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 public safety structure was mainly 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 powerful Downtown Council, Chamber of Commerce, Target, Wells Fargo, and 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 surprisingly influential StarTribune newspaper).
Commercial real estate has taken a nosedive, and downtown is struggling mightily with far fewer office workers than pre-pandemic, suburbanites are supposedly afraid to visit, and the unsightly presence of unhoused folks populates various city nooks and crannies. 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.
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.
Nearly every viable candidate in Minneapolis this year considers themselves some shade of Democrat. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a schism. It’s about the people versus the powerful.
With this not being an at-large election, it is inherently more neighborhood-oriented. Downtown Minneapolis 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 moved the center of gravity from a council of 13 parochial wards, which forced power-sharing among Black neighborhoods, Somali-American, and white neighborhoods. At stake are essential debates over police resources, emergency response times, and crumbling city services — but that provincial haggling is no longer necessary. Citywide, the mayor only needs to keep the support of richer, older homeowner voters across a swath of downtown and southwest towards the leafy lakeside precincts of wards 7 and 13 to maintain power.
The council elections, on the other hand, are a series of neighborhood-based contests, more like a municipal electoral college. While the council itself has lost power, the bounds of its new role have not yet been tested, as the previous council was more aligned with the downtown agenda and unwilling to test the limits of neighborhood-based power. If a new left-oriented council majority is formed, they will likely challenge the mayor more and find the edges of their jurisdiction related to budget, police oversight, and city legislation. A neighborhood-focused council will probably also be less sympathetic to the corporations and sports franchise owners whose wealth is derived from Super Bowls, Final Fours, conventions, and filled hotel rooms.
Check back tomorrow to see the wards to watch and how it may impact the council's power come January.