Star Tribune
Saura Jost declared winner of St. Paul’s Third Ward race, cementing city’s historic all-female council
Ramsey County election judges on Monday confirmed civil engineer Saura Jost’s victory in St. Paul’s Third Ward City Council race, wrapping up a historic election year for Minnesota’s capital city.
Voters last week elected women to all seven of the City Council’s seats. When the new council is sworn in at the start of next year, all seven members will be under the age of 40, and six will be women of color.
The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., isn’t aware of another American city the size of St. Paul ever electing an all-female council, said Jean Sinzdak, the center’s associate director.
“Though we don’t track this formally, I will say it’s pretty rare to see a city elect all women,” Sinzdak said. “St. Paul is in a really unique position, so it will be interesting to see where they go from here.”
Jost, 35, declared victory on election night after her closest opponent, Isaac Russell, conceded. But since Jost received 48% of first-choice votes, falling short of a majority, election officials went through the reallocation process required by the city’s ranked-choice voting system.
“What we really heard in our ward — and across the city — is everyone really wanted to see our community-centered politics,” she said in an interview last week. “I’m just so excited to be able to represent the community that raised me.”
Campaign representatives were allowed to watch ballots being counted and sorted, but could not challenge vote counts. The opportunity for challenges will come after Wednesday, when the City Council certifies the election results.
The Third Ward seat — which was open for the first time in 12 years, after three-term Council Member Chris Tolbert decided not to seek re-election — drew the highest turnout among the seven wards, with about 13,400 voters.
All seven council seats were on the ballot this year, and four of those races did not include incumbents among the candidates.
Council Members Rebecca Noecker, Mitra Jalali and Nelsie Yang won re-election easily. The newcomers are Jost, Anika Bowie, Hwa Jeong Kim and Cheniqua Johnson.
Starting in 2018, when the first midterm elections were held following former President Donald Trump’s election, the number of women running for office at all levels of government surged nationwide, Sinzdak said.
“Women of the left, in particular, have also been highly motivated by events happening since then,” she said. “Roe v. Wade was highly motivating. Black Lives Matter was motivating. A lot of these progressive social issues have been very galvanizing for a lot of women running for office.”
Many of the winning St. Paul candidates in interviews said they saw themselves as part of this wave and felt inspired by women elected to the Legislature in recent years.
“I think I feel both proud at having been at the forefront of this change in St. Paul, but also nervous because I know it will be hard,” Jalali said. “I have a very fierce personal desire to transform our political culture to be healed of how patriarchy and racism seep into the ways that we are as people.”
The incoming council members have said that while they campaigned together on a progressive agenda, they didn’t expect to agree on every issue.
“I like deliberating publicly,” Noecker said. “And I think it’s important to have people be able to see us doing that — because that builds trust in us.”
In response to criticism that the new council lacks diverse perspectives, Kim said: “When I hear that, it’s coming from folks that have benefitted from decision-making and processes and systems, and they now feel as if now things are being taken away from them.
“I feel strongly that it is not that we are taking away, but that we are ensuring that those who have not have an equitable opportunity have access to the things that other people have had access to for generations.”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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