St. Cloud mayor interviews his potential replacement for all to see

ST. CLOUD – A fun fact about Jake Anderson, one of two candidates vying to be mayor this fall, is that he’s a striking 6 feet, 8 inches tall. And he likes bar trivia.

A quirky tidbit about competitor Mike Conway is that he does a lot of canning and likes to futz around in the kitchen making homemade brats and sausage.

These aren’t the hard-hitting facts voters will base their decisions on come November. But they do offer a glimpse into the personalities of the candidates who could become the city’s next chief executive and spokesperson — and that’s what propelled the current mayor, Dave Kleis, to interview candidates and post the recordings to the city’s website.

“I haven’t seen this before,” said Sheila Ferguson, vice president of the League of Women Voters of the St. Cloud Area, of an outgoing mayor interviewing their replacements for the public to watch. “I thought that was [a] really nice way for people to be able to get information quite quickly in a five- to eight-minute interview and really get a small feel for the candidates.”

Throughout July, Kleis interviewed the six candidates running for mayor (which was whittled to Anderson and Conway in Tuesday’s primary) and 15 of the 16 candidates running for St. Cloud City Council (which voters narrowed to six finalists last week).

“I had people say, ‘How do we learn more about these candidates?’” Kleis said. “And thought, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I would ask them some questions.”

First elected in 2005, Kleis is the city’s longest-serving mayor and was re-elected while running unopposed more times than not. This spring, he announced he would not seek re-election after five terms. And only one of the three at-large members on the council filed for re-election, contributing to a windfall of candidates, the city’s largest in at least five decades.

The League typically hosts public candidate forums during election years. This September and October, the League plans to hold panels with candidates for St. Cloud mayor, City Council, school board and local Minnesota House districts, as well as a forum on Stearns County’s justice center referendum.

“If there’s one way of getting rid of misinformation, it’s to have the candidates themselves answer the questions that the people in the audience ask,” said Ralph Carr, president of the League.

Though the League holds forums in the fall, Kleis’ interviews aimed to get information out before the primary. And people responded — the click rate for the link to the videos was 10 times the rate for other city-related links.

“There are so many candidates,” Kleis said. “Having held this position for 20 years, it is extremely important that voters are well aware of the individuals before they make that decision to vote for somebody.”

Kleis said he got a lot of positive feedback from folks who watched the videos, so he plans to conduct more, at least with the mayoral candidates, before the November election. He said he’ll grill them on how they’d handle scenarios he has dealt with during his tenure. St. Cloud is one of just four cities in the state with a strong-mayor system, where the mayor acts as a chief executive and the council as a legislative body.

“It’s not a ceremonial position. It is somebody that is in charge of a $122-plus million budget and 400-some employees,” Kleis said. “And they’re the spokesperson for the city — speaking on behalf of the city and speaking on behalf of you — and that’s important, too, because it reflects on your business, where you live, where you go to work.”