What appeared to be a muddled mayoral and City Council campaign in Minneapolis gave way to surprisingly clear themes in Tuesday's election. Voters embraced urbanism, diversity, generational change as they elected a new mayor and seven new members of the 13-member council.
City Council Ways and Means chair Betsy Hodges emerged with a commanding first-choice lead in an overcrowded 35-candidate mayoral field whose final results were still being derived at this writing. Her strong showing relied on a smart campaign that caught the spirit of the electorate while still hewing close to the policy trajectory set by Mayor R.T. Rybak, who is stepping down after three terms.
Hodges, 44, offered youthful vigor, gender diversity (she will be the city's second female mayor), fiscal discipline, and new approaches to improving schools and transit. As this page's endorsement editorial argued, she has shown a willingness to stand up to special interests.
She also promised to nurture the healthy regional cooperation that developed during the tenures of both Rybak and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who won an impressive 78 percent of the vote Tuesday in his bid for a third term. Hodges is a past president of the Minnesota League of Cities; Coleman supported her mayoral candidacy.
Though a DFLer, Hodges was not the favorite of the DFL machine that has long dominated city politics — and that may have been to her advantage. The party made no formal endorsement, but big labor and a number of longtime DFL luminaries lined up behind the second-place finisher in the first-choice mayoral balloting, Mark Andrew, a former Hennepin County commissioner and former DFL Party state chair. Andrew amassed the race's largest campaign war chest as well.
But big money and credentials involving the word "former" evidently did not impress city voters. Former City Council presidents Jackie Cherryhomes and Dan Cohen were also spurned, as were three incumbent council members who were denied DFL endorsement last spring — the youngest of whom is 53. Their replacements — Jacob Frey in the Third Ward, Abdi Warsame in the Sixth and Lisa Bender in the 10th — are, respectively, 32, 35 and 35. The campaigns of all three were fueled by young adult volunteers whom we hope will stay engaged in city governance.
Minneapolis voters evinced little interest in reviving the city's moribund Republican Party. Cam Winton, an unendorsed Republican who filed for mayor with the label "independent, responsible, inclusive," captured fewer than 10 percent of first-choice votes. Green Party candidates for Park Board and several City Council seats fared better. But all but one of the 10 council candidates who were declared winners Wednesday are DFLers.
The newly elected council members may lack partisan diversity, but they bring richly varied personal backgrounds that reflect the changing Minneapolis population. If leads in first-choice balloting are confirmed as second choices are sorted and tabulated, likely today, the 2014 City Council will include new members born in East Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The new member elected to the St. Paul school board Tuesday, Chue Vue, is also a Hmong immigrant with an impressive background as both a scientist and an attorney.
