There is a worm in our apple.
Minneapolis is a beautiful city, and its best asset is its people. We have neighbors who care about each other and who work hard to maintain the common good, organizing garbage cleansing, shovel the sidewalks of each other, coordinate food shares and the main community trees. This is what makes the city special, and it is something that people should not hold for granted.
But for as well as I think, the political culture of this city has been authorized to break down. With difficult choices to come, it’s a critical moment when we have to look at our values rather than abandoning more things that make this city great.
Minneapolis is like an apple, or if you want to be really cheesy about this, a mini apple. Our employees and neighborhoods are like our shiny and red exterior, the thing that makes us shine. In our hearts is a place founded by hearty and robust people and immigrants from afar to make a better life. But there is a worm in our apple, and if we are not paying attention, he will eat from the inside.
There are not many people who describe the current political climate of our city as healthy. The problems arise when you start to identify the culprits. In most of the conversations in which I am involved, one of the two factions is blamed for the city’s current political dysfunction – the progressive majority of the municipal council or the mayor and its moderate allies. (Editor’s note: I will use the term “progressive” to talk about the faction which is more on the left and “moderate” to talk about the faction which is more in place in the city, and if you cannot manage this, this part may not be for you.)
I will try to convince you that there is no one here without blame. The city has been authorized to transform into groups in war of political initiates who play in null -of -one games with each other, while the rest of us are forced to sit and look. The two main causes are the political action committees (PACS) full of money which would violate all the laws on the financing of the reasonable campaign and a system of caucus and convention which prevents anyone, but the most hardened political actors, to divide the loot of the DFL of Minneapolis before most reasonable people pay attention.
PACs and the political and industrial complex
This zero-sum policy now has a self-reinforced architecture of CAPs which not only works during electoral cycles, but also between them. After playing a pivotal role in the city’s elections in 2023, all the MPLs (the CAP which is aligned with the mayor and the moderates) and Minneapolis for the many (the CAP which are aligned with the city’s progressives) did everything in their power to demonize and destroy their rival faction – which has left very little room to compromise, work together.
It is really a new development, and deeply negative. The CAPs that operate outside of electoral cycles and spit negativity towards the opposing political “side” and continues to exist Even when the vast majority of us need people to work together is a very bad result for the whole city. This creates a new political and industrial complex where consultants gain their checks by maximizing tension, by pumping people with frightening negative information to justify the fundraising efforts that pay their invoices.
This electoral cycle, there is a new CAP to support the moderate faction, we love Minneapolis. Will they continue to manage their political operation outside of electoral cycles, working to influence public opinion at a time when we desperately need people to work together in our name, or disappear in the wind once their mission is finished? Time will tell us.
Some local media have even made its doors. The Minnesota Star Tribune was even kind enough to allow us to love Minneapolis To broadcast a free ad Complete with a call for action and a link to their website the day before the Caucus of Minneapolis DFL. Minneapolis Times Sent an email To a list to which I was added without my permission on weekends before the Caucus, containing a successful piece on one of the CAPs and a positive rotation on another. Was there a coordination involved directly with PACS? I am not sure because they will not respond to my emails on this subject.
It is the world that Mitch McConnell’s efforts to destroy the campaign financing system created, and the moderates and progressives play with Glee. The moderate side, for the record, has many more resources, but the progressives have also chosen to play this game. As far as I know, I have not yet seen a single candidate say that he will reject the CAPs and will disavow anyone who will spend money on their behalf. Until it happens, it is prudent to assume that everyone feels pretty good with the status quo.
There is a cynical voice that I can already hear answering this play, saying: “Well, it’s just like that!” But this is really not the case. The magnitude of these CAPs is something that we have never seen before. It is not lost for me that millions of dollars will be spent for the city’s elections this year, while the total budget for Minneapolis votes (the only publication which interviewed the five main candidates of the mayor before the DFL caucus) has an annual budget of almost $ 150,000.
What have we become? Do we have a city where you can only be elected mayor if you collect a million dollars for a campaign And Create a secret side on the side? It’s grotesque and ripe for corruption.
This sweet corruption creates an authorization structure which allows more scandalous behavior. Speaking of this, as a symbol of the distance of our standards, take a look at the municipal council.
A member of the council was directly involved in the food of our future scandal, where funds intended for children’s lunches have been stolen. Her Women’s non -profit organization has been closed After an investigation into their involvement, and the member of the Council himself carried out a non-profit organization which was Involved in fraud perpetrated with one of the mayor’s aid. To my knowledge, not a single politician or candidate for Minneapolis called him to resign, or even said that he should not run.
Our ethical standards have slipped, but that’s what happens when everyone’s hands are dirty.
They are also the caucus
It’s not just the CAPs that worsen things. You may not know it, but on Tuesday evening a few weeks ago, the mayor’s democratic approval was almost decided. The DFL of Minneapolis kept its caucus, where each area of the city elects its representatives from the City Party Convention. The caucus in my neighborhood ran until 11 p.m., I have a young child, so I couldn’t attend mine without incurring a really expensive invoice of a baby-sitter. Even if you are witnessing the first caucus and you are lucky to be chosen as a delegate, you are rewarded in you are sent to a gymnasium a beautiful Saturday spring where you will have to wait more than eight hours to participate in the final vote. The winner of this model Un-MEET-WAR-OF-ATTTION EXERCISE obtains the approval of the party and unlocks a lot of resources.
Most likely, all this attention, energy and resources will be devoted to a process that will not eventually approve anyone, just like the last Mayoral DFL convention in 2021, the Convention before that in 2017, and all the other congresses, but one since 1997. I will again say: the convention process, in which the mayor’s candidates people with social life, anyone who works on nights or weekends Family cannot participate, resulted in approval from the Clinton administration.
The caucus and the convention system are obsolete, it is undemocratic and must die. Each year, immediately after the Convention, a large part of people who see the process will again agree with this until we arrived at our next electoral cycle and we will refer it.
So what can you do?
With these conditions in place, is it surprising that people feel really alienated from a political system full of money, travel a process of caucus which prevents most people and with less local information resources dedicated to the revelation of the truth of what is going on? Do this wonder people who feel our city negatively feel when there is a lot of money spent to destroy our political leaders of all bands?
I have good news. You are a maximum lever point with your political leaders. They need something of you, right now, that they will no longer need you for a few years, or never. They need your vote. Oh, and whatever happens to the city’s DFL conventions, don’t forget that 90% of the city has never been able to participate in the process, and the results are not indicative.
This electoral cycle, I encourage you to ask difficult questions and reject simple answers. Do not respond to demagogues or people who want to exploit your fear to achieve their favorite political results. When the shippers have hit your mailbox and the announcements have hit your social media flow, don’t forget that you don’t get the full story. Dig more deeply.
The next mayor and the municipal council will have a really difficult task in front of them. While many things in Minneapolis move in the right direction – crime is decreasing again this year, the neighborhoods feel more alive than ever, and we will fortunately be through a lot of large construction projects at the end of this summer – we are in a few difficult years. The writing is on the wall and the budget cuts are on the way. There is no way to get around this when you have an economy that vacillates, a federal government which reduces the financing of the programs which have an impact on the left and on the right, and a budget of the city built around a city center at a time when the real estate of the city center in which our city depends on our tax plate has decreased, as in the cities from all over the cities.
The one who is elected will have to make very difficult things and make impossible choices. If demagogues win, it will be very easy to use this moment as a moment to demolish more people.
I always think that this city is a beautiful fruit, but if we do not get rid of this worm, it will not stop as long as it does not eat from the inside.
Publisher’s note: A previous version of this play poorly identified the city’s elections in 2023 as a election of the city in 2022.