Tag Archives: Soren Stevenson

Election 2025: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 8

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Two years ago, Soren Stevenson lost to incumbent Andrea Jenkins by 38 votes. This year Andrea Jenkins did not run for re-election; it’s an open seat. On the ballot:

Soren Stevenson (DFL-endorsed)
Josh Bassais (DFL)
Philip Galberth (Independent)
Bob Sullentrop (Republican)

Bob Sullentrop (Republican)

Bob is a local Republican who has run for a bunch of stuff, including Park Board (2017), Ward 8 City Council (2021), Ward 8 City Council again (2023), and Minnesota House 62B (2024). In 2024 I e-mailed all the people running as Republicans to ask who they thought won the 2020 Presidential Election and Bob was among the large majority who simply did not respond to my e-mail. In 2023 his campaign site talked about his hatred of bike lanes; this year he mostly talks about how much he hates the DSA. (“It is Bob’s belief that Democratic Socialists are extremely radical Democrats and at least some of them are indistinguishable from communists.”) I would not rank Bob.

Philip Galberth (Independent)

Philip appears to have no information online at all (no website, no social media) other than possibly a LinkedIn. Seriously, why do people do this. It costs $250 to file! With that money, you could go buy 50 chocolate croissants from Street Wheat, eat five, and hand out the other 45 to everyone else waiting in line and it would almost certainly bring you more joy than being on a ballot for a job you don’t actually seem to want enough to even bother setting up a website.

I sent him an e-mail asking if he had a website or any information he wanted to share about himself. He said he graduated from Washburn and owns a home. “The other candidates have released visions on how they want to reshape the city in their image. I prefer to have the voters tell me how they want their city to work. The city council should work for them and not tell them how the city should function. ‘Represent not rule,’ as they say.”

He went on to say that the questionnaires asked him questions about public safety, climate, and affordable housing, which are not concerns expressed by the people he’s talked to, who ask about plowing, street lights, pot holes, plastic bollards, the cost of trash disposal if HERC is shut down, and park maintenance. He finished with “As your potential representative on the council, what could I do for you?” If anyone in Ward 8 wants to e-mail him their policy questions, his address is listed on his campaign filing. FYI, his e-mail to me arrived looking like it had been redacted by the FBI or something, I don’t know what he did with his formatting but in order to read it I had to copy & paste without formatting, basically. You may need to do the same. (I do not recommend ranking him.)

Josh Bassais (DFL)

Josh Bassais is a good illustration of why I pay so much more attention to endorsements and questionnaires than what you say on your website. His website is mostly pretty inoffensive other than being difficult to read (light-blue-text on white background), he emphasizes public safety that doesn’t center police and so on. However, he’s endorsed by All of Mpls/We Love Mpls/Thrive Mpls (centrist groups heavily funded by suburban landlords, and you can get more details in my Ward 2 post) and the more I dug the more weird nastiness and hypocrisy I found:

  • He’s endorsed by all my least favorite City Council reps, my least favorite former mayor (Sharon Sayles-Belton), an organization of realtors, and NOT the union he apparently used to work for (LiUNA, which endorsed Soren.)
  • His campaign manager is Julius Hernandez, who previously managed campaigns for Republican-pretending-to-be-a-Democrat Victor Martinez and has worked for actual straight up Republicans.
  • He got called out at the the DFL convention for trying to talk up his support for renter protections despite saying on his We Heart Mpls questionnaire that he did not support any additional protections for renters. (Listening to that answer he’s pretty carefully dancing around the idea of additional protections — he talks about enforcing existing protections and how he would support a “tenant’s union” — while trying to use rhetoric to sound more left-wing than he is, like talking about “standing in solidarity” and “pounding the table.” Trying to use left-wing rhetoric to describe centrist positions strikes me as a bad sign, like you’re both a centrist and you’re trying to hide it from people because you know the people you’re trying to convince to vote for you won’t like your actual positions.)
  • Asked “bike lanes: love ’em or leave ’em” in the short-answers section of a forum he responded, “In July and August I love them, but otherwise … it depends.” I want to call out two things about that response. First, the idea that July and August are the best months for biking is just weird; I think of June and September as our perfect biking months, sunny and pleasant and not excessively hot. The second thing, though, is that this is a response that appears to centers his take on bike lanes on his personal experiences with biking. I don’t bike much but I want there to be safe, well-maintained, pleasant bike lanes and biking infrastructure throughout the metro because many other people bike. Some of them year round, in fact. I love bike lanes because they keep other people safe, and that’s a good enough reason to love bike lanes. Year round!
  • His website talks a lot about affordable housing, but has nothing on there about homelessness. On his We Heart Mpls questionnaire he says his solution to encampments is to “Address the root cause, drug addiction and mental health,” with zero details on how exactly he wants to address drug addiction and mental health. He did not respond to the Neighbors for More Neighbors questionnaire (Soren did.) My expectation, if he were elected, is that he would continue the Frey policy of periodically clearing encampments in an attempt to harass unhoused people into moving them out of sight, while making noise about root causes and doing absolutely nothing to make addiction treatment and mental health treatment more available to those who need and want them.
  • His website puts accountability up front when talking about policing. His responses to the We Heart Mpls questionnaire tell a different story; that questionnaire asks directly whether you feel that the city’s more pressing issue currently is staffing levels or police accountability, and he responses that it was staffing levels. (Hey, fun fact: the police officer who shot Soren Stevenson in the face with a rubber bullet at close range while Soren was peacefully protesting was not disciplined in any way and still works for MPD.)

Anyway — I think Josh Bassais is an empty suit who’s pals with a bunch of people I deeply dislike, and I think he would be a rubber stamp for Frey. I would not rank him.

Soren Stevenson (DFL-endorsed)

I liked Soren Stevenson two years ago and was planning to doorknock for him; I wound up not going out that day because my husband came down with COVID and I didn’t want to risk exposing other people. Anyway, I’m sorry, clearly if I had gone out I’d have found you 38 more votes.

Soren Stevenson had an eye shot out by the Minneapolis Police during a protest after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd; on police accountability specifically, I trust him a lot. He’s worked as a lobbyist for the Minnesota Justice Coalition and doing street outreach for Agate Housing and Services. One thing that struck me was that his ideas on homelessness include dedicated shelter beds for trans and gender-nonconforming people; I wonder if his awareness around this specific issue is partly from working with people for whom shelters are just not safe.

Soren is someone who has walked the walk in a whole lot of extremely tangible ways and honestly, working in street outreach is a hell of a background for someone who wants to do useful policy work on homelessness. (I have a friend who did street outreach and then lobbying — he’s now retired — and he was, for decades, someone with a long list of useful and practical ideas for addressing unsheltered homelessness.)

I would absolutely vote for Soren, and I am really excited to see him on the Minneapolis City Council.

I have a new book coming out next June! This one is not YA; it’s a near-future thriller about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on site to deliver babies. You can pre-order it right now if you want.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people who want to reward all my hard work to donate to fundraisers. This year I’m fundraising for YouthLink. YouthLink is a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps youth (ages 16-24) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (Here’s their website.) I have seen some of the work they do and been really impressed. (An early donor to the fundraiser added a comment: “YouthLink was incredible instrumental in my assistance of a friend to escape a bad family situation in Florida with little more than a computer and a state ID. Thanks to YouthLink and their knowledge of resources my friend was able to get a mailing address (which was essential in getting a debit card and formal identification documents), healthcare, hot meals, an internship at a local company, and even furniture for their new apartment.” — That is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about!)

I set up a fundraiser with a specific goal mainly because seeing the money raised helps motivate me. (Having external motivation helps! This is a lot of work.)

Elections 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 8

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Here’s who’s on the ballot:

Andrea Jenkins
Soren Stevenson
Bob Sullentrop
Terry White

Andrea Jenkins has been elected twice before, and this year, weirdly enough, is the first time she’s had meaningful opposition. (Bob Sullentrop ran against her last time. In 2017, when she was first elected, she wasn’t even opposed for endorsement, and her opponents on the ballot were all flakes. Yes, that includes Terry White, who’s running against her again this year.)

Let me quickly touch on Bob and Terry before I get into the real race, which is between Andrea and Soren.

Bob Sullentrop

Bob Sullentrop is a surly Republican who not only hates bike lanes, he actively wants to prioritize car convenience over really basic pedestrian safety: “Another issue that Bob is concerned about is the proliferation of bicycle lanes in the city, along with lower speed limits for cars and timing of signal lights such that motorists are stopped at almost every controlled intersection and in some cases forced to wait there for several minutes until given a green light.” Bob, you are not more important just because you’re driving a car, and your desire to speed through Minneapolis is not a higher priority than the desire of people moving through the city on foot to cross streets without being run over. During the Ward 8 forum he also talked repeatedly about “getting rid of” homeless people. Don’t vote for this guy.

Terry White

Terry White ran back in 2017 and it’s sort of hilarious to compare his stances then to his stances now. In 2017, he was running as a Green, a big fan of the city’s climate action plan and the Complete Streets policy, and talked about prioritizing transportation for pedestrians, bikers, and transit over cars. In 2023 he wants to defend the importance of parking spots and thinks that bike infrastructure is a waste of money. His housing takes aren’t terrible, but I am not impressed by him. Also, even if you think he’s awesome and want to list him first, it’s going to come down to Andrea vs. Soren, so you’ll want to pick a backup.

Andrea Jenkins

“Why don’t people like Andrea Jenkins? She sounds so cool.” –a friend of mine from another state, who mostly just knows that Andrea is a Black trans woman who’s also a poet and artist as well as serving on the Minneapolis City Council. On paper, she sounds amazingly cool, and one of my questions that I tried to really examine while researching this race was, are people harder on her because she’s Black and trans?

I do think she gets more abuse because she’s a Black woman (as does LaTrisha Vetaw, for that matter) — if you look up strong Black woman trope you’ll find a lot of discussion of the problem where Black women are expected to show emotional strength even in the face of really unreasonable and upsetting stuff, and yeah, I have seen people complain about Andrea Jenkins responding to physical intimidation with anything other than smiling courtesy (while also not subjecting Emily Koski, Lisa Goodman, or Linea Palmisano to either the same abuse or the same scrutiny).

But there’s a difference between “abuse that a city-level elected official shouldn’t have to expect as part of the job” and “having people vigorously object to your decisions in office” and that second one, no, I don’t think people are harder on her — I think that if anything, she got a lot of extra benefit of the doubt. She represents a very progressive ward and has not represented them in a way that reflects what her constituents have demonstrated that they want. On the City Council, there’s a progressive faction (Chavez, Chughtai, Wonsley, Payne, Ellison) and a centrist faction (Koski, Palmisano, Rainville, Vetaw, Goodman, and obviously the mayor); Johnson, Osman, and Jenkins have been the swing votes. You can see a visual illustration of where everyone swung on the divided votes here — Jenkins is in fact the most conservative of the swing votes. Ward 8 passed rent control by a margin of 61%-39%. And yet, rent control failed to move forward this session because it got brought to a vote on Eid. I don’t think this was a conspiracy (the date of Eid is not as predictable as you’d think) but Andrea Jenkins’s response was deeply unsatisfying. She is Council President and the idea that her hands were just tied and the vote had to go forward is patently absurd. At the time, she said that someone had to make a proposal to delay it and no one did; I’m sorry, I cannot even begin to list the number of DFL meetings I’ve been at where the person running the meeting has said, “I would like to entertain a motion to [do a thing the chair thinks ought to happen]” and gotten an immediate chorus of “so moved.” She was running the meeting. If she’d wanted to delay the vote, there were lots of options at her disposal.

When I looked back for people’s past frustrations (by searching Twitter) I found a good illustration of Andrea at her absolute worst from August of this year. After police shot Black motorist Ricky Cobb II, Andrea sent out an e-mail that (a) misspelled his name and (b) had a fundraising link at the bottom. This really does kind of sum up the frustrations I see with Andrea: she wants credit for symbolic gestures while siding with the centrists on the actual tangible stuff, like when she approved the police contract with no progress on accountability or transparency, or when she voted against a proposal to make the police oversight board entirely citizens rather than a mix of citizens and police. (Worth noting — she’s better than, say, Linea, who picked the “better for the cops, who cares about accountability” option with every single vote. But she was the deciding vote on the amendment in question, which you’ll find on page 10 of the linked PDF.)

Soren Stevenson

Soren Stevenson had an eye shot out by the Minneapolis Police during a protest after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd; on police accountability specifically, I trust him a lot. He’s worked for the North Country Cooperative Foundation and as a lobbyist for the Minnesota Justice Coalition.

As I was starting work on this post (weeks ago now) part of what sidetracked me was the Hamas attack on Israel. I do not usually discuss Israel or anything Israel-adjacent if I can possibly avoid it. (I mean, honestly: no one with decision-making power on anything remotely related to Middle East policy cares what I think.) But I was really upset by the statement released by the Twin Cities DSA at the time, and on October 11th I contacted Soren (and the other DSA-endorsed candidates) to see if they had a comment. Soren got back to me in under a half hour with the following:

I condemn cruelty and violence against civilians in all its forms. The acts of Hamas against civilians are horrifying and unacceptable. The decades of violent oppression against Palestinian civilians and the cutting off of food and water to Gaza are also horrifying and unacceptable. I am committed to fighting antisemitism and cruelty in all its forms and in every arena in which I have authority. 

I am running for the Minneapolis City Council in no small part to address the cruelty that our City is responsible for by failing to hold violent, racist police accountable and through the City’s treatment of our unsheltered neighbors. It is cruel that we allow the police federation to continue to set the terms of our contract with them at the expense of our neighbors and it is cruel that we evict our unhoused neighbors throughout the city and trash their belongings with no serious plan to house them. At the heart of my campaign is fighting for a kinder, safer City, and I am fueled by my own personal experience and the experiences of our communities in doing so. My commitment to opposing cruelty did not waiver after the Minneapolis Police shot me for standing up for George Floyd. And it will not waiver when I am elected to City Council.

I really appreciated this response for a couple of reasons. First, because it came so very quickly. Second, because it acknowledged both that Hamas’s violence was unacceptable and that Israel’s violence towards the Palestinians for decades has been unacceptable. Third, because he succinctly identified the common thread here, which is the acceptance of cruelty as policy. Bob Sullentrop talked about “getting rid of the homeless” not in the sense of offering people housing but simply forcing people out of sight. That’s what destroying encampments is about: forcing unhoused people to find places to camp where Bob doesn’t have to look at them, doesn’t have to reckon with the fact that people are living in tents because there isn’t enough affordable housing that everyone can live indoors, doesn’t have to actually try to solve the problem. (Andrea Jenkins also voted against a proposal to require the city to confirm that shelter beds were available before clearing an encampment.)

Anyway: I like Soren, and I think Ward 8 deserves someone who’s committed to progressive policies, who will vote for police accountability and humane treatment of unhoused people. I would vote for Soren Stevenson.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students.