How Kaohly Her became St. Paul’s next mayor

St. Paul will have a new mayor for the first time in eight years when Kaohly Her is sworn in in January.

The state legislator’s win represents an upset against two-term Mayor Melvin Carter, a longtime fixture in St. Paul politics. Her will be St. Paul’s first female mayor and first Hmong mayor, serving a three-year term.

How did she do it?

First-round St. Paul mayor’s race results started coming in after 9 p.m. Tuesday, consistently showing Her and Carter running neck-and-neck, a trend that continued as the count wore on.

Once all the first-round votes were counted, Her was 2.4 percentage points behind Carter.

Data shows Her with more first-round votes than Carter in Wards 2 and 3, which tend to play a big role in choosing the mayor because residents typically turn out. Carter had strong support in these wards in 2017 and 2021.

Her’s House district includes parts of Wards 1, 2, 3 and 4. She won all but two of the 12 St. Paul precincts in her House district.

Carter handily won his last two races for mayor, getting a majority of the votes in the first round, which meant no ranked-choice tabulation.

It was different on Tuesday. Since no candidate cleared over 50% of votes in the first round, it went to tabulation, and some voters’ second preferences were counted.

Without a mathematical path to win, Yan Chen, Mike Hilborn, Adam Dullinger and write-in candidates were eliminated.

Ballots with those candidates as first choices were reallocated to Carter and Her, the only candidates with paths to win.

Her benefited more from second-choice votes than Carter, and in the end, she won enough to more than close the gap. Her was declared St. Paul’s next mayor around midnight.