St. Paul has a competitive mayoral election. Why has it been so sleepy?

St. Paul has issues. Downtown is still trying to recover from the pandemic and the collapse of a major real estate company. Residents are seeing ever-higher property taxes even after a 2023 sales tax added to the cost of living. Too many streets are still in rough shape.

But even with such high stakes, the campaign to decide who will run the city has been a lackluster affair.

Mayor Melvin Carter, seeking a third term and a rumored lieutenant governor possibility, has the most significant challenger of his career in state Rep. Kaohly Vang Her, a DFLer who made national headlines for her passionate stance on health care for undocumented immigrants. Yet campaign events have been small, mailboxes are flier-less, doorsteps are free of volunteers, and the battle of yard signs is just beginning. Even social media has been civil.

Here is why the St. Paul race has been so St. Paulishly subdued.

Outside groups and even the DFL are sitting on the sidelines in the St. Paul mayor’s race.

There are no mailers from outside groups, and the groups that are making endorsements have yet to unleash door-knockers and phone-callers.

The St. Paul DFL did not hold endorsing conventions this year for a mayoral candidate, with the local party short on people and resources. Political action committees have not formed to support any of the candidates, and the groups that have endorsed Carter and Her have not yet started campaigning for them.

Progressive group Unidos MN will not endorse on the race, focusing their work on campaigning for the city’s two ballot questions, and ISAIAH has yet to endorse either.

And unlike in Minneapolis, the Democratic Socialists of America have not endorsed a candidate for mayor, meaning there has been none of the buzz that followed democratic socialist candidates after New York City’s DSA candidate Zohran Mamdani won that city’s Democratic mayoral primary election this summer.

Labor unions are making endorsements, with the SEIU and the Minnesota Nurses Association backing Carter and the Teamsters and SMART, the sheet metal workers union, behind Her. But so far, these groups have not been active in the race.

That lack of activity can also be seen in the spending, with neither Carter’s nor Her’s campaign doling out much so far to reach voters. Carter’s campaign has spent just over $41,000 this year, and Her has spent a little more than $12,000, with both spending primarily on campaign consultants.

For comparison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s campaign has spent $293,000 so far this year.

These issues are animating voters thinking locally, but they don’t map neatly onto the progressive-conservative continuum that guides national politics or even the Minneapolis mayoral race, which has been seen as a proxy battle over the direction of the Democratic Party.

St. Paul, by contrast, offers none of the partisan fuel that often fires up voters.

The two front-runners agree on most key issues, and they even appeared at a news conference together Monday in support of a ballot question.

“I don’t think there is enough of a differentiator between the two, and I think that’s the way the voters are feeling at the moment,” said Marc Cove, who chairs the St. Paul Area Chamber’s political action committee. “Even though it’s extremely important. St. Paul is at a crossroads.”

Instead, the St. Paul contest is about who is better equipped to run the city.

He is touting the success of a non-fatal shooting unit of the St. Paul Police Department in bringing down gun violence, talking up a computerized building-permit system, and speaking about his hope for new development across the city.

David Schulz, a political science professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, said Her’s case against Carter isn’t clear-cut.

She’s not campaigning on aspirational policies that tend to rally activists. Instead, Her’s knock on Carter is a nuts-and-bolts argument that he has presided over a city where things just don’t work well.

“It is not because we have stricter standards,” Her said. “It is because we do business poorly.”

Though Her has dinged Carter for too little collaboration with other levels of government on issues from gun control to renovations of the downtown hockey arena, she has stopped far short of calling Carter’s tenure a failure.

The unique advantages of campaigning while serving as mayor of St. Paul is another reason why the contest hasn’t made much noise.

Carter’s day job allows him to regularly get his message out, whether it’s joining a lawsuit against the Trump administration, responding to a major cyberattack in late July, or touting the falling gun violence number. It’s also let him be vocal about rolling back rent control and being a cheerleader for downtown.

The office of St. Paul mayor in particular offers an outsized advantage of incumbency, Schulz said, because so much power has been consolidated there. There is no significant opposition within the largely dormant city DFL and no City Council opposition to challenge him on issues that could affect the race.

“The mayor has come to dominate DFL politics,” Schulz said. “There really is no serious rival.”

The deadline to file for office in mid-August was the starting gun for this year’s mayoral election, with Her announcing her candidacy on Aug. 4. That meant she didn’t have summer events to get her name out there, noted Cove.

What’s more, because the St. Paul DFL did not hold endorsing caucuses, there wasn’t an opportunity to fire up activists earlier in the year, said Garrison McMurtrey, a Ramsey County commissioner and former chair of the St. Paul DFL.

“St. Paul is a bit different because we didn’t have caucuses and conventions this year and all Mayoral candidates hadn’t announced until closer to the filing deadline,” he wrote in an email.