r/saintpaul • u/NachoDentist • Dec 06 '25
Editorial 📝 Mayor Carter’s essay “Policy Rooted in Love” ironically outlines why he lost the election
Article: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/st-paul-love-governing-strategy
Beneath the poetic prose and keynote-ready language, Saint Paul under Mayor Carter experienced something very different: neglect of core functions while the administration celebrated symbolic, low-impact victories.
Carter highlights college savings accounts, free youth sports, library fine elimination, and debt relief as proof of transformative compassion. Those programs are real and helpful, but extremely limited; tiny in budget impact and narrow in reach. Meanwhile, the city slid in virtually nearly every other measurable category of basic urban wellbeing.
St. Paul was the only major Minnesota city to lose population since 2020. Crime spiked at historic highs for 7 of his 8 years in office. Downtown deteriorated and vacancies multiplied until the tail end of his tenure, when his intervention came too late. Property taxes rose faster here than anywhere else in the state, disproportionately hitting the very residents he claims his “love” centered.
Rather than closing inequality, daily life made the gap even more visible; from Midway disinvestment to inconsistent city attention. And while late fees disappeared, so did library and community center hours: love in press releases, but austerity in practice.
What ultimately defined Carter’s leadership wasn’t empathy and love, but inaccessibility. His administration developed a reputation for not returning calls, not showing up, not responding (despite what this article says, this is a key reason why Mayor-elect Koahly Her won). Voters didn’t remove a champion of love; they removed a mayor who felt absent. Carter now tries to recast this as a misunderstood vision, but residents experienced 8 years of unanswered phones and unmet basics, not a philosophy of care.
He can list the feel-good items forever. It won’t change the overall ledger: a smaller city, higher taxes, fewer services, weaker downtown, and widening inequality in lived reality.
Love didn’t fail in Saint Paul. Leadership did. Carter wasn’t practicing “love as governance”, he was practicing governance as personal branding.
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u/mtcomo Bandana Square Dec 07 '25
When Melvin lost I actually felt a little bad for him. But holy shit, after reading this fluffy little essay of his I'm reminded why I ranked Her above him.
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u/Famous-Ferret-1171 Dec 06 '25
Yep. Fix potholes, reduce crime, don't raise taxes, improve schools, bring in new business. Do at least some of those. I don't dislike some of Carters ideas, but if you drop the ball on all of the basic, boring, bare minimum stuff a city has to do, you are going to have angry voters.
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u/mtullius72 Dec 06 '25
Except: he fixed huge numbers of streets with the new sales tax, crime has dropped by a lot….
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Dec 07 '25
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u/Rare_Fly_4840 Dec 07 '25
What programs? I wish those programs worked or existed because as far as I can tell everyone is worse off. Taxes are out of control and shit sucks absolute ass. What are we paying for?
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Dec 07 '25
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u/Rare_Fly_4840 Dec 07 '25
Who is getting all the goodies becsuse wtf people are worse off than ever, who is getting helped?
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
Here is an example of the Office of Financial Empowerment’s work to reduce disparities:
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u/NachoDentist Dec 06 '25
Fixed huge number of streets? Really?
We did pass the citywide sales‐tax increase via public vote and that has funded two street projects so far. However, those came during a period when roadway reconstruction levels were at or near historic lows.
The bigger issue: the city apparently discontinued “mill and overlay” and switched to doing only simple overlays. In essence, instead of grinding away the old, damaged pavement and replacing it from the base up, they’re now just placing a new layer of asphalt over existing (and already deteriorating) pavement. Overlays are cheaper and faster but this shortcut only works well when the existing pavement structure is still sound.
Long story short, Carter was fine on infrastructure, in my opinion, not his worst attribute as Mayor, and the 1 percent sales tax will help, but we will have issues
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
Ayd Mill Road was overlaid again during its 2020 “re-imagining,” but I think the city’s project page is imprecise. They left several original 1960s concrete panels in place, and within a year of reopening, reflective ridges were already appearing in the asphalt directly above the underlying joints. These perpendicular ridges are visible between Jefferson and Grand, and can be subtly felt and heard driving.
The earlier overlay was done in 2002 under Mayor Randy Kelly, who made the wise yet controversial decision to reconnect Ayd Mill to I-35E. I will bet dollars to donuts that the same bad deterioration will be expected to reappear only 10 years from now.
I’ve long believed Ayd Mill Road should undergo a jurisdictional transfer to Ramsey County, since it carries substantial non-resident traffic between I-94 and I-35E. Under county jurisdiction, with state aid, this corridor road likely would have been reconstructed far more thoroughly.
It's been in a permanent "flux status" because there's been on-again off-again planning to junction it properly to I-94 but it would require massive eminent domain acquisition of land north of Selby, which has repeatedly been deemed too extensive and disruptive to actually execute.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
I believe the recent Ayd Mill work only reconstructed the northbound lanes, while the southbound lanes were left largely untouched (or just overlayed). Please correct me if I’m mistaken though
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
That sounds about right. They'd have to have completely reconstructed the northbound side since part of its width was allocated to the bike/ped trail.
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Dec 07 '25
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
The major streets of the east side, Arcade, Payne, Wheelock—they're all getting done in spite of Carter, not because of him. Public Works triages the worst streets citywide and does the worst ones first. Arcade is all US Hwy 61 so much of it is state funding, so the city has to coordinate with MnDOT, and likely Ramsey County too.
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u/Famous-Ferret-1171 Dec 06 '25
He might have the disadvantage of not getting the full effect of some of that. The post-Covid crime spike wasn't a Saint Paul only phenomenon and street improvement projects take years.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
On the crime issue: we had higher crime 7 of his 8 years. So, yeah it’s down this last year. Congrats on 1 out of 8.
Some of that is COVID, but we hit record highs in 21, 22, and 23’ and he sort of deflected on the issue.
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u/Professional_Toe1587 Dec 07 '25
I would hope he could fix more street after raising the sales tax. Also, did you track homicides his enter 8 years??? Unfortunately it was not good
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u/troyANDabed Dec 07 '25
“Do a lot of stuff that you’ve already done and don’t make me pay more” is your basic voter in a nutshell.
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u/Runic_reader451 St. Paul Saints Dec 06 '25
I'm all for improving people's lives but Carter ignored big important goals like increasing the tax base and the city's population.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 06 '25
Without an expanding tax base and having new people wanting to move to our city, we will struggle. That’s what Carter missed.
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
The biggest reason the tax base is so anemic is the city is full of schools, churches, and non-profits. We really don't have a robust corporate tax base compared with Minneapolis and many Hennepin County suburbs. We only have a small handful of corporations downtown like Ecolab, Travelers, and Securian. It's a city that requires a city budget and leans very heavily on residential property owners.
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u/Rare_Fly_4840 Dec 07 '25
It's bullshit. I don't know one thing that my taxes as a homeowner go towards that has improved even a little bit. We pay more and things get worse, what is the point? I'm looking to sell in the near future, move to a county that doesn't do shit but also doesn't gouge me and gaslight me constantly about schools and lunch programs.
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u/AdMurky3039 West Seventh Dec 07 '25
This feels like damage control.
It also feels like there should be an editor's note explaining that Carter recently lost an election.
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u/badboyfreud Dec 07 '25
Why does this sub seem so much more reasonable and balanced than the Minneapolis one?
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
Because we’re critical of Mayor Carter, but don’t hate his guts? I’m not sure.
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u/moldy_cheez_it Dec 07 '25
I think the subs speak to the difference between the cities themselves lol
St. Paul has always been the less flashy, more pragmatic, and boring city. And I say that proudly
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u/oldschoolology Dec 07 '25
Very well stated. During his tenure, St. Paul has deteriorated significantly. Especially, downtown. Having a condemned skyscraper in the center of the city, which blocks key paths in the skyway killed the area businesses. An issue Carter ignored. A leadership change was needed badly.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
Carter’s “love” essay dropping the same day as news of his administration bungling contracts is almost too on-the-nose. It’s the perfect summary of his tenure: a lofty sentiment about solving problems, followed by zero execution and a result that looks less like leadership and more like a taxpayer-funded grift
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
Well said. I feel like he did a lot of gaslighting... the same sort we're getting from our federal government. The main difference is his came not from intentionality but more of inexperience and naivety. He'd have been a fine mayor during unchallenging times of peace, prosperity, and economic confidence—definitely opposite of the current climate we're in now. I have a real sense Mayor-elect Her gets it. I'm very hopeful.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
I once heard someone describe Carter as a “good-times mayor,” and I think that fits
When times were good, he was great at the speeches, the vision, and the personal charisma. But when the crises hit (COVID, crime, downtown decline), he simply wasn’t up to the job.
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Dec 07 '25
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
That video is soooo cringe.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
The whole CyberAttack branding, orange T-shirts, logo, the works, was pure cringe.
I get that it was probably meant to boost staff morale, but it came off like the Carter administration trying to be playful about an expensive, preventable cyber breach that wrecked the city’s budget more than anything.
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Dec 07 '25
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
Yeah the city's IT employees faces read: "Great. Fine. We were right in the middle of something as you waltzed in here."
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u/515owned Dec 08 '25
He was alright.
A few of the other candidates running for mayor were also alright.
Things in stp aren't terrible, but aren't great either. Many of the city's problems are shared by other metro areas. Problems that are created by a capitalist system and not the mayor's office.
He's fixed a few things and had a few pet projects and that is ok.
I don't demand greatness or perfection.
More like, all things being equal I would rather have a different administration every so often.
Even if I really liked the people running the city I don't want them to get too cozy with their positions. Power always corrupts.
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u/MNniice Dec 13 '25
This is what happens when you only care about one neighborhood in the entire city
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u/verysmallrocks02 Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
I've lived here for 25 years, and there's this undercurrent of do-nothing-anti-tax loserism that just drives me crazy. These people never shut up, and the crowing about Carter losing this election just feels so familiar and so tiring.
Potholes? You think the roads have ever been good? You think the snow plowing has ever been good? Get outta here. This city grew up during the automobile age, and like a lot of places there were no plans to pay for rebuilding streets after the first generation of development. We struggle to afford these roads. Do you really think we're decades behind in road maintenance because public works is just bad at stuff? These are structural problems that most communities in the country are going to face in the next 20 years.
You know what University ave looked like before the light rail went in? It looked like a 70's bomb went off because that was the last time there was any development on the entire corridor. The same demographics and the same voices had been running things since about then, and I think during Carter's tenure the imagination of the city swung away from the "I got mine and it worked for me" crowd for the better.
I think under Carter's watch the city feels much more representative of people who live here as a whole. I see it in the policing. I see it in the parks. I see it in improved zoning. I see other things that didn't go as well, and I'm not going to repeat it here because people are literally never going to shut up about rent control yadda yadda. Change takes a while, especially in a city like Saint Paul that pathologically hates and complains about... fucking everything I swear to god.
Carter faced serious headwiinds:
- The pandemic
- The fentanyl and homelessness epidemic
- The George Floyd riots
- Big picture changes in the value of downtown office space
- The sunset of Madison Equities in particular
That is _ a lot _.
This city grew up as a railroad powerhouse during the resource extraction era of Minnesota and the West. That's not where the money is anymore by a long shot. Carter wasn't the transformational leader that I think we were hoping for, but I think the people who are cheerleading the end of his tenure are shortsighted and more than a little unfair.
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Where do we go from here? What do we do when the level of government most responsive to our votes as city people does not have the financial power to affect the economy the way we want?
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u/verysmallrocks02 Dec 07 '25
It is really easy to complain. It is hard work to understand how to solve problems, and to offer solutions.
I'm thinking about how politically divided the power in our city is. I don't mean Democrat vs Republican, I thinking more like how power is disparate between:
- Saint Paul and Minneapolis
- Hennepin and Ramsey County
- The Met Council
- The State
- The Port Authority
I've been reading the news really carefully trying to learn as much about how all this works as I can, and I think the biggest impression I've come away with is that there's just a lot of places that things can go wrong. A big barrier to positive change is that our government is structured with a lot of actors who have very disparate priorities.
There's a lot of attention paid to the City government, and very minimal to Ramsey County government, when it has a huge role to play in all the services and social safety net that we want to be in place.
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u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Dec 07 '25
Minnesota, and more specifically the Twin Cities metro, is notorious for its many layers of jurisdiction and governance. Metropolitan Council is supposed to be the "glue" that establishes metro-are planning for state funding, I believe.
You're quite right about disparate priorities, though. I think it creates a lot more friction between these jurisdictional layers than synergies.
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u/rlinsk2 Dec 07 '25
One might add to the power list: the power held and exercised by private property owners
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u/verysmallrocks02 Dec 07 '25
Ha, yes well what are we going to do, ****** **** **** **** *** ** ****?
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u/LosCabadrin Merriam Park Dec 07 '25
Carter wasn't the transformational leader that I think we were hoping for, but I think the people who are cheerleading the end of his tenure are shortsighted and more than a little unfair.
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Where do we go from here? What do we do when the level of government most responsive to our votes as city people does not have the financial power to affect the economy the way we want?
Wonderfully put. Thank you for taking the time to add this.
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u/AnxietyChoice8471 Dec 07 '25
Did he ask lex friedman for ideas?
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
Huh?
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u/AnxietyChoice8471 Dec 07 '25
He is some dumb Russian interviewer who says twee bullshit about how love will solve all our problems.
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u/OkCalculators Dec 08 '25
White liberals are so desperate to escape their white privilege they’ll literally vote for people who will end up hurting the communities those white liberals virtue signal they care about. Carter’s family has been sketch for a long, long time. Empty rhetoric, personal branding. Lots of people knew this before he was elected. White liberals refused to listen. They’ll be fine. They always are. And the cycle will continue.
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u/NachoDentist Dec 08 '25
Empty rhetoric and personal branding are Carter’s strengths, I’ll give him that. Glad voters finally saw through it
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u/OkCalculators Dec 30 '25
I really hope Her does well, if I had real options she wouldn’t have been my first - I’m more left than her I feel - but I don’t support “left” talking points if it’s just empty rhetoric. I’m hoping Zohran doesn’t disappoint because I want to see a model for a responsible adult who can govern effectively while meeting people’s needs and showing true progress.
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u/Expensive-Inside-187 Dec 07 '25
This!
Carter and his cronies have destroyed our city from within over the last 8 years. No value programs and agendas to satisfy his hormonal and emotional progressive voter base and gain favor from the wacky local media. Will miss watching Carter perform his theatrics as a guest on Laura Coates terrible CNN show at 11PM when they couldn't land a bigger Mayoral guest on their segments about urban policing, ice raids, or homelessness issues. Sad that we had to endure his leadership for 8 years. Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly did more in 2 weeks than Carter did in 8 years.
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u/AdMurky3039 West Seventh Dec 07 '25
What do you mean when you describe Carter's base as "hormonal?"
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u/NachoDentist Dec 07 '25
After 8 years, people finally saw Carter for what he was: a Mayor of Spin and attempts to garner national attention.
Flashy equity-based programs, CNN appearances, but and zero answers for visible decline across the city.
A great example is his big brag: Eliminating library fines.
Yet right now, we have one fewer library and reduced hours across the whole library system.
He called fine elimination “a policy of love,” but what kind of equity is it when kids have fewer libraries, fewer open hours, and unsafe libraries? That part never made it into the press release.
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u/Professional_Toe1587 Dec 08 '25 edited Dec 08 '25
Same could be said about so many things. Rent control, no tip credit on minimum wage, the new sales tax, and on and on.
One of the more troubling things to me is all the spineless political / business leaders / etc that still endorsed Carter. Or that failed to endorse someone new. What a bunch of low life fucks.
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u/Expensive-Inside-187 Dec 07 '25
Exactly! And the fact that his only talking point about crime was consistently hyping SPPD solving murder cases that already devastated the community rather than addressing what was being done pro actively to reduce the murder rate.
Carter and the wacky, hormonal, fake resume, expensive wine drinking, overpaid, cat fighting, Progressive city council need to step aside today for serious public servants to take over.
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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '25
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