In a historic win, former St. Paul City Council member Melvin Carter III was elected mayor Tuesday night, earning more than 50 percent of the vote and overtaking his nearest rival Pat Harris by a wide margin.

Carter, 38, will be the first African-American to serve as mayor in St. Paul.

“This is the honor of a lifetime,” Carter said late Tuesday night. “Being able to carry a majority of the first-choice votes says to me loud and clear that St. Paul is a city ready for change.”

With all 96 precincts reporting after 10 p.m., Carter had 51 percent of the vote, Harris garnered 25 percent, and City Council member Dai Thao came in a distant third at 12 percent. Green Party candidate Elizabeth Dickinson garnered 5 percent, with former school board member Tom Goldstein at 4 percent. Five additional candidates earned about 3 percent of the vote between them.

READ MORE: With deep roots in St. Paul, Carter embraces a more diverse future

“(Melvin Carter) lives, breathes and bleeds the city of St. Paul. Our families will be celebrating all year,” said childhood friend Nneka Constantino, a board member with the St. Paul Port Authority, who was among hundreds of Carter supporters gathered at the Union Depot Tuesday night.

Melvin Carter, the newly elected St. Paul mayor, celebrates his victory with his supporters at Union Depot on Tuesday night, Nov. 7, 2017. (Pioneer Press / Nick Woltman)

Melvin Carter, the newly elected St. Paul mayor, celebrates his victory with his supporters at Union Depot on Tuesday night, Nov. 7, 2017. (Pioneer Press / Nick Woltman)

Melvin Carter, the newly elected St. Paul mayor, celebrates his victory with his supporters at Union Depot on Tuesday night, Nov. 7, 2017. (Pioneer Press / Nick Woltman)



Harris, at a gathering of supporters at Mancini’s Char House on West Seventh Street on Tuesday night, said it was “pretty clear” based on the election results that the new leadership of St. Paul “won’t be me.”

Harris called Carter to offer his congratulations, and he encouraged unity in remarks to supporters.

“I’m never going to stop making a difference in this community,” said Harris, 51, a banker and former city council member. “I’m going to embrace new leadership.”

By gaining more than 50 percent of the vote, Carter won the race outright Tuesday.

If his vote totals had fallen below 50 percent, vote-counting and redistribution under the city’s ranked-choice voting system could have continued for up to four days.

FORD PLANT, POLICE ISSUES

At ballot locations, several voters said they were eager to see City Hall better reflect the diversity of the city and they wanted a mayor who was sympathetic to neighborhood concerns.

After years of population loss, St. Paul recently grew to more than 300,000 residents, led in part by sizable growth downtown, where Carter posted strong results.

“St. Paul is a diverse city; St. Paul is a multicultural city,” Carter said. “And I think today’s outcome says we’re ready to step into that future.”

Increases in poverty, recent immigrants and racial minorities, renters and luxury housing created a dynamic backdrop for a 10-way mayor’s race, as did a year-over-year uptick in crime and shots-fired incidents in the city.

“We’re a very different city than we used to be,” said St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who joined Carter at his celebration gathering Tuesday night.

Sara Frommeyer, who voted at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center Tuesday, remarked on the “recent fiasco” over a third-party mailing that attempted to link the theft of guns from Carter’s house this summer to increased gun violence in the city. “The way he handled it, he’s ready,” Frommeyer said.

Other voters noted Carter’s endorsements from Gov. Mark Dayton, Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, among other well-recognized backers.

The five leading candidates in the St. Paul mayor’s race struggled to differentiate themselves in the early part of the election season, with all of them pledging to support — to varying degrees — a $15 minimum wage, public transit, affordable housing, neighborhood investment and diversity and local hiring in the St. Paul Police Department.

They differed more strongly when it came to the city council’s recent decision to rezone the 135-acre Ford manufacturing plant property in Highland Park for medium-to-high density residential apartments.

Harris opposed the plan, Carter and Dickinson embraced it, and Thao publicly condemned it the day before it went to the city council for public hearing in late September. At a time of rising rents and increased housing demand, critics dubbed Harris — a former Catholic Charities housing worker — unsympathetic to housing concerns.

No candidate won the influential endorsement of the St. Paul DFL at the party’s city convention this summer, though Carter — the son of Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter and retired St. Paul police officer Melvin Carter II — came the closest on a platform that included reforming use-of-force training within the police department.

“Our goal is to ensure that when people see a St. Paul police officer on their block … they know they can trust that person and know that they’re on the same side,” the younger Carter said Tuesday night after his victory.

Harris, who carried the endorsement of the St. Paul Police Federation, called for the resignation of the federation’s leadership last month after mailers quoting the federation sought to link two handguns stolen from Carter’s home this summer to an increase in shots fired across the city.

On election day, “I don’t know what effect that had,” Coleman said, “but I just know that was vile and disgusting and not what St. Paul politics are all about.”

Thao made headlines of his own after firing his campaign manager last April while facing allegations they attempted to solicit a bribe from a paid lobbyist and food container company.

Following an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Scott County attorney’s office declined to press charges against either of them.

Candidates who did considerably less fundraising and door-knocking earned less than 1 percent of the vote apiece — commercial Realtor Tim Holden, perennial candidate Sharon Anderson, homeless advocate Barnabas Y’Shua and street activist Trahern Crews. Libertarian advocate Chris Holbrook had 1.4 percent of the vote. Related Articles AP source: Envelope addressed to White House contained ricin

ND angler’s YouTube videos let him quit his day job

Trump pledges woman for court, pushes Senate to move on pick

Trump backs proposed deal to keep TikTok operating in US

Ginsburg’s death draws big surge of donations to Democrats

New for this year’s election, Ramsey County ballot machines scanned digital pictures of every ballot and will make them public later in the season. Minneapolis will use software for a faster count in its mayoral and city council races, which will be decided this week.

Roughly 6,200 St. Paul voters this year submitted their ballots well in advance of Election Day. In 2013, the Legislature passed the No Excuses bill, allowing voters to obtain absentee ballots without the requirement of a written explanation.

In Ramsey County, early in-person voting began at six locations on Halloween, allowing county residents to vote at sites far from their own home precinct.

Pioneer Press reporter Nick Woltman contributed to this article.