Adam Dullinger’s politicizing moment arrived in the mail one day last spring, in the form of a letter from the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections. The lawn grass and assorted plantings at his North End home had grown too high, it said, and he had 72 hours to cut them or DSI would do it for him, at considerable cost to his wallet.

Armed with information about a state law that allows pollinator-friendly native landscaping to grow more than 8 inches tall, Dullinger appealed the order to the city’s legislative hearing officer, who saw things his way. The officer said she would recommend to the St. Paul City Council that his appeal be approved.

It didn’t help. Three days later, he came home to find the city had mowed his front lawn down to the grass nubs, pollinator plants and all. The mower had found its way into his fenced-in backyard and made short work of his milkweed, bellflower and white Dutch clover, even destroying several ankle-high tree saplings.

Alarmed, Dullinger returned to City Hall to testify before the city council — “I was like, ‘Hey, this process needs to be fixed’” — which approved his appeal, but the damage was already done. Rather than simply grumble about the episode, Dullinger took the most dramatic practical step he could think of: he filed to run for mayor.

‘I’m a quick learner’

Dullinger, 29, is the youngest and arguably most politically inexperienced of four candidates vying to challenge St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter for his seat as the mayor seeks a third term in the Nov. 4 election, which will be decided by ranked-choice ballot. The winner will serve three years due to the city’s transition to even-year elections.

Some might call Dullinger an unlikely candidate. Given his work as a mechanical engineer, he said he’s never served on his neighborhood district council or on a City Hall board like the Planning Commission or Capital Improvement Budget Committee, which are often gateways to understanding municipal processes.

“I’m a quick learner,” said Dullinger, a licensed professional engineer who helps design fire safety equipment for a company based in South St. Paul.

In mayoral forums, Dullinger, who said he bikes most everywhere he goes whenever he can, has been the most bullish in favor of expanding the city’s cycling infrastructure, especially the proposed five-mile bike path along Summit Avenue.

He calls the avenue an essential east-west connection in the city’s bike network, and has sometimes criticized fellow candidate Kaohly Her in forums for not coming down more decisively for or against the project.

“If I become mayor, I won’t be running for another office,” said Dullinger in a recent interview, in a dig at Her, who currently holds the position of state representative.

Issues

Dullinger, who grew up in a semi-rural town outside St. Cloud, recalled spending long hours biking trails that would take him far from home at a young age. The isolation and anxiety that young people feel today, he said, might have a solution as simple as building better bike paths to keep them safe cycling city streets, as well as investing in public transit and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

On some other issues, he’s still feeling things out. He recently proposed that the city use eminent domain to acquire and tear down the vacant CVS at University and Snelling avenues, which has become an eyesore property, but he’s since discovered that the building carries a $3 million valuation, which would make it a pricey purchase for the city.

In interviews and political forums, he’s stressed the need to reform DSI and have police focus on non-fatal shootings. The latter issue, which also is one of Carter’s favorite talking points, came to Dullinger’s attention when he served on a jury in a murder trial involving a man who had sought vengeance after his son was shot in the face.

The trial opened his eyes, he said, to the importance of having police get ahead of revenge shootings by thoroughly investigating non-fatal gun crimes.

“To me, that says the police department needs to be run better,” he said.

Public monopolies

Dullinger said he is not seeking political endorsements or campaign contributions, and he said he’s steered clear of involving himself with advocacy groups by design. Some have called Dullinger a single-issue candidate, overly focused on expanding the city’s bike network. He sees things differently.

“Specifically for things like utilities, I think it’s important for government to be involved in those, like trash and water. Things that have a public utility need to be run by the city, and the city needs to make sure they benefit the entire public,” Dullinger said.

“I think it would be cool if they ran internet and electricity and composting — anything that benefits from a public monopoly,” he added. “As with electricity distribution, it’s good to have a singular network. In other industries, it’s important that government stay out of the way. Beyond basic regulation, they don’t need to be involved in the nitty-gritty.”

Adam Dullinger on five key issues

Age: 29

Family: Single; no children.

Education: Bachelor of science degree from the University of Minnesota in mechanical engineering; minor in product design.

On the proposed remodel of Grand Casino Arena

Dullinger has said he’s adamantly opposed to the city proposing $200 million in local funds — $400 million total — to renovate the home of the Minnesota Wild. “$200 million over 300,000 people? That’s $600 per person,” he said. “Especially when we’re talking about cutting the budget in so many ways, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”

The Wild, he pointed out, are under contract at the arena for the next decade. “We have the leverage,” he said. “We should put the public’s interest first.”

On declining downtown property values and downtown revitalization

“I think the most important thing to do is making the city a more livable place, and to make those spaces places people actually want to spend time in,” said Dullinger, in a recent mayoral forum. “Downtown has been very built. They’ve got multiple highways that run directly through it that the city doesn’t get to control.”

“In the spaces that we can control, we need to prioritize more pedestrian spaces … and make it possible to be able to bike down there, so that way you don’t have to bring your car,” he added. “It’s the people that are the vitality of our city. … If we don’t make it so that they want to live here, then we’re lost.”

On administrative citations

A question before voters on the Nov. 4 ballot asks whether to amend the city charter to allow the city council to create administrative fine schedules for those who break city ordinances. Dullinger said he will vote “yes” because “there’s a lot of benefits,” though he acknowledged, “I haven’t dug into it too much.”

On the St. Paul Public Schools special levy referendum

Another question on the ballot asks whether to raise property taxes by $37.2 million per year, adjusted for inflation annually for 10 years, to fund the St. Paul school district. Dullinger said he will vote “yes,” though “in my ideal world, the state would take over all the (school) funding.”

He recalled growing up in a comfortable school district that frequently approved levy referendums to fund amenities like laptops, while a poorer district next door to his own voted down referendums “because they can’t afford it. That’s tragic to me.”

On housing

Dullinger said the city has focused too heavily on encouraging private developers to build affordable rental housing, and it should put more energy into encouraging homeownership through housing co-ops, condominiums and other under-explored options. He said the city could build its own public housing, including market-rate units that would subsidize affordable units.

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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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Today is Sunday, Oct. 19, the 292nd day of 2025. There are 73 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 19, 1987, the stock market crashed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6% in value (its largest daily percentage loss ever), to close at 1,738.74 on what came to be known as “Black Monday.”

Also on this date:

In 1781, British troops under Gen. Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, as the American Revolution neared its end.

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In 1914, the First Battle of Ypres began in World War I.

In 1960, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested during a sit-down protest at a segregated lunch counter in Atlanta, one of the early events of the non-violent protest movement that King was instrumental in leading during the nascent civil rights era.

In 1977, the supersonic airliner Concorde made its first landing in New York City, flying from France, in three hours and 44 minutes. The flight marked the start of regular commercial Concorde service between Paris and New York.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa during a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square. Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity global order that attends to society’s outcasts, was elevated to sainthood in 2016 by Pope Francis. She died in 1997.

In 2005, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was put on trial by the Iraqi Interim Government, accused of crimes against humanity. Captured by U.S. forces in 2003, Hussein was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in December 2006.

In 2016, in the third and final 2016 presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the election if he were to lose.

Today’s Birthdays:

Artist Peter Max is 88.
Actor John Lithgow (LIHTH’-goh) is 80.
Fox News host Steve Doocy is 69.
Singer Jennifer Holliday is 65.
Boxing Hall of Famer Evander Holyfield is 63.
Filmmaker Jon Favreau is 59.
Former first daughter Amy Carter is 58.
“South Park” co-creator Trey Parker is 56.
Comedian Chris Kattan is 55.
Filmmaker Jason Reitman is 48.
Actor Gillian Jacobs is 43.
Actor Rebecca Ferguson is 42.

With her 2023 entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Association, a best country album Grammy and an acting role in “Yellowstone” under her belt, it’s not surprising that Lainey Wilson is on her largest tour to date. Saturday night, she packed in more than 14,000 fans to St. Paul’s Grand Casino Arena.

What was surprising, though, is how easily she has transitioned into headlining such large venues. Her performance Saturday night felt like it was delivered from a seasoned pro, not someone with a single Top 10 album to her name. That record, last year’s “Whirlwind,” figured heavily in her set list.

It’s been a long time coming for the 33-year-old, who began writing songs as a teenager and landing gigs on the side as — of all things — a Hannah Montana impersonator. (She told the crowd she knew music was her calling when she was just 9 years old.) Wilson moved to Nashville in 2011 and landed a major label deal in 2018. The 2020 single “Things a Man Oughta Know” gave her the first of her six Top 10 hits, all of which received a hero’s welcome Saturday night.

Clad in a series of colorful cowgirl outfits, Wilson commanded the stage and crowd in a manner reminiscent of Carrie Underwood or even ’90s-era Shania Twain. This was a country show, so there was plenty of drinking, but the audience kept their attention focused on Wilson, who broke out an acoustic guitar for songs like “Hillbilly Hippie,” which featured an extended instrumental outro.

Wilson co-writes all of her material, which leans into ’70s country, soul and pop. She’s also not afraid to incorporate key influences into her music. She expanded “Country’s Cool Again” into a medley with Vince Gill’s “One More Last Time,” Dwight Yoakum’s “Guitars, Cadillacs” and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Fishin’ in the Dark.” Later, she played “Somewhere Over Laredo,” which interpolates the hook of the Judy Garland classic “Over the Rainbow.”

Sitting on a stool alone on the stage, she crooned “Whiskey Colored Crayon” and called it her favorite storytelling song she’s written.

Wilson boosted her profile by opening for some of the genre’s biggest acts, including both Chris Stapleton and Luke Combs at U.S. Bank Stadium. So she gave each of her own opening acts a moment to shine. Maddox Batson, a fairly ridiculous 15-year-old mini Morgan Wallen, joined her for “Good Horses” (which features Miranda Lambert on the studio version) and she later invited the duo Muscadine Bloodline on stage to play their song “Pieces” as an acoustic trio.

Given her performance, and reception, we’re likely to see her back in town sooner than later.

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