Incumbent Melvin Carter won the St. Paul mayoral race with 61.64% of the vote. He was followed by Dino Guerin, who got 12.61%.
St. Paul residents voted in favor of the rent stabilization referendum, which garnered 52.89% of votes. Once enacted, the measure will impose a 3% cap on the amount that a landlord can raise rent per year and will be one of the strictest rent control measures in the country.
This, Carter said, is a measure where “the work that we have to do after Election Day was essentially the same one way or the other.”
“It’s building a table big enough to fit everybody at it and ensuring that we’re all working together to build a policy that works best for safety,” Carter said.
Carter highlighted that the last two years have taught him about the power of unity in a speech at his election night watch party at Brew Hall in Allianz Field.
“As long as one member of our community can’t afford a stable home when it’s time to shelter in place, as long as one member of our community can’t go straight to the doctor when they have symptoms of take a week off to quarantine or care for a sick child that we are all less safe,” Carter said.
Carter also talked about the challenges of his first term in a post-speech press event.
“The COVID crisis, the pandemic, the economic pandemic that it brought with it, the murder of George Floyd and all that kind of trauma that we experienced together in the wake of that is all sort of intermingled for us,” Carter said, “and bringing this community through that place, through all of this, is by far the biggest challenge.”
Angeline Terry can be reached at Terr2351@sttthomas.edu.
Mae Macfarlane can be reached at macf7507@stthomas.edu.