Ramsey County elections: Maria Isa Perez-Vega, Rebecca Noecker vie for county board seat

St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker was taken aback last year when Ramsey County pulled out of decades of planning efforts around the Riverview Corridor, a proposed streetcar or bus rapid transit line that would have traversed a reconstructed West Seventh Street. The county, to her shock, gave her and other longtime partners no notice before canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding in a Facebook post.

Noecker, a self-avowed “policy nerd,” said she quickly sprang into action, working closely with then-Mayor Melvin Carter’s administration and state leaders to see what aspects of the road rebuild and transportation plan could be salvaged, even without Ramsey County’s $730 million, which the county redistributed to other road projects.

“At a community meeting, I said we immediately need to have a plan put together within 60 days, and we put a deadline on it for accountability, because you don’t get things done unless there’s a deadline,” said Noecker, a candidate for the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners . “When the county dropped the ball, that’s one of the last straws that got me to run for this.”

State Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, who is also running for the Ramsey County Board, recalls things differently. When a sinkhole opened in front of the Burger Moe’s restaurant on West Seventh Street in St. Paul last year, she’s the one who asked the state and mayor’s office to free up funding for a $90 million road reconstruction. The city found $10 million and the state ultimately put up $13 million.

“It’s pretty interesting to see (Noecker’s campaign) take a lot of the credit for the $13 million,” said Perez-Vega, who maintains she did not hear from the council president until after her first legislative hearing on the proposal. “She did not consult with me about anything except to say ‘that’s what the mayor is supposed to do.’ I don’t agree with that at all.”

Noecker and Perez-Vega will both appear on the November ballot as they vie for the rare open seat on the county board. Early voting is already underway, and the two have appeared evenly matched in the DFL endorsement process last April and the August political primary , both of which ended in a virtual tie.

Rebecca Noecker (Courtesy of the candidate) The District 5 seat has been held since 1995 by Commissioner Rafael Ortega , the county’s longest-serving board member, who has endorsed Perez-Vega. The district, which includes some of St. Paul’s wealthiest and poorest areas, spans downtown, Highland Park, Macalester-Groveland, the West Seventh neighborhood, the West Side and Dayton’s Bluff.

Among other factors that may draw voter attention to the race, the seven-member county board has proposed an 8.25% tax levy increase for 2027. With hopes of revitalizing downtown St. Paul and propping up the county tax base, Ramsey County has proposed a $320 million “Building Stronger Together” economic-development package focused heavily on projects in downtown St. Paul, including the long-delayed Park at RiversEdge off Kellogg Boulevard.

Maria Isa Perez-Vega (Courtesy of the candidate) County commissioners are paid $107,000 per year , which would be a significant raise for both candidates. The county board sets budgets, resolutions and general policies for the Ramsey County sheriff, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, the county medical examiner, public works, social services and other county departments.

Backers talk policy, personal connection

Both women are well-known entities within St. Paul’s political circles. Critics have called Perez-Vega, a rapper and poet, more rooted than Noecker in St. Paul’s ethnic and working-class communities but lighter on specific policy proposals. In their years in office, neither candidate has found a winning combination to turn around a downtown in tumult or calm property tax increases.

Meg Duhr, who lives off West Seventh Street, said that while Perez-Vega is “sharp and passionate,” Noecker brings more concrete ideas to the table. Duhr worked with Noecker to protect or replace a group of ash trees slated for removal on St. Clair Avenue. Inspired by the experience, Noecker later led a nearly two-year planning effort to get citywide tree-replanting policies rewritten.

“Rebecca provides unparalleled constituent services in terms of listening to people and pulling every lever she can to solve problems,” said Duhr, speaking in her own capacity and not as president of the West Seventh/Fort Road Federation. “Maria was one of hundreds of reps, and she voted with her party during a DFL trifecta. That’s great, but Rebecca has had to be out in front. You’re the person everybody comes to to solve issues, and you have the least resources to solve them.”

Not all of those city policies have fully resonated with voters, Perez-Vega points out, or helped downtown St. Paul out of the doldrums of remote work and declining property values. Noecker worked intimately on efforts to launch city-driven child care subsidies under the title SPARK, but voters fearful of the impact on property taxes for limited output rejected the proposal at the ballot box in 2024, about 60% to 40%.

“We’ve been trying to be strategic, trying not to raise taxes at the local level, and that initiative would have only reached 10% of the city’s families,” Perez-Vega said.

Lowertown artist Ta-coumba Aiken called Perez-Vega “a very personable person and a very activated person” who would serve as an effective liaison between the county and state leaders. “I’ve known her since she was 13 or 14, teaching other young kids how to write music and poetry and dance over here in Lowertown,” he said. “Some of the people she was teaching then are the voting class now.”

Sage Holben, 81, a Dayton’s Bluff writer and advocate, threw her hat behind Perez-Vega after a coffee meeting last year. “She wanted to meet with me, and frankly I’d never heard of her before,” Holben recalled. “She has a knowledge about the East Side, what goes on in the street. She’s involved. She’s tied in.”

Noecker through the years

As a 17-year-old college freshman at Harvard University, Noecker once wrote an essay questioning the need for modern feminism. She would go on, within a few years, to tackle disparities firsthand, teaching at highly disadvantaged schools in Baton Rouge, La., and the slums of Pune, India, before returning to Minnesota and becoming involved with the West Side Community Organization and the St. Paul Planning Commission.

With the support of women’s groups like WomenWinning, the DFL Feminist Caucus and MN-NOW, Noecker won a seat on the St. Paul City Council in 2015, and then went on 10 years later to become president of the all-women council, shortly before a woman was elected mayor. She joined community patrols and co-hosted constitutional observer trainings during Operation Metro Surge, where she saw families targeted and groups of women responding.

“I’ve learned a lot about how the world works since the time I was 17. I guess I thought I knew everything when I was 17,” said Noecker, with a laugh. “To be the president of an all-female city council is pretty amazing.”

Two decades removed from her college days, Noecker, a ubiquitous presence downtown, has become a key emblem of female political leadership in the capital city.

So too has Perez-Vega, whose Puerto Rican roots and deep ties to St. Paul’s West Side Latino community continue to inform her music and activism. In January, while organizing food drives during Operation Metro Surge, Perez-Vega released the bilingual song “Que Se Vaya El Hielo,” which translates to “ICE Out!”

Perez-Vega through the years

When Hurricane Maria swept through Puerto Rico in 2017, Perez-Vega and her mother — a long-standing advocate for the West Side — established the Hurricane Maria Relief Fund, which shipped generators and medical equipment to the island. She’s been a youth mentor, helping children find healing through song writing after Philando Castile, a beloved St. Paul Public Schools kitchen supervisor, was shot dead by a suburban police officer during a traffic stop.

Her social critiques have been rather direct. Invited to perform downtown at the St. Paul River Balcony Festival in 2016, the musician then known simply as Maria Isa offended some in the audience with the lyrics to “Pig Roast,” a song she later explained was dedicated to Castile and victims of police brutality, and “refers to police officers who are allowed to work after killing for no reason.”

“Lives are being taken away,” the performer recited to the audience. “Those lives are given death penalties by pigs who will roast. … We’re gonna throw them a pig roast.”

The DFLer would go on to be elected a state lawmaker in 2022, two years after publicly mourning the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. Floyd had previously provided security for her hip-hop group.

Perez-Vega issues no apologies for words spoken at a difficult time in police-community relations, but she also points to her efforts to reach across the political aisle and work with individuals of all political stripes. Bipartisanship helped net $3.6 million in general obligation bonds dedicated to the state’s first Latino history museum, which organizers hope to open near Harriet Island in St. Paul.

“Folks said I’m never going to get it in a tied House,” she said. “I got told that with quite a few capital investment projects, including the $13 million for West Seventh Street. I fought extremely hard for that.”

Noecker has pointed out that the seven-member county board, much like the seven-member city council, isn’t just about allocating funding to projects in a partisan environment. It’s about working closely on constituent issues and everyday policies with a small group of nonpartisan elected officials. Three votes in one direction might be followed by three votes in the other direction in the same morning.

Noecker’s key priorities

Noecker, 42, lives on the West Side with her husband and two sons. On her campaign website, she points to the 1,175 new housing units and shelter beds created with the help of city funding during her 10 years in office, as well as $1.4 million and counting delivered to community organizations to revitalize main streets through the “Commercial Corridors” program.

In her time at the council, St. Paul has set a citywide minimum wage that is now above $16 an hour for most employers, compared to $11.41 throughout Ramsey County; added suboxone drug treatment to the city’s ambulances; and opened the city’s seasonal, 64-bed “Safe Space” shelter, a project she was very involved in advocating for downtown.

Under the heading “what Ramsey County took away,” she notes the county closed its detox center, eliminating 43 positions and services for 2,500 people annually. And she notes that after the county walked away from plans to roll out a streetcar down West Seventh Street, St. Paul and Metro Transit have since scrambled to pitch the Metro J Line, a bus rapid transit system .

Noecker notes the county operates five shelters, and all run at capacity.

“After the city of St. Paul allocated $800,000 to Ramsey County for additional supportive housing … they failed to distribute any of the money to community partners,” reads her website, as of Oct. 6. “Housing is a human right. It’s time for Ramsey County to do better.”

She noted that while the St. Paul City Council ordered the removal of the police department’s two AI-connected Flock security cameras, the Ramsey County sheriff continues to maintain 11 Flock cameras, most of them within the city limits. She’s called on the county to put $200,000 toward a “bridge” suboxone clinic at Regions Hospital, ban masked law enforcement and pass a “separation ordinance” that bars Ramsey County law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration policy.

Perez-Vega’s key priorities

Perez-Vega, 39, lives on the West Side with her young daughter. In interviews and