After a year of turmoil and upheaval, the citizens of Minneapolis will pick their next mayor on Tuesday, Nov. 2. The battle for mayor of Minneapolis is bound to be a contentious one. Incumbent Jacob Frey is running for reelection, but he faces two prominent challengers: Kate Knuth and Sheila Nezhad.
Minneapolis hasn’t put a Republican in the mayoral office since 1973. The Democratic-Farmer-Laborer Party (DFL) has a stronghold on Hennepin County, with 70% of voters going for Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election. While it may not be the most bipartisan to look only at Frey’s fellow DFL challengers, it certainly makes the most sense. The question going into this race is simple: What does Minneapolis need right now?
This is often, and incorrectly, reworded as “who” do we need now. The policies are more important than the person — though I think that’s a lesson many of us learned in 2020. Our political leaders are people. No matter who is put into office, they will make mistakes at some point. When considering who to rank as your number one (because Minneapolis is a beautiful utopia that uses ranked choice voting), it’s critical to look not just at the background of a candidate or how well spoken they are, but what change they have actually made and the concrete plans they have moving forward.
Current mayor Jacob Frey has the incumbency advantage, but his first term in office was rife with crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent summer of racial reckoning kept the administration (and its public relations department) on its toes. Despite all this, an August 2020 poll conducted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune found that Frey held onto an approval rating of 50 percent. His tumultuous first term wasn’t enough to knock him out of the running, but it also hasn’t guaranteed him reelection.
Frey’s focus for much of his original campaign and time in office was affordable housing. Candidate Kate Knuth is also honing in on this issue. In a state with remarkably brutal winters, providing residents with accessible housing is truly a matter of life or death. Frey’s website outlines his four pillars for affordable housing, including increasing pathways to housing, protecting renter’s rights, and creating more affordable housing units. He doesn’t outline how he plans to do those things. Knuth’s website sports fourteen bullet points of in-depth steps, many of which fall into one of Frey’s four categories — just with more detail. Knuth also ties in environmental and equity issues in her proposed pursuits. Our third potential candidate, Sheila Nezhad, outlines a few vision statements without actionable steps. Nezhad’s website also just screams “girlboss,” even if she’s focused on accessibility instead of gatekeeping.
While this is just a singular issue, it is representative of how the candidates would take on a term as mayor. Knuth is incredibly straightforward and in-depth, Nezhad is a big-picture thinker and Frey walks somewhere in the middle of the two. The question is, then, what do you want accomplished in Minneapolis over the next few years? What issues matter the most to you? And which candidate has the best plan to confront those exact issues?
We’ve still got time before the mayoral election, during which the candidates will likely try to differentiate themselves strongly enough to actually stand out. That’s easier said than done when they’re all part of the same party in an overwhelmingly liberal city, but I’m sure they’ll try anyway. As the race progresses, I have something to ask of you: Vote with your head, not with your heart.
Meat Eater
Aug 16, 2021 at 5:32 pm
just click your heels three times as you say Bde Maka Ska
everything will be fine
A Gopher
Jul 25, 2021 at 9:58 am
It’s really a question of the devil you know vs the devil you don’t. Everything you’ve said about Frey is absolutely true. The only thing is that he seems to have learned from his past mistakes and is at least pushing back against some of the more ridiculous city council members. Kate Knuth and Sheila Nehzad are not qualified to be mayor. Imagine someone like Lisa Bender with more control! I’m voting for Frey, but I’m not happy about it. The alternative is even worse though!
Henry Gowin
Jul 24, 2021 at 3:29 am
The only redeeming quality of Frey is that he was a welcomed replacement for Betsy Butthead, our previous mayor who screwed up the city so much that even she left town.
At the time of the last election, I was hesitant about Frey because of his underhanded dealings in city hall. Specifically, he was the kingpin of a backroom deal that gave a developer a prime piece of city land for pennies. The city staff knew that they had some prime real estate that they could leverage into a huge community benefit through an RFP process, so they surveyed downtown residents to see what ammenity the residents wanted to be included in the deal. Enter Frey. He threw out the community survey and instead inserted a requirement into the RFP for a restaurant that served breakfast (I’m not joking). As a result, only one bidder met the full requirements of the RFP because that bidder had a deal with local restauranteur Kim Bartmann (yes, the same Kim Bartmann who failed to pay her workers during the early days of the pandemic) to operate a restaurant on the ground floor. So Frey makes one of his developer friends happy, Bartmann gets a good deal on another restaurant and the only benefit to the community is another over-priced burger joint. But I voted for the idiot anyway, just to be rid of Hodges.
With Frey in the mayor’s seat, the city built some “affordable housing” units. But there is nothing affordable about them. The developers took the city for a ride. For the price that the city paid for a new “affordable unit” they could have purchased two existing units in the city and had money left over.
Then there’s the city’s purchase of the K-Mart lot on Nicollet. They rushed into the deal for no reason. They bought it cheap but they didn’t consider that once the property became municipal property, the city would lose several years of property tax revenue. And what’s there today? A taco truck and a temporary post office.
That brings us to the riots. How can a mayor allow an entire commercial zone to be burned to the ground. Think of the lost property tax revenue and the lost sales tax revenue. And then instead of bending over backwards to help the businesses reopen, the mayor dilly-dallies around trying to find a way to come out on the right side of a very bad situation. I hold Frey personally responsible for the disaster.
It’s obvious that the residents of the city want changes made in the police department. Frey knew that but he dilly-dallied around and no serious changes were made. In fact, Frey kept the same police chief. When I studied public policy, we learned that change comes from change agents. The chief is not a change agent. He is a life-long MPD employee. He knows nothing else. If we wanted the police department to stay the same, he would be the best man for the job — but we want change and he doesn’t know how to do it. Municipalities that want change, bring in a hired gun who makes the changes and then leaves. The change agent does the dirty work, makes the tough decisions and then turns it over to the nice guy to take over from there. Now we have a complete mess of a police department.
If Jacob Frey told the voters that we had to unseat Betsy Hodges because she got the city into the national news for all the wrong reasons – WTF did he do?
I don’t know anything about the two candidates opposing Frey but if they’re breathing and have a pulse, they’d have to be a better option. I’ll vote for both in no apparent order and leave the box next to Frey’s name blank. I urge everyone to do the same.
A Gopher
Jul 22, 2021 at 5:10 pm
How many times do the criminals need to bite the hand that feeds before students stop blaming cops for the increased crime? It’s like you all are in school, but nobody can do any damn critical thinking. And if this is just a tiny minority voicing this nonsense why don’t any of you speak the hell up?
Meat Eater
Jul 21, 2021 at 4:10 pm
What Minneapolis needs is one of those politicians from the 80’s who promised to thump the heads of criminals and throw them in jail, not any of these limp wristed liberals afraid they will lose the black vote if they are tough on crime.
Note that the group bringing the lawsuit because Mpls doesn’t have enough cops are all black before you respond with a stupid rebuttal.
A Gopher
Jul 21, 2021 at 3:55 pm
Sheila isn’t fit to run a thrift sale let alone the city of Minneapolis.
A Gopher
Jul 21, 2021 at 3:54 pm
They both seem immature and and unrealistic with their overly idealistic takes. Sheila is often dressed as though she is headed to 50’s cosplay with her ridiculous overdressed rat she calls a dog. Both of these candidates have bought into the defund rhetoric arguing that more police does not lead to less crime. I find this ridiculous as simply discussing defunding the police led to a massive spike in crime and the long-term social programs both candidates propose would do nothing to dissuade the current hardened criminals we have now. I would like to see a candidate that has concrete, actionable proposes that don’t require the level of social engineering that both Sheila and Kate seem to think is push button.
Emily
Jul 20, 2021 at 2:52 pm
As a member of the OutFront PAC, I had the opportunity to screen both Sheila and Kate for the OutFront endorsement. Sheila came into the screening with clear actionable facts and incredibly detailed understanding of the levers of policy in Minneapolis, and Kate brought a vague good feeling but very few details and actionable plans. The PAC unanimously ranked Sheila 1 and Kate 2. Sheila seemed much more prepared for this job than than Kate.
Ruby Levine
Jul 20, 2021 at 2:45 pm
There are many policy positions listed on Sheila Nezhad’s website under Organizational and Subcaucus Questionnaires. I’m not sure what “girlboss” means here — that her website has pink on it? Seems a little dismissive.