ST. CLOUD — The pool of candidates vying to join the City Council here this fall is the largest it’s been in at least three decades.
St. Cloud sees largest City Council candidate pool in decades
Six people filed to fill the seat left vacant by Mayor Dave Kleis, who is not running again, and 16 people are vying for three at-large seats on the council.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
June 6, 2024 at 2:18PM
During the two-week filing period that closed Tuesday, 16 residents submitted affidavits of candidacy for three at-large council seats. An August primary will whittle the list to six who will be on the November ballot.
City Clerk Seth Kauffman estimates the candidate count could be the largest in the last half-century.
“There’s a recollection of some of the people who have been here a lot longer than I have that there was a candidate pool roughly this size around 1989,” he said. “But it is definitely the biggest in the past 25 — maybe 50 years.”
Kauffman said the high interest could be because only one incumbent is running for re-election. Council Member Carol Lewis is running for mayor; her council term is up and she can only run for one office at a time. Council President Jeff Goerger announced last month he would not run for re-election. Incumbent George Hontos is the only at-large council member running again.
Other at-large candidates are Scott Brodeen, Tami Calhoun, Patrick Crooks, Alex Cutchey, Bill Doll, Mindy Ellingson, Charlie Hobbs, Lenora Hunt, Hudda Ibrahim, Mark Johnson, Nicholas Lengyel, Emmanuel Oppong, Michael H. Peterson, Omar Abdullahi Podi and Garrett Zimmerman.
The candidate pool is more reflective of the city’s growing diversity than in recent years. From 2010 to 2020, the percentage of residents that consider themselves Hispanic or nonwhite doubled to 32%. But those changes haven’t been reflected in elected bodies, which generally skew older, whiter and more male than the community.
“When I look down the list, it’s not just one group of people coming out to do this: There’s young, old, people who are just out of college and people who are retired. It’s all over the place,” Kauffman said. “I really think that’s just a good pool to have.”
An August primary will also narrow the field of six mayoral candidates to two who will appear on the November ballot. In April, Mayor Dave Kleis announced he wouldn’t seek re-election this fall after five terms.
Kleis, 60, is the city’s longest-serving mayor. First elected in 2005, he was re-elected while running unopposed in 2008, 2012 and 2016. In the last election, he defeated challenger Steven Schiller with more than 63% of the vote.
Schiller filed to run for mayor again this election. In addition to Schiller and Lewis, mayoral candidates are Anne Buckvold, James F. Trantina III, and current City Council members Jake Anderson and Mike Conway, who are midway through their terms representing different wards in the city.
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