urbanMSP

Having done a fair amount of my graduate work on historical life-course trends in connection with the Minnesota Population Center, I'll say that there's a good deal of statistical evidence to back up the general principle that average household size has shrunk significantly in the last six decades; this trend by itself means that with the same number of inhabited dwellings there will be a smaller number of people. I am *not* familiar with the specific numbers for the city of Minneapolis but other than some abandoned areas in North Minneapolis it doesn't seem that formerly-inhabited places have become uninhabited so it seems a fair conclusion; I in fact have always assumed this to be the dominant factor in Minneapolis' population decline (as opposed to other cities, such as Saint Louis and Detroit). Our own exiled_antipodean may be able to provide a fuller facts-based analysis on this point, since he works more closely in this area than I do.

Yes. I know when one of my parents was growing up in the 60s in South Mpls, they had five kids in a 3 BR house. And that's after they moved across the street from a 2 BR. That was quite common on their block. Now there's probably more people like me, who have 3 BR houses but no kids.

This is fun:

http://naomikritzer.livejournal.com/275312.html

Wow, LiveJournal. That's been a while.

Strib covered a Ward 5 (Near North & industrial part of North Loop) candidate forum last night: http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/225230682.html

Candidates are:
Ian Alexander (DFL, attorney)
Brett Buckner (DFL, community organizer)
Blong Yang (DFL, attorney - came in 2nd place for Hennepin Cty Commissioner in 2012, lost to Linda Higgins)
Kale Severson (Green Party, brassica oleracea)

I have absolutely no sense of how this race is going or who has which endorsements. No DFL endorsement was made. Buckner has loaned his campaign a bunch of money...over $50,000, which came from a family inheritance. Blong has done so on a much lesser scale, because he's still kinda tapped out from the Hennepin Co. race last summer. Ian Alexander raised the most in donations, but a bunch of that was from downtown strip club & Sneaky Pete's owners/affiliates...that's kinda sketchy.

Ian is the urbanist of the bunch. Formerly a republican if that matters. His thesis on West Broadway when at the Humphrey Institute is available online. He nearly had the endorsement, but I believe due to the use of RCV they only had a few ballots and he just came up short. Buckner is an Urban Leaguer and was second. Yang and Alexander seem to have the most yard signs if that matters. I live across the street from the 5th ward so I won't be voting in this race. Whoever wins will have a large impact on the southwest corner of ward 4.

Wiki'd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapoli ... ions,_2013

Includes links to individual pages covering the Mayoral, City Council, Park Board, and BET contests. Not too shabby!

I'm no political insider or Nate Silver of Minneapolis politics, but I have been working closely on one Council race and read a TON of news, tweets, etc. and talk to a bunch of smart folks who know more than I do about this stuff. I'm going to give a brief prognosis of how I think each race is going and predict a winner.

Ward 1: Kevin Reich, obviously. I'm watching for how many "stadium protest" votes Mark Fox gets, because he isn't actually running. There's also a Pirate Party candidate, who is not a pirate, and is actually running. They really ought to change that name...it's just wide open to ridicule and misinterpretation.

Ward 2: Cam Gordon, obviously. Huh-larious that our one sitting Green Party councilperson got a challenger from the left rather than the DFL. It seems the unspoken agreement in the DFL is you don't run against Cam Gordon. No one, not one person, sought the DFL endorsement or plunked down the $20 to run against him as a DFLer. That just seems...unlikely, even from a purely statistical standpoint.

Ward 3: Likely Jacob Frey. I think he could possibly get to 50% in the first round if Hofstede does poorly, but perhaps not. There is a Green Party candidate and a libertarian in this race, making it the most balanced on the political spectrum in the city. I would imagine that Greens and libertarians/republicans will rank Jabob Frey second, on Hofstede's stadium vote alone.

Ward 4: Barb Johnson wins easily. Kris Brogan seems like a stadium protest vote, but is actually campaigning. Will Barb Johnson have enough votes on the new council to remain Council President?

Ward 5: Leans Ian Alexander. He seems like the consensus "most qualified" and got the Star Tribune endorsement, but who knows, he's supposedly a former republican. Brett Buckner and Blong Yang are both running structured campaigns and have loaned money to their campaigns. Ranked choice WILL come into play.

Ward 6: Likely Adbi Warsame. It looks like Robert Lilligren got gerrymandered out of office here. It would be pretty impressive for him to somehow eek out a victory. It doesn't seem like any of his colleagues even came to his rescue, given that the other guy got the DFL endorsement and no one wants to tick off the Somali community in such an obvious way.

Ward 7: Lisa Goodman is running unopposed, somewhat surprisingly. She seems controversial.

Ward 8: Elizabeth Glidden is running unopposed. If Betsy Hodges doesn't win the Mayoral race, I could see Glidden taking a stab at that seat in four years. She is very popular.

Ward 9: Leans Alondra Cano. She's likely the second choice of Charles Curtis and Pat Fleetham voters, over Ty Moore. Moore outraised the DFL-endorsed Cano, which is impressive, but I think a bunch of it came from Socialist-leaning folks nationwide. Ranked choice WILL be a factor.

Ward 10: Toss up. I door knock for Lisa Bender almost every day. I'm giving up sizable chunks of my free time to get her elected and I wish I could say I know she's going to win. The campaigns are in a dead heat on money, including cash on hand for the final push. Lisa has more individual donors and energetic volunteers without a doubt. The problem is that Meg's key demographic (typically older, wealthier, white home owners) show up to vote. Meg has enormous support in the Wedge, where she's lived for 30 years and is probably strong in East Harriet & ECCO as well. However, Whittier makes up nearly half of the new ward population, and Meg is not the incumbent in Whittier (redistricting). Will enough young folks, renters, immigrants, urbanists, cyclists, rooftop patio lovers and anti-stadium voters turn out to vote on Tuesday? I hope so, and I'm an optimist, so I'm going with Lisa Bender. She does have the DFL-endorsement, and the endorsement of every local DFL-er not named Mark Dayton. With Lisa and Meg being the only two candidates (Nate Griggs dropped out and has unofficially endorsed Meg Tuthill, the other is a "Pirate Party" candidate), it would have to be razor close for ranked-choice to be a factor. I hope Lisa has 50% in the first round so I can have a blast at the victory party and enjoy my day off work on Wednesday.

Ward 11: Apologies to Matt Steele, but my gut tells me John Quincy will win with over 50% in the first round. I wish I was more hopeful, and I wish the W10 race was clearly leaning Bender, because I'd be out knocking doors and dropping lit with him. I hope he runs again in 4 years. I'm really interested to see how big of a dent Matt Steele makes in this race. I think it will be much more substantial than anyone else running against a DFL-endorsed incumbent this year, that's for sure. If Matt had jumped in the race earlier, he could have possibly blocked John Quincy's DFL endorsement on the stadium vote alone. This would be a whole different ballgame if he had announced in February, rather than August. I look forward to Matt's future involvement in City affairs and truly hope he runs again. He's probably the purest urbanist and transit/transportation nerd to have ever run for City Council and has some really fantastic ideas and strong guiding principles.

Ward 12: Despite the Star Tribune's misguided and misinformed endorsement otherwise, likely Andrew Johnson wins this one. You don't go from almost capturing the DFL endorsement from a 3-term councilperson in April to losing to some Gisselman-come-lately. Andrew got in the race early and has broad support, despite his youth. He will probably experience some growing pains on the council, but will do a great job for his ward. Ranked-choice could come into play here, but Johnson has a shot at 50% first round if his early support has not withered away.

Ward 13: I have no ****ing clue. Honestly. Linea Palmisano (I think) surprised everyone by getting the DFL endorsement over Matt Perry. He seemed like the front runner pre-DFL-convention, but must've gotten complacent or just simply got out-organized. Star Tribune has endorsed Matt Perry and he obviously has a bunch of support. Ranked choice WILL be a factor in this race. Who are Missy Durant's supporters ranking second? That's going to be a big factor here. She obviously has some support, but no chance of winning. Linea Palmisano is my guess, but I am not at all confident.

Everybody's thrown their weight behind Abdi in Ward 6, but a friend of mine who worked for the DFL until recently and is now helping out where he can with campaigns is helping Robert because of the non-inclusive way Abdi has carried himself at times.

Also, I was gone this weekend but when I got home we got literature for "Abdi Addow" for Ward 6. It's just his picture with the tagline "Strong Leadership" and the campagin address is actually an apartment in my building. I think he's one of Roberts spoiler candidates, if we choose to believe that rather than a bunch of Somalis with names almost the same as Abdi Warsame chose to run all on their own. Also I got an anti-Robert mailer paid for by the Abdi campaign in the mail.

Anyway, since Rybak has made the Firefighters Union a big deal in these last few days, can anyone speak to whether we have enough firefighters or not?

Thanks for the summary, twincitizen. Makes me wish I lived in a ward where my council vote mattered, but I live on the Ward 2 side of 15th. Perhaps in 2017.

I have been told that I'm wrong about Wards 9 and 13. We shall see. Those were the hardest to call.

It's actually harder for me to predict Ward 10 since I've been so closely involved with the campaign, but the outpouring of support for Lisa Bender at all hours of the day and night is simply awe-inspiring. No one is resting on their laurels in that campaign office. Even if we blow Meg out of the water, we're giving 100% towards getting out every last vote until the polls close.

Well my polling place moved .6 miles down the street, but I made the trek and I voted.

13th Ward might be the first instance of ranked-choice voting turning a race. Perry tails Palmisano by 400 first-choice votes, but has 300 second-choice and 400 third-choice on her. Will be interesting to see how this one shakes out.

alright way to go. Ranked choice sucks imo and not sure how this furthers democracy. Perhaps by making elections more confusing?

the candidates can project the percentage of 2nd and third place votes. The gap is too great to make up.

thankfully this is a weak mayor city and Betsy hodges will govern on the margins. Lisa goodman and barb Johnson are thankfully still around to provide check and balance.

So it appears Blong Yang is ahead in Ward 5 (say what?), and Ward 13 will need multiple rounds to sort it all out. I was right about Ward 9 and all the rest. Obviously the Bender campaign was much further ahead than they led even their own volunteers to believe but it was still an amazing experience being a part of the movement. I wouldn't take back a second of it, even the 7am transit visibility shifts and all day door knocks and phone banks these past few days. I'm taking a well deserved day off tomorrow. We were this close to getting more votes than Jacob Frey over in W3, despite the massive difference in fundraising and iPhone App ridiculousness in Ward 3 versus an amazingly well organized ground campaign and outpouring of support by dozens of dedicated volunteers in Ward 10. I am still in awe of how well we did in Ward 10 and how hard every single person involved in the campaign worked. Meg never stood a chance.

In Ward 13, Matt Perry might be leading in 2nd choice votes simply because Linea led in 1st choice votes. Highly likely that most people who ranked Linea 1st ranked Matt 2nd, and vice versa. Although people who have been involved in the campaigns are very divided and probably wouldn't rank the other, I don't see the majority of voters doing that. It will come down to who Missy voters ranked 2nd.

Personally, I really hope Linea comes out on top as I have real issues with Matt's lack of integrity that he displayed on the campaign trail.

The Charter Commission raised filing fees today. $500 to file for Mayor next election.

The charter commission doesn't have the power to do anything -- they can only vote to recommend to the Council, and the Council must approve it unanimously for it to be enacted, or send it on to the voters.

True. I'd fully expect the current council to approve the changes before January.

In the news- http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/230909041.html