This is the seat currently held by Raymond Dehn, the progressive favorite mayoral candidate back in 2017. On the ballot:
Raymond Dehn (incumbent)
Esther Agbaje (endorsed by the DFL)
Isaiah Whitmore
Lisa Neal-Delgado, a Green, will be running in the general election. (I mention this just in case you’ve seen her name and are wondering why she’s not getting discussed!)
A bunch of people have asked me why I am so concerned about Jacob Frey and developer money, I saw an online conversation involving Nekima Levy-Pounds that I wanted to talk about, and I got asked why I didn’t say more about Raymond Dehn. So whee, one. more. post.
I’m going to skip the linked list of candidates and just put my analysis below the cut.
Because various things have come out or turned up or been added to people’s websites since I first started researching the race two months ago (!) I’m doing a followup post on just the five candidates that I think might plausibly win this election.
Running (and likely to win the race) for Mayor of Minneapolis:
Raymond Dehn DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Jacob Frey DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Tom Hoch DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Betsy Hodges DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Nekima Levy-Pounds DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
You get to rank three. Analysis under the cut.
OKAY. ::cracks knuckles:: Let’s get this election-blogging-show on the road. The first set of four (edited to note: these are the first four alphabetically, I will be covering all sixteen candidates):
Troy Benjegerdes FARMER LABOR
Raymond Dehn DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Jacob Frey DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Al Flowers DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Four years ago, I suggested that when picking three candidates (out of 35) to rank, the two most basic questions are, “who here could plausibly do the job?” and “who here could plausibly win?”
Occasionally, candidates show up really mad when I say they’re not a serious candidate. Here’s how I know that you are definitely not a serious candidate for a job like “mayor” — if you have no campaign manager, no fundraising link, no way for interested people to volunteer, no one who appears to be volunteering for you, and no one who’s endorsed you. (If I can’t even figure any of that out because you have no website, then you definitely are not a serious candidate.) Even if all your ideas are perfectly sensible, if you’re not doing this fairly basic stuff, you’re not a serious candidate.
In most cases, not all their ideas are perfectly sensible. They’re a crank. Or they have no actual ideas. Or they’re running 100% on platitudes. (There are serious candidates who run 100% on platitudes, but they also have high-powered endorsements. This might seem unfair; you can take comfort from the fact that I, for one, do notice when someone’s running 100% on platitudes.)
Anyway, on to the first set of candidates!
Will Tell Stories For Food 