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It took an instant runoff election late Tuesday night to determine who would become the next mayor of St. Paul. When it was all over, state Rep. Kaohly Her defeated incumbent Melvin Carter by nearly three percentage points.
According to voter data, Her secured her victory by winning first choice votes in parts of the city that had supported Carter, sometimes strongly, in previous elections.
Dark areas on the map show the highest vote totals for a candidate — lighter shades show how close the top two candidates were in those precincts.
Here’s why some residents voted for Her
Cristina Arellano, who lives in Highland Park, ranked Kaohly Her first and no one else. She voted for Carter in 2021.
"Carter did a good job as a mayor, but he already had two terms, and I thought that a few other things needed to be done, like, you know, downtown St. Paul needs more attention, and taxes are very high, so I wasn't so happy about that,” she said.
Highland Park is located in Ward 3, which contains precincts that turned out strong for Carter in 2021, but less so in 2025.
"[Her] seemed to be really knowledgeable and ready to work and organized an amazing campaign, really reached out to me and to my neighbors. I was impressed with that, and my neighbors were impressed by her," she said.
Arellano isn't the only voter who thinks taxes are too high in St. Paul.
Highland Park resident Tom Mollner said he ranked candidate Mike Hilborn first, Yan Chen second and Kaohly Her third.
The rental property manager said Her won because "Carter's taxes were unbelievably crazy."
In 2024, Carter proposed a 7.9 percent increase in the property tax levy — the total amount that the city collects. Council members wanted to limit the increase to 5.9 percent, and Carter proposed meeting them halfway. Council ended up approving a property tax levy increase of nearly 6 percent that year.
Mollner said he found it hypocritical that Carter supported rent control.
"He says, 'you can't raise your rents for people more than three percent' but yet their budget is going way higher than that," Mollner said.
He also said he hopes Mayor-Elect Her listens to the results and realizes that voting out an incumbent is "really difficult."
"So he (Carter) must have done something enough to upset the constituents," he said. "I would hope that she listens to that and understands that, hey, like maybe being so radical isn't good and maybe come a little more to the middle," Mollner said.
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