Medcalf: St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter speaks out after election upset

Expecting a more casual conversation, I wore a sweatsuit when I met Melvin Carter on Wednesday at Catzen Coffee on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. But the city’s mayor was in a sport coat as we talked about his recent loss to Kaohly Herin the election, his work in the city through two terms and his next steps.

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t put a jacket on for me.”

Almost 20 years ago, Carter and I met when I was a St. Paul City Hall reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune and he was an aide to then-Mayor Chris Coleman. Back then, we talked about our long-term goals and I told him that he’d run the city one day. About a decade later, he achieved that dream when he was elected as mayor of St. Paul, his hometown.

Earlier this month, Her — his former aide and a former state representative — defeated Carter in a close race. He conceded with admirable grace on election night.

That approach to loss not only positioned the city well to prepare to tackle its challenges in Her’s first term but it also cleared the way for Carter to start fresh, too. In politics, maybe everyone can win, if you remove the selfishness, condescension and arrogance too familiar in the political space today.

I reached out to Carter because I thought he’d set an example, not just for politicians but for anyone with intentions to move a city forward. We can be human beings in all of this, if we choose to be.

“All I have to say is I’ve spent the last eight years telling this city that it’s not about me,” he said. “It’s got to be us. It’s got to be about all of us.”

Downtown, Carter said, remains a major concern for the city he’s led for the past eight years.

“If you look at it right now, the concerns about downtown are 100 percent accurate,” he said. “There are absolutely concerns.”

Carter said he has supported a nearly $1 billion renovation of Grand Casino Arena to help revitalize the area after the pandemic changed the makeup of downtown.

“It’s not a sports arena that we’re talking about,” he said. “It’s a central, organizing principle for our downtown. And we can take that for granted if we decide to. But it will be at our own peril.”

Weeks after his loss in the mayoral race, however, the “competitive” mayor also believes the story of his legacy involves a multitude of positives. In our conversation, he touted the city’s universal basic income program that helped encourage similar efforts around the country. He also launched college savings accounts for newborns. And recent projections have put the city on track to end 2025 with 70% fewer homicides than 2024.

“When I look at a mayor like Her, I think she’s going to be a great leader,” Carter told me. “We not only have a playbook but a team and funding for our downtown strategy. We’ve doubled our investment in infrastructure. The foundation is there. The foundation is absolutely there, so it feels like we have set a new administration up to succeed.”

The politics matter here, but I’d also reached out to Carter to ask the question politicians are often asked in these moments: What’s next?

The 46-year-old leader who has been involved in local politics — his father, Melvin Jr., was one of St. Paul’s first Black police officers and his mother, Toni, is a former Ramsey County commissioner — for most of his life.

“I don’t know,” said Carter, which was also his response when I asked him directly if he plans to run for office again.

Carter said he hopes to continue to do the same work he did in the mayoral office in his next chapter. Only after he processes everything that’s unfolded in the past eight years. Because the mayor’s office was his dream. And the price of running a city of nearly 300,000 people was also immense in ways he could not have anticipated.

He knew the man from his days playing high school sports, and later, the man became his son’s barber.

“It was this fantastic trip we’re having and then it’s like, ‘Mayor time,’” he said. “You know what I mean? And so I think every day in a city of 300,000 people, something happens that you didn’t major in. And it’s tough sometimes but my job is to, on any given day, cram on some subject while taking the final on television.”

He experienced another profound moment when civil unrest on University Avenue after the murder of George Floyd demanded his attention. That call came just as he’d arrived at the hospital for an urgent appointment for his newborn daughter.

He won’t miss those urgent days, he said.

“I’m looking forward to not having to be the one to have to carry that,” Carter said. “I’m looking forward to re-training myself and making it around to my phone when I make it around to my phone. And I’m looking forward to enjoying community in this city. If you’re behind the wheel, you can’t enjoy the ride in the same way.”

“After we explained to her the election results, she goes, ‘Does that mean you won’t have the strings anymore?’” Carter recalled. “I said, ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ She goes, ‘The strings that connect your whole body to the entire world when you’re not there anymore. You don’t have those?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what that means.’