Lisa Goodman leaves the Minneapolis City Council after record-setting run in office

Lisa Goodman has served on the Minneapolis City Council longer than anyone in the city's history.

But after 25 years representing an area that includes much of downtown, Goodman is in her last days in office.

Her term ends Sunday. But the results of her work are sure to leave a memorable impact — just like her unapologetically brash demeanor.

Here's a sampling of changes that Goodman either spearheaded or had a heavy hand in influencing:

Those were ideas she liked.

As for those she didn't?

"When I'm on your side, I'm really on your side. Unfortunately, when I'm not, I'm really not," Goodman told City Pages in 2009, when she was at the peak of her powers as chair of the council's Development Committee — effectively the drawbridge operator for developers during a spell of downtown condo and high-rise development.

It was a position that in some respects, Goodman recalled, "made me the most powerful person in the city for a very long time."

The role helped forge allies as well as enemies for Goodman, whose personal relationships stretched deep across personal and professional lines in a context that wasn't only about the abstract urban planning, but also her pragmatic day-to-day life.

For example, the way she tells it, the first downtown Lunds & Byerlys was spawned when she floated the idea to an acquaintance who lived nearby and also yearned for a convenient grocery store — and had a key relationship with a Lund family member.

"There hadn't been a City Council member in modern history who had lived downtown before me," she said, citing that as a failure among city leaders to see what was possible beyond office workers.

Beyond downtown, Ward 7 today includes the Bryn Mawr, Kenwood and Cedar-Isles-Dean neighborhoods.

"You can't read [Goodman's] list of accomplishments and say Lisa is a realist. She's a dreamer," Council Member Jeremiah Ellison said at Goodman's final council meeting. "She believes in impossible things and she believes in her ability to get impossible things done."

The frequent political foes — Ellison on the progressive left and Goodman aligning with Mayor Jacob Frey and relative moderates — have formed a deep friendship that both describe as "unexpected," a theme of many who have worked with Goodman over the years.

Goodman knows she has a reputation for being direct, even bristly.

She said she treats others in the same way she's been treated — but is characterized differently than men with similar personalities.

"I learned very early in my career, when I was the only woman in a room dealing with land use and development issues, if I did not push back, I would be rolled over," she said. "I was always underestimated."

That posture came in handy in a number of high-stakes situations.

Former Mayor R.T. Rybak tells the story of a crucial stretch of negotiations over Target Center renovations, when City Council support, and the future of the Timberwolves, was likely but uncertain. The NBA brought in "a hard-bitten attorney from New York, who was messing it all up trying to bully us. The conversation was going nowhere."

Rybak knew where to turn: Goodman. The two came up with a winning strategy, which was basically Goodman tearing into the attorney's arguments — in just the same way she routinely did with the mayor. Rybak recalls that Goodman systematically "tore down all his arguments, one by one."

"It was classic Lisa on so many levels because she could be my best ally and my worst opponent, on the same day — or in the same sentence," Rybak said.

The NBA agreed to what the city wanted — and Rybak won Goodman's much-needed support for the project.

Raised in and around Chicago, Goodman arrived in Minneapolis in 1989 when she was 22, living with a roommate in a rented space near Loring Park. She landed a job with Paul Wellstone during his first successful bid for U.S. Senate. Later, she became executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota, an abortion-rights group with influence at the state Capitol.

She was first elected in 1997 with 54% of the vote — the narrowest margin she'd see in her seven successful campaigns.

While Goodman's highest-profile battles focused on downtown projects, she has maintained that basic constituent services were her passion, frequently noting that she responds to every email herself. "Twelve-hour days for years and years takes a lot of energy," she said.

Goodman had flirted with ending her tenure several times previously. At one point during debate over the city's support for U.S. Bank Stadium — which she unsuccessfully opposed — she tearfully questioned whether she wanted to stay in elected office.

First-time candidate Katie Cashman won November's election, defeating the more-moderate Scott Graham — Goodman's successor of choice — by 2 percentage points. Cashman will assume office Monday.

Today, Goodman expresses the bewilderment of someone who has seen the political ground shift beneath her feet.

"I started out as the most liberal person on the Minneapolis City Council, and my representation and views have not swayed in one direction or the other very far, but now I'm the most moderate," she said. "It says something about [the] city's movement to the left."

In the end, she said it was that shift, as well as the vitriol of today's political climate, that made her decide it was time.

After she refused to join the majority of her fellow council members who pledged to dismantle the Police Department following the murder of George Floyd, she said she received "25,156 emails calling me a racist. I don't want to say the other things that people called me." (Her frequently cited number varies slightly; she told Minnesota Public Radio she got 25,153 such emails.)

Amid "the blur of 2020 leading into 2021," hatred came from the left, but threats came from the right, targeting her for being Jewish.

"The threats were so frightening," she said. "I remember grabbing a bunch of pillows and mattresses and putting them under my bedroom window, so if someone threw a Molotov cocktail through my window, I could jump out my bedroom window and not die in a fire in my house."

While she's not planning to run for elected office again, and she ruled out lobbying, Goodman, 57, says she's not retiring from civic work. She plans to work on issues for which she cares deeply: women's and reproductive rights, and animals.

"I am hardworking, smart and committed to the city. I am probably going to do something that is either city-focused or in one of my areas of passion."