As a free-market conservative running for mayor in a city led squarely by members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Mike Hilborn has few illusions about the rocky path before him to the corner office at St. Paul City Hall.
His company, based on West Seventh Street, employs workers — about 60% of them previously incarcerated or in addiction recovery — to plow snow, power-wash trucks and decks, and string Christmas lights, paying them $25 per hour with benefits. To his mind, his “second chance” hiring should make him the talk of the city. Instead, he feels treated as an also-ran in St. Paul’s five-way mayor’s race, which culminates with the Nov. 4 election.
“Nobody is funding my campaign,” said Hilborn, speaking broadly. “Business leaders, they have no interest. I’m not a good candidate. You’re not a good candidate if you can’t raise money. They don’t want to put any money in, because if they do it’s going to get tracked and they’ll have their name on there for donating to a guy who wasn’t a leftist. … I’m not going to win.”
Still, “we live in a constitutional republic,” Hilborn said. “And if we let one voice dominate and take over, that’s really bad. … I’m willing to take the hit here.”
‘Stuff that sounds good that doesn’t do good’
When Hilborn ran for state office last year as a Republican in House District 65B, he drew about 23% of the vote, losing heavily to state Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, a DFLer. This time around, he has not sought the endorsement of the GOP. Relatively few of his campaign donations have originated from inside the city. He’s mostly hit up friends and family living elsewhere.
And yet he’s shown up for mayoral forum after mayoral forum, urging residents to embrace a platform that would block many of the mayor’s socially conscious initiatives, like $50 college savings accounts for the city’s newborns. “Fifty dollars? Really? It’s that stuff that sounds good that doesn’t do good,” said Hilborn, 62, in a phone interview.
“I’m common sense — lower taxes, lower crime and we’ve got to stop this homelessness,” he said. “The only person who is going to be able to fix St. Paul, because it’s not good financially, is a businessman or a businesswoman. … People agree with me, but they’re just not willing to do anything about it.”
Critics have said some of his own proposals sound financially unsustainable, and that the campaign promises on his website are short on details around how they’d be achieved. Early in his campaign, he promised to double St. Paul’s police force over time, while at the same time reducing property taxes by 50%. That promise led some on social media to question how the city would draw talented officers without raising pay, which likely would require increasing taxes, not cutting them.
Hilborn has since abandoned that proposal.
“I was ahead of the curve on that one,” he said. “That was stupid.”
High taxes
Undeterred, Hilborn has repeatedly pointed out the city has the highest sales tax in the state, and among the highest in the nation. Property taxes have been no less forgiving.
He points to his own experience with his commercial landlord, who raised the monthly rent this year on his company’s West Seventh Street headquarters from $17,000 to $22,000, based largely on the building’s property tax increases.
“We have to lower taxes,” said Hilborn, who has called city spending unsustainable. “Otherwise, people are going to leave. … Sometimes we’re just going to have to say no to things we’re going to have to wait on.”
Starting his own business
Hilborn, who is engaged, raised three sons to adulthood across his 40 years in St. Paul, and he said he’s fully committed to a city some of his friends have chosen to move out of. He found a job at a UPS store while an undergraduate at what was then Bethel College and stuck with the company for 17 years before starting his own business out of the garage of his Highland Park home. He now lives in a downtown condominium.
He’s criticized city leaders for not embracing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s efforts on immigrant detentions and deportations, though he’s been less supportive of “collateral arrests” of immigrants at workplaces who were not the initial intended target.
He’s labeled a five-mile bike trail proposed by the Melvin Carter administration along Summit Avenue as wasteful spending, and said he’s “not sold” on the city’s management of residential trash collection, which he said should be led entirely by the private sector.
“Government, it should keep people safe,” Hilborn said. “It should make sure there’s a level playing field for businesses, so we’re all playing by the same rules. It should do the least amount of things possible to provide those fundamentals. It should not be picking up trash. It should not be doing what the private sector does, because government is not good at things. Everything is by committee. It rarely works.”
Mike Hilborn on five key issues
Age: 62
Family: Engaged; three adult sons.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business, with minors in communications and economics from Bethel College.
On the proposed remodel of Grand Casino Arena
Hilborn said he would not oppose the mayor’s push to seek $200 million from the state for a remodel of the arena. “If we lose the Wild hockey team — it’s already dire, I can’t even imagine that,” he said in an interview. “I would find a way to make sure we retain that business, one way or another. I don’t know what to do. We’re losing too many businesses. We can’t lose that one.”
On declining downtown property values and downtown revitalization
“If we want to revitalize, first of all we have to keep residents and businesses from leaving,” said Hilborn, during a recent Coalition of Asian-American Leaders forum. “Our crime is really bad. Shoplifting, people are just going into stores, grabbing what they want and leaving, and no one is holding them accountable. And when they do get arrested, they’re right back on the street the next day. … We’ve got to lower taxes. You can’t be the most expensive place to run a business in Minnesota and expect people to open businesses there or to continue. … And then homelessness, I don’t see compassion letting people sleep in tents. Having people sleep on sidewalks doesn’t inspire people to come into our city.”
On administrative citations
Hilborn said he will vote “no” on a question on the Nov. 4 ballot that would allow the city council to institute fine schedules for ordinance violations. “That’s a hard no,” he said. “That’s horrible. … You’re already the worst place to run a business in Minnesota, and you’re going to add that to it? Are you kidding me? Is anybody thinking long-term here?”
On the St. Paul Public Schools special levy referendum
“Enough. Enough of this taxing,” said Hilborn, in an interview. “I don’t want to put all this money into bureaucrats and all the extra staff that doesn’t actually go into teaching kids. We’ve got to get down to the basics — reading, math — and not all this administrative and ideological stuff that we’re doing. It’s time to focus on efficiency.”
On housing
Hilborn has advocated for minimizing government involvement in housing by reducing regulations for homebuilders, which he predicted would help increase supply and ultimately lower home prices. “You’ve got to make it so that builders can build,” he said, during a recent forum. “This rent control has been an absolute disaster. … The free market is what’s going to make things work. Regulations are 20% to 25% the cost of a home, sometimes 30%. If you go to North Dakota, houses are $15,000 to $30,000 less per house.”
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