For many Twin Cities metro-area candidates in last week’s election, the blue wave that defined the results started last winter when federal immigration agents descended en masse into the region.

Candidates who prevailed in their bid for office listed many of the same reasons for why they decided to run: to protect their neighbors against federal agents, bring in new leadership with a sense of urgency and put forward creative ideas.

Here's what several told MPR News.

Columbia Heights mayoral race

Columbia Heights City Council President and Mayor-elect Rachel James said this year's election was personal because of what residents witnessed and experienced during the federal immigration enforcement surge.

"I saw kids in my kid's school district taken away. I was there when Liam Conejo Ramos was abducted," James said. "I've just seen the way that our community came together to protect one another. I knew that I had to continue to stand up and fight for our neighbors and protect our kids and just refuse to give in to federal occupation here."

James won the city's mayoral race with 70 percent of the vote, defeating opponent Mark Miernicki, a professional musician. She will replace current Columbia Heights Mayor Amáda Márquez Simula, who handily won her bid for retiring DFL state Rep. Sandra Feist’s seat.

James said she wants to build on the work of Márquez Simula, who openly and frequently condemned ICE, including being one of 11 suburban mayors who signed a letter calling on the agency to respect constitutional rights. This year changed the way James said she saw the role of mayor and local elected officials.

"It shifted perspective from policy and budgets to literally protecting our people in the streets, in courtrooms and with mutual aid," James said.

While James said she believes her local leaders responded well to the enforcement surge in real time, she acknowledged that there were few policies in place to guide their way. She said part of her role as mayor will be responding to unforeseen challenges as they come.

"The person who is in the seat really makes the difference," she said.

Fridley City Council

Half of Fridley’s four-member City Council will be represented by newcomers.

Emily Villanueva defeated incumbent Ward 1 City Council member Luke Cardon, who the council appointed to fill a vacancy. Liz Novotny, a realtor and former teacher, unseated incumbent Ward 3 City Council member Ann Bolkcom.

Villanueva and Novotny told MPR News the enforcement surge catalyzed their decision to run.

"Fridley was very much impacted by ICE and what we saw was that our residents and our neighbors were asking for help from our elected leaders,” Villanueva said. “And, at a time when we wanted them to show up, what we saw was that they mostly shrank away instead of leaning into direct action and creative ideas and help. The residents did not receive that.”

Villanueva said she wants Fridley to change its immigration statement to state city law enforcement would not assist federal immigration agents. She also wants to hold more robust conversations about how to protect residents without over-surveilling or over-policing them, particularly as the city and county consider the use of automated license plate readers and controversial Flock cameras.

She looks to neighboring Columbia Heights, a city that canceled its Flock contracts and opted out of the Anoka County Sheriff's Office's expansion of its drone program. Villanueva wants to see Fridley do the same, but said the City Council "has refused to take a vote" on these issues.

The Fridley City Council and mayor did pen a joint statement in March denouncing heightened federal immigration enforcement, but Villanueva said a letter isn't enough if there's no action backing it.

"Nobody's going to act perfectly,” Villanueva said. “No one knew what to do when ICE happened, but what we're asking from leaders is that they step up and try to learn in that moment and do better each time. And when that doesn't happen, then we need new leaders."

Spring Lake Park tied mayoral race

Spring Lake Park's mayoral race ended in a tie between incumbent Mayor Robert Nelson and Halyn Roth, a special education paraprofessional. Each candidate received exactly 1,401 votes.

Nelson won the seat after a tie-breaking draw. Roth requested a recount minutes later.

Nelson did not respond to a request for comment, but Roth said he was inspired to run explicitly because of what he saw his community go through when federal agents descended onto the state.

He was disappointed by what he described as the city’s lack of a response to the surge.

"Not only did they refuse to make any public statement affirming the rights of all people in Spring Lake Park, but the mayor openly welcomed ICE into the community, basically rolled out the red carpet for them," Roth said.

Roth, his husband and their son have lived in Spring Lake Park for six years. He's spent most of his career working in schools.

Watching ICE disrupt children’s learning and development spurred him to run for office.

The tied race in his city shows that local officials need to work across political lines, Roth said.

"We should govern in that way,” he said. “We should spend the next four years figuring out a way to bridge the divide within our city and making sure that we are truly listening to the people and being responsive to their needs."

Ramsey County Commission

St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker narrowly won the Ramsey County Commission District 5 seat by just 119 votes over DFL state Rep. María Isa Pérez-Vega.

Noecker has been a council member since 2016. She said she ran for the county seat because she felt the commission did not respond strongly enough to federal immigration actions over the last year. She wanted the county to say no to Flock cameras, establish a separation ordinance and ban masking by law enforcement.

"It felt like it wasn't a time for business as usual," she said of the surge. "We needed to be moving with more agility. We needed to be working better between the county and the city and we needed to be getting more done."

Noecker said she realized during her decade on City Council how much a city can do and how much it can't without a county partner.

"On the social services side of things, everything that supports people in our community — it's largely the county's responsibility — and also everything that the federal government is targeting right now," she said.

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.