Former Minnesota state senator Nicole Mitchell was elected to the Woodbury City Council on Tuesday after resigning from the Minnesota Senate last year following her felony conviction for burglarizing her stepmother’s home.
According to election results from the Minnesota Secretary of State, Mitchell was one of two candidates elected to the Woodbury City Council on Tuesday. Out of more than 59,000 votes cast in the city council race, Mitchell secured the second most votes by a 101 vote margin.
However, the eligibility of the former DFL state lawmaker to serve on Woodbury’s city council appears to be in question.
In July of 2025, Mitchell resigned from her Woodbury-area Senate seat after she was found guilty of felony burglary and felony possession of burglary tools. Her conviction stemmed from a 2024 incident where Mitchell broke into her stepmother’s home in Becker County.
During her trial, Mitchell’s defense team argued that Mitchell was in the home to perform a welfare check on her stepmother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The prosecution argued that Mitchell was there to steal items belonging to her late father.
After her felony conviction, Mitchell resigned and was sentenced to six months in jail and five years of supervised probation. According to her sentencing order, Mitchell was ordered to report to jail in October of 2025. She was released from jail in January.
Mitchell is currently appealing her case before the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
In June, Alpha News first reported Mitchell was planning a campaign for city council. Now, with her election victory, Mitchell is scheduled to take office in January, but there is still a question about how her conviction and probation status affect her eligibility to serve.
On Friday afternoon, former Republican state lawmaker Kelly Fenton, who represented Woodbury in the Minnesota House of Representatives, publicly questioned whether Mitchell was eligible to serve on the city council in a social media post.
“According to MN Dept of Corrections, a person still on probation for a felony CAN’T hold public office. Does this mean that [Mitchell] can’t be sworn in? Who would rule on this? She’s appealed, but still on probation. Woodbury voters deserve transparency,” Fenton said.
On its website, the Minnesota Department of Corrections says, “If you are convicted of a felony you lose the right to hold public office until court-ordered discharge from probation or the end of your sentence.”
Mitchell is no longer in jail, but court records say her supervised probation term began on Sept. 23, 2025, and runs until Sept. 23, 2030.
On Friday afternoon, Alpha News contacted the City of Woodbury and Mitchell to ask about Mitchell’s eligibility to be a city council member. Mitchell did not respond prior to publication. Meanwhile, a Woodbury spokesperson said the city would provide a response next week.
Prosecutor slams Mitchell after she appears to say felony charges were political
After her election on Tuesday, Mitchell appeared on a WCCO radio show on Thursday in which she discussed her election and her burglary conviction.
Mitchell told radio host Jason DeRusha that she has “always served my community” and “service has always been in my heart.” She noted that “a couple people kinda talked to me” when a position became open on the city council.
She said a turning point in her decision to reenter public life was when she was unanimously elected president of her child’s parent-teacher organization after no one stepped up to run.
“It made me realize that people who know me see me as more than one thing that happened in my life, and still wanted me to help the community, and so that’s kind of what got that ball rolling, and yes I had tremendous support from the community,” she said.
However, Mitchell pushed back against her felony conviction, telling DeRusha, “I’ve never seen a family situation that would normally be handled as a misdemeanor, handled as the highest possible felony charge.”
She did acknowledge some wrongdoing related to her burglary, but also appeared to say that there were political motivations behind her felony charges.
“I didn’t handle this right, I do deserve something, but we shouldn’t be making the [criminal] charge this high because of politics and differences of politics,” she said. “So I think there was a combination of failures on a lot of ends.”
In a statement to Alpha News, Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald, who prosecuted the felony case against Mitchell, slammed Mitchell’s remarks.
“These comments are nothing more than sour grapes from a convicted felon,” McDonald said. “I hold a nonpartisan office and there is no place for politics in criminal prosecution. The notion that politics were a motivating factor against Nicole Mitchell are both misplaced and insulting.”
McDonald continued, “Nicole Mitchell broke into someone’s home in the middle of the night dressed in all black. She was properly charged and enjoyed all procedural safeguards afforded to a criminal defendant. She exercised her right to public trial in front of a jury of her peers. A Becker County jury listened to her purported justification for her actions and soundly rejected it. She exercised her right to a trial and was readily convicted. The verdicts speak for themselves.”
“Nicole Mitchell continues to demonstrate her inability to accept responsibility for her actions and her comments show why she is unfit to hold any public office,” McDonald concluded.
Mitchell believes media portrayal of burglary was inaccurate
During her interview with DeRusha, Mitchell said she would not go into details about her case, citing the ongoing appeal. However, she did say certain elements related to the burglary case were not portrayed accurately by the media in her opinion.
Additionally, she declined to say whether she should have resigned from the Senate after she was first charged in 2024, but she did tell DeRusha that “there were a lot of things that were presented that weren’t accurate and I felt like I wanted to be able to defend myself before people made a decision as to whether or not I should resign.”
She also said her appeal involves evidence that was excluded.
Mitchell ended her radio appearance by expressing her gratitude to the people of Woodbury, saying, “I’m thankful for their trust. I’m thankful that they looked at my lifetime of service, and that they know I will get in there and really try and help the people of the city.”
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
