Rebecca Noecker is the incumbent and has three people running against her, none of them very impressive.
On the ballot:
Rebecca Noecker
Noval Noir
Bill Hosko
Peter Butler
Bill Hosko’s hobby is running for office. He is not very good at it. In 2015 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “no parking meters” platform. In 2019 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “we should spend huge amounts of money to install turnstiles around every light rail station; also, taxes are too high; also, we should spend huge amounts of money holding referendums on literally everything” platform. In 2021 he ran for mayor on a “turnstiles” platform and also on the grounds that Mayor Carter had weeds in his yard, which Bill videotaped. And last year he ran for Ramsey County Board on a platform that went something like, “crime is bad.” Also he still wanted turnstiles. This year, he doesn’t mention turnstiles; his unreadable, inaccessible website (it’s entirely blurry graphics without alt-text) basically says things are bad and taxes are too high. Given his commitment to losing elections very badly, I’m surprised that he apparently hates ranked choice voting (or at least did in 2017) since without it, he’d get even fewer votes than he does already. He’s endorsed by Republicans, because in St. Paul, they’ll take what they can get. (ETA: the site with the recommended candidates for Republicans to vote for is not an official Republican site, so I have changed my statement to say he’s endorsed by Republicans, i.e. the people running that site, vs. the Republicans, i.e. the actual party.) Anyway, for so many reasons, as I noted in 2021, I would not want Bill as a City Council rep or for that matter as a neighbor.
Peter Butler has an even weirder hobby than Bill’s, which is to organize petition drives to put stuff on the ballot in St. Paul, turn in his petition, and when it fails because a bunch of the signatures got declared invalid, he sues the city. (Should you want to fact-check this, pay attention to middle initials: there’s a Peter Butler who’s a drunk driver but it’s a different person.)
He did have one tantalizingly innovative proposal, which was to bring back boarding houses: “Many older residents have spare rooms and can remain in their homes by earning rental income and having someone to help with household chores.” He shows absolutely zero self-awareness of the fact that this idea clashes with his firm commitment to single-family zoning (“Should St. Paul allow at least three units of housing on any residential lot? Why or why not?” “No. I strongly support neighborhood preservation. Entry level homes (pricewise) will be demolished for the lot, removing affordable homes from first-time homebuyers.”) He’s another “absolutely not.”
Noval Noir apparently didn’t fill out the questionnaires for either the East Metro Voter Guide or the MinnPost election guide; she was interviewed and was mostly pretty incoherent. Her main issue is the opioid crisis and she has a list of things she wants to do that are a mix of things that we’re already doing (collecting data, harm reduction, educating people on opiate risks, tracking prescriptions), things that would genuinely be a good idea and have broad support among Democrats (expand treatment facilities), and things that are extremely nonspecific (“Develop a long-term strategy to combat the opioid crisis, recognizing that it is a complex issue that will require sustained effort and resources.”) I guess if I really really hated Rebecca Noecker she’d be my pick. I guess.
Rebecca Noecker is a normal Democrat and I would vote for her if I lived in Ward 2. I feel like possibly I’m damning her with faint praise here, but I am trying to get through the last few races and all you really need to know here is, “she’s fine, and even if she made you mad in the last four years, you probably don’t want to vote for any of her opponents.”
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.
Will Tell Stories For Food 