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The battle lines are drawn. It's Election Day in Minneapolis. Who's side are you on? [1]

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Date: 2023-11-06  

Tomorrow is City Election Day in Minneapolis. All 13 wards are on the ballot in a first-of-its-kind election. After serving a two-year term since 2021, the city made modest revisions to the ward maps, keeping most of the same neighborhood, political, and ethnic pockets in place.

The City of Lakes has slugged it out politically since George Floyd’s murder. By most estimations, Minneapolis was the epicenter of the Defund the Police “movement,” such as it mostly wasn’t. A ballot charter referendum was defeated, which would have restructured the police department, inserting an overarching public safety umbrella above police, fire, 911, etc; to help integrate departments and encourage cross-silo communications. After what Minneapolis experienced in 2020, some government restructuring did seem to be in order. After the amendment was defeated, the Mayor adopted many of the changes unilaterally, but only by the city equivalent of executive order. The new structure was mostly just a PR front.

However, what did pass was a wholesale charter charter change granting the Mayor more executive power. Previously, the council had significant executive duties, while the Mayor was a figurehead with many keys missing on their piano. This power consolidation happens to line up with the interests of the downtown council, Chamber of Commerce, Target, Wells Fargo, US Bank, as well as the Pohlads (owner of the Twins), Wilfs (owners of the Vikings), and Glenn Taylor (owner of the Vikings and the StarTribune). As commercial real estate has taken a nosedive, and downtown is struggling mightily with far fewer officer workers than pre-pandemic, moneyed glass-towered Minneapolis interests are freaking out a bit.

The pro-business slate has spent well over $1m on behalf of their chosen seven or so council member candidates.

Some perspective. 2023 is the second in three consecutive odd-year elections (2021, 2023, and 2025) in Minneapolis. Two years ago, the city changed the entire governance structure of the city, giving significantly more power to the executive branch, and at the same time, city voters showed modest support for at least some form of rent control. This year, the council is on the ballot in thirteen standalone, isolated contests. Each campaign is unique, just as the candidates and the makeup of each neighborhood and ward are unique.

Overarching themes are emerging not just in Minneapolis but also in cities like New York, San Francisco, Portland, and my hometown of Duluth, revolving around the challenges of addiction, housing, immigration, and societal struggles. These issues are most pronounced in urban centers where people are densely concentrated. Simultaneously, central business districts are suffering due to fewer office workers, reducing profits for commercial real estate.

In this context, I’d like to propose a framework for understanding local politics in the current moment. It’s about the people versus the powerful.

With this not being an at-large election, it is inherently more neighborhood-oriented. Downtown is increasingly a substantial neighborhood in and of itself, with over 55,000 residents. But the calculus is different. Shifting power from the council to the Mayor, moving the power from a council of 13 parochial wards, and power-sharing among Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, rich and poor, about things like police resources, emergency response times, and crumbling city services — that haggling is no longer necessary. Citywide, the mayor only needs to keep the support of richer, older homeowner voters across a swatch of downtown towards the lakes and outwards Edina. The upper-middle-class baby boomers of the DFL Senior Caucus are an aggressive group of bike lane haters that has been listed among the downtown highrollers, bankrolling a second massive citywide independent expenditure campaign. Their goal is clearly to elect a pro-business slate of overtly moderate Democrats.

Check back tomorrow to see the wards to watch and how it may impact the council's power come January.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/6/2204061/-The-battle-lines-are-drawn-It-s-Election-Day-in-Minneapolis-Who-s-side-are-you-on?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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