Change doesn’t start at City Hall.
“If I have the honor of becoming your mayor, I will depend on the people of Minneapolis to bring their best selves to governing and building our city.”
How we’ll govern
The last few years have taught many of us that how government works matters. Pandemic, police violence, civil unrest, extreme weather – these things have tested each of us as individuals and as a community. They’ve shown how we are all connected and that our government plays a unique role in keeping us all safe. Government is the only place we all have a say, and it is where we bring together resources (taxes) and use them to provide essential services that individuals can’t provide themselves.
We’ve also seen that getting government responses to emergencies and to address slower-moving challenges especially matters for those in our community who are more vulnerable – whether these vulnerabilities come from age, living situation, lack of financial resources, or systemic racism.
To earn your support, I want you to understand my values, my vision for Minneapolis and where I stand on key policies. I also want Minneapolis residents to know how I will approach governing the city and the day-to-day work of leading a city government with thousands of employees who provide essential services in our community.
On this page, I start with the basics of what a mayor does - leading and managing the city government itself. I then describe how our city governance structure is designed to work best with distributed power, which is how power increasingly works in our time. To work well, our governance system also demands a lot from people – and I ask you to participate in the work of making our city great. Together, we can act boldly and persistently to make the city we want, and the city we deserve
+ Leading and managing the city government
In running for Mayor, I am asking for you to hire me for a job that is in large part about leading and managing the city government itself.
My approach to city leadership is based on my experience as a state elected official, as a local and state appointed official, as city staff, and in working to innovate within the large bureaucracy of the University of Minnesota. They are also based on my deep study of and research on collective leadership and leadership for systems change, both of which are especially applicable in this moment in our city.
I will challenge myself and city staff to communicate where we are trying to go together and that we’re open to new approaches to how to get there. I am skilled at listening to diverse perspectives and knitting together and reflecting what I’ve heard in ways that help people make sense of the moment and our path forward.
As mayor, part of my job would be to put forward a budget proposal and work with the council and community to make sure this budget uses our collective resources in ways that reflect our values, keep people in our city safe, and continue to build a foundation for racial and economic justice and climate resilience.
My approach to budget development has six key priorities – engaging with community groups in budget development, rebuilding our city equitably as we move forward from civil unrest and pandemic, making sure our basic city services are funded and being provided in racially equitable ways, building up health-affirming approaches to public safety, making long-term infrastructure investments that make us more climate resilient, and keeping an eye on short-, medium-, and long-term financial stability for the city.
I will make sure the leadership of the city reflects the breadth of diversity in our city and that staff leadership shares our city’s deeply-held values. We need to recruit and hire effective leaders. I will take an active role in defining what our city needs from the leadership of city departments and going out to find great people for these jobs.
Relationships and communication matter in any organization, but in the distributed Minneapolis governance structure, they matter even more. I will proactively build positive relationships with the city council and city departments. I will ask my staff to do the same with council offices and city departments. These positive relationships always matter. But as we saw through 2020, these relationships matter most when we face moments of crisis.
I will communicate high expectations of city staff, asking them to work with an ethic of service and accountability. At the same time, we ask a lot of city staff, and it’s a particularly challenging time to be a public employee. I will prioritize making sure city employees have what they need to do their job serving city residents. This support includes training for working within diverse organizations and communities, resources for working with trauma-informed approaches, and being open to suggestions staff identify as needed.
Minneapolis city government can sometimes be difficult to access. We need to push back on this difficulty. Whether it is a resident experiencing homelessness, a small business needing rebuilding assistance, a property owner frustrated by waste collection, a worker being poorly-treated by employees, or someone else - I will prioritize making sure we are making city government services highly-accessible to people and responsive to needs.
Finally, the success of Minneapolis and of the state of Minnesota are completely intertwined. As mayor, I will work across levels of government, stewarding key relationships with other elected officials. I will also be a champion for making sure Minneapolis gets the resources it needs and for making sure Minnesotans understand the unique role Minneapolis plays in our state. My experience working across levels of government in Minnesota means I have a set of relationships and understanding that will be particularly useful for this work.
+ Minneapolis has a government built for how leadership and power work in our time – that’s exciting!
The debate about how Minneapolis government is structured has played out for years, and it continues to do so this year.
When I started contemplating running for mayor, I took time to think deeply about how our government is structured and what that means for mayoral leadership. I thought about not just from the perspective of how our city government structure limits the power of the mayor. Instead, what got me most excited about the job of mayor is thinking about how we can use our government to build the city we want and deserve and the role of the mayor in doing so.
The thing I realized is that though Minneapolis city government was designed decades ago, it is built to work in ways aligned with how power and leadership increasingly operate in society today.
In our society, power is distributed. It is less and less held within positions, but rather built through ideas, communication, relationships and, in real and problematic ways, through the accumulation of wealth in a small number of people. Leadership built on great ideas, strongly communicated that are enacted through trusting relationships has the power to align power and wealth for the good of all of us.
Our system of government in Minneapolis requires just this kind of leadership for a mayor to be effective. How exciting is that!
The mayor is in a unique position to communicate a positive vision of becoming a city that is great for everyone – Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant, white, young, old, – and rallying support in service of this vision. This work requires building relationships with council members, city staff, community leaders, businesses, and civil society. My vision of mayoral leadership is not just aligning city resources to build the city we deserve, but also the vast resources in Minneapolis more broadly.
I will approach the job of mayor with an understanding that leadership and power serve the people best when they come out of collaboration and collective action. Our city government structure and the time we are in requires this kind of leadership approach.
+ Governing well depends on each of us – that’s why I talk about “how we will govern”
Here’s the thing about governing in a time with more distributed power and leadership – it requires more of each of us to make it work. It takes courage to engage in our democracy with deeply-held values, an open heart, and a curious mind about how we move forward together.
If I have the honor of becoming your mayor, I will depend on the people of Minneapolis to bring their best selves to governing and building our city. Some might call this co-governance, some might call it participatory democracy, others might call it civic engagement.
Whatever you call it, it comes out of an understanding of our government not just as an entity that provides services or regulates activity. At its best, our government is also a partner in helping our community solve its problems and build a better future. Government is a unique partner because it’s the one place in our society that, by design, each of us has a say and each of us has a right to expect responsive service.
I will strive to lift up – and build new if necessary – pathways and processes for the people and communities who have been left out of public and government power for too long.
One of my favorite things about Minneapolis is that it is full of people who don’t just dream of making life better for the community, they step up to do it. The kind of government system we have in Minneapolis is a powerful force for channeling this culture and energy into remaking our city into a home where each of us belongs better. As mayor, I will ask you to step into this work. Even more, I will ask you to stay in it as we move through real challenges and into a future of deep community safety, widespread opportunity, truly multiracial democracy, and climate resilience.
+ Committing to each other and our future through “bold, persistent experimentation”
In leading the United States out of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt described the need for “bold, persistent experimentation.”
Speaking in 1932, he said the following:
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.” Franklin Roosevelt speaking at Oglethorpe University
We are in a critical moment that demands just this kind of approach to governance. Like during the Great Depression, we live in a country with a huge divide between a small number of uber-wealthy and the many who struggle for basic economic security. This is not okay, and we need to undo it.
What’s different in Minneapolis now is that we also need to reckon with racial injustice, rebuild after pandemic and civil unrest, and navigate the era of climate change. Our bold, persistent experimentation, therefore, asks even more of us than the time of the Great Depression.
We need to act together to try new ways of doing things – learning from and expanding the initiatives and projects that are already underway and working. We need to fill in gaps where we haven’t yet found things that work.
We need to boldly and persistently work to address the disparities of wealth and opportunity that fall along lines of race ensure, and build thriving small businesses while not inviting in gentrification, and make sure every resident of Minneapolis has a safe place to call home, and process the trauma of police violence and civil unrest while building public safety systems that actually keep ever person safe, and build a carbon-neutral city that is resilient to climate impacts.The thing is, none of us as individuals know how to do all the things we need to do as a city. No person – as an individual – has all the solutions that will work. As your mayor, I will not claim to have all the solutions or answers.
But together? Together we most certainly have everything we need. Together, we can build Minneapolis into the great city we need. Together we can build the thriving, racially-just, climate-resilient city we deserve.
As your mayor, I will show up every day to be our city’s champion and partner in this work. I ask you to join in.
