2026 Election: Minnesota Senate District 65

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We talked with Robyn Gulley and Rocco, the two candidates running for Minnesota Senate District 65. Our candidate questionnaire covers priorities, local funding, fraud, housing, and more.

• More: See our full voter’s guide for information on other local races.

Race profile: Minnesota senators are elected to a four-year term. District 65 represents the northern half of West St. Paul, the West Side, Downtown, Frogtown, and more. Incumbent Sandy Pappas retired, making this an open seat.

Who’s running:

• Robyn Gulley – DFL – Current West St. Paul City Council member and University of Minnesota regent, Gulley works as a labor educator and Midwest coordinator of the Doctor’s Council-SEIU.
• Rocco – GOP – Works in the private sector.

Editor’s note: Rocco missed our deadline for candidate responses, but we’re including them anyway to be helpful to voters.

Candidate Questions

We asked the candidates a series of six questions and asked them to respond in 250 words or less. The questions cover priorities, local funding, fraud, housing, immigration, and transparency around Flock cameras.

Priorities: What are your two to three top priorities as a statesenator/representative and how will you address those issues and actually accomplish something?

Robyn Gulley: The biggest issues that squeeze working-class families like mine in District 65 have been the costs of housing, health care, childcare, and college tuition. Once elected, I hope to serve on committees where I can apply my experience and background in these areas. Specifically, I support universal, single payer healthcare to lower costs and expand access to care in our state. I want to extend the North Star Promise that currently provides tuition free college to students from families making less than $80,000 per year to families making less than $150,000 per year. I also hope to make it easier for cities, counties, and our state to invest a portion of our financial reserves in affordable housing projects!

Rocco: My top three priorities are public safety and law and order, ending fraud and waste, and affordability for working families.

On safety, I will back law enforcement, demand prosecutors hold career criminals accountable, and reject policies that treat officers as the problem. I will also fight for due process when politics infects the courts.

On fraud, I will push a full state audit, stronger inspector-general authority, and real consequences when public dollars are stolen. Minnesota cannot keep raising taxes while billions leak out of programs. 

On affordability, I will oppose new tax hikes, including vehicle-tax schemes for pet projects, and fight infrastructure that makes commuting worse — including a real fix for the Lafayette Bridge bottleneck instead of more lane cuts for bike paths.

I am not a career politician. I will introduce and vote for bills that match those priorities, block bills that make the problems worse, and tell voters exactly how each vote landed.

Local funding: Education funding continues to fall short, and more burdens are being shifted to local counties. What, if anything, will you do to address these local funding gaps and unfunded mandates

Rocco: Unfunded mandates dump costs onto counties, cities, and school boards while St. Paul takes the credit. I will require a fiscal note and a funding source before new mandates pass. If the state orders it, the state should pay for it.

On education, I support sending more dollars to classrooms and parents, not bloated administration and union politics that leave too many students unable to read. I will oppose shifting pension and program costs onto local levies without voter-facing honesty.

A state audit is part of this. We cannot close funding gaps if we do not know where the money already went.

Robyn Gulley: I agree that Education funding continues to fall short and believe the main source of this “under-funding” issue lies with our Federal Government. The failure by congress to fully fund our special education programs has impacted every district in our state and country. At the Minnesota legislature, I will support efforts to address this problem by pooling more school funding at the state level rather than relying so heavily on local property taxes. The current approach results in huge funding disparities across districts. This approach leaves working class communities like West St. Paul falling further behind wealthier districts. I also believe we should streamline state priorities and focus our state tax dollars on the most pressing issues. We can use the savings to increase our local government aid and increase support for cities, counties, and school districts.

Fraud: With overwhelming bipartisan support, last session the legislature created an Office of the Inspector General to combat fraud. Is there more the state should be doing to stop fraud?

Robyn Gulley: Yes. Much of the fraud is being conducted by private entities that are contracted to provide services our state used to provide directly. The businesses engage in fraudulent behavior by, for example, billing the state for services they did not actually perform, or they shortchange the clients or workers who rely on the services themselves.

I support a top to bottom evaluation of outsourced programs and believe we should bring many services back under state control where there are stricter oversight and public controls. The public should have the ability to access information about public programs and currently we do not because the work is being performed by private entities. This makes fraud harder to detect and address. It has been said that “sunlight is the best medicine” and I believe we can address many areas of real and potential fraud through increased public control of our public services.

I also support increased funding for our Attorney General to investigate and charge those who commit fraud in Minnesota.

Rocco: Creating an Office of the Inspector General was a start. It is not enough.

Minnesota needs a full, independent audit of major spending streams, faster clawbacks, real prison time for large-scale theft of public funds, and an end to looking the other way when politically connected networks are involved. Prosecutors who will not prosecute fraud are part of the problem.

I will support expanding IG subpoena power, faster referral to criminal prosecution, and public dashboards so taxpayers can see recoveries — not press releases.

I will also oppose things that my opponent has done like increase the threshold for a city audit from 100  signatures to over 500 signatures making fraud easier to commit.

I also support an annual audit of every tax dollar and if you abuse any system you are banned from all systems and funds from Minnesota for life.

Housing: In the last several sessions, various proposals have sought housing reform with the goal of increasing affordable housing with measures that often take away local control. What, if any, housing measures will you support?

Rocco: I support more housing supply and lower costs. I do not support St. Paul stripping cities of zoning and land-use control so the same people who failed on crime and taxes can dictate every neighborhood.

I will back measures that speed lawful building, cut red tape, and protect property owners. I will oppose statewide overrides that ignore local streets, schools, and parking. Affordable housing that bankrupts cities or imports crime is not a solution.

Robyn Gulley: The biggest issue we have with the cost of housing is that we need a lot more supply to keep up with the demand. Simply put, we need more housing! I am proud to have supported the construction of hundreds of new units of affordable housing in West St. Paul. We need much more. I plan to support legislation that will make it easier for cities and counties to invest a portion of their cash reserves in affordable housing projects through AAA rated funds like the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. Such funds can build high-quality, affordable housing. By permitting the use of reserves for this purpose we can both get billions more in capital working to build housing without increasing taxes or impacting our state budget. In fact, it would allow cities and counties to get a better return on this investment than treasuries alone.

Immigration: Minnesota saw significant impacts from the increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations earlier this year, including closed businesses, students missing school, protests, and law enforcement conflicts. What was your reaction and what changes, if any, should the legislature implement to address future conflicts?

Robyn Gulley: I was heavily involved in organizing to stand up to ICE in our community. Like so many, I and my entire campaign team worked to organize rallies and deliver mutual aid to our neighbors. My husband and I raised $500,000 from across the country to help our neighbors facing potential eviction. While it is impossible for the state to fully prevent such disturbing behavior by the federal government, we should nevertheless work to pass laws limiting law enforcement access to our schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, and universities. We should provide our Governor with the power to decree a temporary eviction moratorium if needed and we need to increase the funding for our Attorney General’s office so officials like Keith Ellison have all the resources they need to go to court on behalf of the citizens of our state should anything like this happen again.

Rocco: Minnesota should not be a sanctuary state. Sanctuary policies strain housing, schools, and public services, raise costs for taxpayers, and make legal immigration harder.

ICE enforcing federal law is not the scandal. The scandal is a state that rewards illegal presence and then acts shocked when federal enforcement arrives. I support ending sanctuary policies, requiring cooperation with lawful federal requests, and putting Minnesota taxpayers first.

If we had not prevented Federal Enforcement at the courthouse, jails, and prisons then they would not have had to take to the streets.  Every death and injury by ICE is on the hands of those career politicians who refused to enforce federal law.

Protests and business closures do not repeal federal immigration law. The legislature should stop setting local government against federal officers.

Transparency: Data privacy is an increasingly important issue with concerns about Flock cameras and sharing data with the federal government. Do you support the continued use of Flock cameras in Minnesota? Why or why not?

Rocco: Public safety tools can be useful against car theft and violent crime. They are not a blank check.

I can support Flock-style cameras if Minnesota cities keep local control, publish clear retention limits, require warrants for investigative fishing, and do not quietly feed a federal or commercial database with no public rules. If the state cannot explain who sees the data, how long it is kept, and how it is audited, the cameras should not expand.

Privacy and catching criminals are both legitimate. Secret sharing is not.

Robyn Gulley: I was proud to support the removal of Flock cameras from West St. Paul and will absolutely support restrictions or an outright ban on the use of Flock cameras (or any other automated license plate reader system) in our state. Widespread state surveillance is incompatible with what it means to live in a free and democratic society.

Lightning Round

We asked candidates a series of 10 simple questions and asked them to respond briefly in 25 words or less.

1. Do you have a library card? When did you last use it?

• Robyn Gulley: Yes. Last month.
• Rocco: Yes

2. Do you support restrictions on data centers?

• Rocco: Case by case. Protect ratepayers, water, and the grid. No blank subsidies.
• Robyn Gulley: Yes!

3. Have you volunteered in your community in the past year? Where?

• Robyn Gulley: Yes. At Dorothy Day, community clean-up events and I helped organize and distribute mutual aid / rent relief to neighbors across Senate District 65.
• Rocco: Yes — Catholic Charites street and sidewalk clean up.

4. Do you support legalizing sports betting?

• Rocco: Open to regulated betting if taxes do not become another slush fund.
• Robyn Gulley: Only at the existing tribal casinos. I also support Minnesota’s restrictions on prediction markets.

5. Have you attended community events in a non-campaign capacity in the past year? Which ones?

• Robyn Gulley: Yes. I attend community events weekly. I launched my campaign a year ago so it would be difficult to describe which were explicitly non-campaign related.
• Rocco: I help youths learn to drive when parents don’t feel comfortable and I help the State Fair and church

6. Do you support the new state flag?

• Rocco: No. Restore Minnesota’s historic flag that was removed because of an Omnibus Spending Package.
• Robyn Gulley: Yes! Proudly

7. What’s your favorite local park?

• Robyn Gulley: Thompson County Park.
• Rocco: Harriet Island

8. Do you support partisan gerrymandering?

• Rocco: No. Maps should follow communities, not protect incumbents.
• Robyn Gulley: Yes, I support fair political maps. I do not believe states should change maps more than once per decade. I also support Instant Runoff Voting.

9. Who is someone that inspires you?

• Robyn Gulley: There are so many. However, if I could only choose one person, it would be Ella Baker!
• Rocco: Working parents and officers who still show up after politicians abandoned them.

10. Do you support mail-in and early voting and same-day voter registration?

• Rocco: Support legal voting. Support ID, clean rolls, and audits. Fraud has consequences.
• Robyn Gulley: Yes!

More Information

• Ballotpedia: Gulley, Rocco
• League of Women Voters Candidate Forum (Gulley arrives about 10 minutes into the forum)
• Town Square Television Candidate Forum (Rocco left after making an opening statement)

See our full local voter’s guide for information on more races and candidates.

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