increases have left many homeowners reeling. The city lost its last downtown grocery store — Lunds & Byerlys — in March, and Cub Foods is leaving Aug. 2 after 30 years in the Midway.
For some voters, enough is enough. When questioned about the mayor's prospects for re-election, users of the social media platform Bluesky offered a wide range of responses:
'I'm a lifelong Democrat. I'll never vote for Mayor Carter again,' wrote one Bluesky user. 'I've sent his office questions about problems in Lowertown and was met with no response. I followed up. No response. Too many Democratic leaders in St Paul feel 'safe' so they ignore what they don't care about. They ignore citizens.'
Others aren't so sure. 'I have a hard time getting a read on him as a mayor because the city council is comically ineffective, so he spends a good chunk of time/effort dealing with that,' wrote another social media user. 'I would like to see him at least challenged, though. Downtown is in terrible shape.'
Some praised the mayor for working with St. Paul Police to focus on non-fatal shootings, an approach that appears to have helped St. Paul temper but not eliminate shooting deaths.
Carter 'worked WITH police to change tactics and clear more non-murder shootings to reduce the overall number of homicides,' wrote a Carter supporter on the Bluesky platform. The police 'chief even credits the progressive Dem. Imagine that!'
Other social media users noted urban areas across the country have suffered in the era of remote work, high housing costs and online retail, and St. Paul's challenges are not unique or attributable to one person or political party.
'The issues downtown aren't the mayor's fault — they're the result of major shifts beyond the city's ability to control,' wrote a Bluesky user. 'I think he's done good work so far, and rehabilitating downtown will take decades, not years. I like the way he's steered policy with a practical but reliably liberal approach.'
'I don't blame a mayor for condemned buildings and low office occupancy post-Covid,' wrote another user. 'But I do like how he explains his fiscal policies and budget, and supports creative solutions to complex community issues.'
'All the problems that St. Paul has will require time, money and effort to fix and I think he's still the best person for it,' said yet another Bluesky user. 'A candidate that promises an overnight solution isn't serious and he's never been that guy, in my opinion. He's got the right focus and values. Let him cook, as they say.'
Said another user, 'I'm alright with the mayor, but I think a good challenger might bring good policy ideas into the foreground. I don't want an incumbent to ever take things for granted and not try things or play it safe, and a candidate that addresses housing, or downtown, with actual policy ideas would be good.'
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