The all-female city council marks a ‘turning point’ for a sister city

There was a moment last summer when Nelsie Yang realized she and six other women were about to make history in St. Paul, Minnesota. The group of city council candidates knocked on doors to share their collective campaign message, a message that is transforming the makeup of the city’s governing body.

“It was such a powerful moment,” said Ms Yang, 28. “That collective work is how you win campaigns.”

In mid-November, Ms. Yang’s prediction came true when they were elected. And on Tuesday, St. Paul’s first all-female City Council was sworn in.

Ms. Yang, who has represented Ward 6 as a councilor since 2020, called the moment surreal and “frankly long overdue.”

“This is the vision I had when I first started organizing eight years ago,” said Ms. Yang, the council’s first Hmong American. “Change doesn’t happen with the same voices at the table.”

St. Paul is believed to be one of the largest cities in the country with the distinction of having an all-female city council. But the firsts don’t stop there: All seven council members are under 40 years old, and six are women of color, making it the youngest and most racially diverse council in the city’s history, historians say.

The new council, all Democrats, consists of three sitting members: Mitra Jalali, the council’s new president; Rebecca Noecker and Ms. Yang – and four newcomers: Anika Bowie, Cheniqua Johnson, Hwa Jeong Kim and Saura Jost. They include former teachers, nonprofit executives, community organizers and congressional staffers. There is even a civil engineer, whose work experience will stand the Council in good stead when discussions on road repairs arise, Ms Jalali said.

“I’m really hoping for the opportunity to have much more sophisticated policy conversations and engage our community in this work in a new way,” Ms. Jalali said.

When four of the city council’s seven members decided they would resign at the end of 2023, Ms. Bowie, Ms. Johnson, Ms. Kim and Ms. Jost tied together to form a coalition and then added the three female incumbents to campaign together. Relying on a small group of women was familiar to Ms. Jost, the engineer who now represents Ward 3.

“It’s a small network of women, especially women of color. We all know each other,” she said. “That was so great to have that support system.”

While the new composition of the City Council may surprise some, several demographic shifts in St. Paul in recent decades have paved the way for this moment, said Michael J. Lansing, a historian at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

St. Paul’s history as an Irish Catholic political stronghold began to change in the 1980s, as the city’s demographics began to change, especially with the arrival of Hmong and other immigrant communities. During that period, elections for the municipal council shifted from general elections to representation by district.

But it would be decades before the city’s leadership could catch up with St. Paul’s new demographics. In 2004, the city elected its first black female council member, Debbie Montgomery. In 2018, the city council consisted mainly of women. Two years later, George Floyd was murdered in neighboring Minneapolis, sparking a new wave of community organizing and political leadership.

Mr. Lansing called the election of seven women to the City Council “a turning point for St. Paul.”

“They are all under 40, they come from different backgrounds and are likely to stay in politics for a while,” he said. “What are they doing? What can they change? How do they see things differently?”

At 39, Ms. Noecker considers herself the group’s “senior stateswoman,” and that’s a good thing, she said: “That means we don’t have the lag or baggage of institutional memory holding us back.”

Many council members have relied on the support of women who came before them, including Amy Brendmoen, the council president who declined to run for re-election last year after serving 12 years at City Hall. She advised council members to maintain relationships between colleagues and think about the long game.

“That balance is how you achieve your goals, and that’s where women thrive,” she said. “Remember to link arms and do this together. We do this naturally. Following that advice is what got them elected in the first place.”

Yet they know there will be differences we have to work through.

“It will be important to learn how to disagree politely,” Ms. Noecker said. “We won’t agree on everything. That is the point.”

Ms Bowie, who represents Ward 1, said she was “excited to see us dancing together.” She acknowledges there will be fights, but she hopes they are “righteous fights.”

Housing, homelessness, economic development, a wide wealth gap and climate change are among the top issues facing the new council. But before the councilwomen got to work, there was the matter of swearing in.

“While this is historic, it just should be,” Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan told a packed audience Tuesday during their swearing-in ceremony at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul. Young people, she told council members, “are going to dream big and achieve their dreams because of the risk you were willing to take.”