I wanted to get one thing straight at the start of my postelection chat with Steve Cramer, the president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council. Are you still a DFLer? I asked.
"Absolutely I am!" avowed the fellow I first met during his 10-year stint on the Minneapolis City Council, 1984-93.
Just checking, I explained. So many social-media electioneers had lately called him and his business allies by the meanest name in their political lexicon — "Republican" — that I wondered if he had taken that affiliation himself.
Not at all, he said. His politics are pretty much the same as they were 24 years ago when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in the DFL-dominated town, talking about the need for improved public safety, a more vigorous quest for jobs and a city government alliance with a strong business community to solve shared problems.
Those were DFL positions then. Cramer wants to believe they still are. But after an election in which voters agreed with a business coalition's picks in just two of its seven targeted City Council races, he's not sure how willing the city's new DFL officials will be to hear, let alone heed, the concerns of the city's employers — quite a few of whom are DFLers too, Cramer says.
The election didn't produce the "lurch to the left" at City Hall that some employers feared, Cramer said. But by his measure, the council that will take office in January "leans more to the left" than does the current one. Three comparatively business-friendly incumbents — Barb Johnson, Blong Yang and John Quincy — were defeated by more liberal challengers. That could be enough to strain the relationship between city government and Minneapolis employers.
Make that "further strain." Good feeling was already in short supply after the City Council proceeded over business objections to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 and compel employers to offer workers paid sick leave. The state Chamber of Commerce filed suit Friday over the wage increase; it did as much over the sick-leave rule last year, without success in the courts to date.
Things got worse this summer as downtown business owners complained of too little City Hall response to recurring episodes of late-night violence.
Then came the campaign, and the business community's alarm as it saw key members of an already liberal City Council being challenged from the left by hard-running candidates. Employers decided to fight back. They formed a political-action committee called Minneapolis Works and employed tactics that state business groups had used to proven effect in legislative campaigns — hard-hitting direct-mail messages.