Mitra Jalali, president of the St. Paul City Council for the past year and at one time considered its most progressive member, announced Friday she will take a leave of absence on Feb. 5 in consideration of her “physical and mental health and wellbeing” and then transition off the council.
“I have made the difficult decision to prioritize my health and begin a transition out of City Hall,” said Jalali, in lengthy resignation letter of sorts shared on her Facebook page.
“I am following the leadership of (Olympian) Simone Biles and taking a step back, because continuing through injury is unsafe in the short term and unsustainable for the long haul,” she wrote. “It is important for me to live out the truth that powerful women of color do have limits, are not superhuman, and will not break themselves in the name of the work continuing.”
Took office in 2018
Jalali assumed office in September 2018 after winning a special election for her Ward 4 seat, which represents Hamline-Midway, St. Anthony Park, Merriam Park and parts of Macalester-Groveland and Como.
The council president, a steadfast proponent of renter protections, affordable housing and gay and immigrant rights, has been no stranger to tough political fights in the past six years, but recent months have piled on some especially difficult challenges at City Hall.
Among them, bruising questions over the city budget remain unresolved following an impasse last month between the council and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office over the property tax levy key spending items, such as police overtime. The November elections brought a second term for former U.S. President Donald Trump, a conservative Republican, and an end to the Democratic trifecta at the Minnesota State Capitol, signaling an especially uphill climb in the years ahead for urban progressives.
Other issues, such as the fate of the city’s controversial rent control ordinance and the downtown and Midway business corridors, also loom large. St. Paul voters last November approved a switch to even-year council and mayoral elections, moving the next four-year council election to 2028 to boost turnout by coinciding with that of the U.S. president. As a result, during the transition to the new schedule, the current council will serve a fifth year in office.
Jalali, after sharing her Facebook post, indicated Friday she would have no immediate further comment, but it’s likely the prospect of another four years under the Trump administration factored into her decision to resign office.
Jalali, in her Facebook post, said she had “fought the first Trump administration’s immigration policy on a local level by building dedicated capacity in our city attorney’s office and activating my relationships in the immigrant justice movement.” In the past six and a half years, she noted, she led the city’s 2020 Census initiative, “championed housing construction at all income levels,” worked for renter protections and fought for zoning reforms to support denser real estate development.
She also supported the expansion of day shelters citywide and the buildout of more than 28 miles of new bikeways.
Ward challenges
Ward 4 spans much of the Green Line light rail corridor in St. Paul, including the Midway business district. Some of those areas were hard hit by rioting following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And some sections of the ward have never fully recovered from the riots and the pandemic, troubles underscored by the shuttered CVS pharmacy at the busy intersection of Snelling and University avenues, which has sometimes drawn loiterers by the dozens.
While the Allianz Field soccer stadium sits just over the border from Ward 4, the complete loss of retail from the former Midway Shopping Center, which preceded it, has also stood out to critics as an emblem of the area’s challenges.
During the riots, “with you, I picked up glass, boarded up businesses, coordinated city responses until 4 a.m. every night, helped organize millions in public and private relief funds to the neighborhood,” she wrote.
Elected council president
Jalali was elected president by her council peers last January following the historic election of an all-women council in November 2023. The new council brought in four new faces, all under the age of 40, and all of the newcomers were self-described progressives and women of color. Jalali herself was believed to be the first Iranian-American elected to public office in Minnesota when she was elected in 2018. Her father is from Iran and her mother was adopted from South Korea.
The city council issued a joint statement Friday evening recognizing how she “championed efforts to build a more equitable St. Paul.” They said they would appoint new leadership next week and “initiate a process to appoint an interim successor for Ward 4 immediately following” her official resignation.
During her time in office, Jalali also was employed for a time by the National Iranian American Council. Prior to winning office, she worked for the U.S. House of Representatives for three years, spending most of that time as a community representative and policy aide to then-U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, who would go on to become the state’s attorney general.
Jalali had previously spent a year working for U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, and also held prior roles with Teach for America, Leadership for Educational Equity and the St. Paul Federation of Teachers. From 2008 to 2011, she taught social studies to middle school and high school students in New Orleans, Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis.
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