A Tale of Two Cities: Reflections on the Minneapolis and St. Paul Mayoral Races

Minneapolis and St Paul are two cities.  No, not two separate cities, but two cities each within
themselves. Both are shining cities on the hill for those who are white, affluent, and live in the right neighborhood.  They are cities of concentrated poverty, racial disparities, and lack of opportunity for  people of color, the poor, and those who live in the wrong neighborhoods.  The defining issue for the 2017 Minneapolis and St Paul mayoral elections ought to be about rectifying the difference between the two cities–providing justice to all to prevent the conditions that led to the deaths of   Jamar Clark and Philando Castile, but so far that has not been the case.
Minneapolis and St. Paul are great cities with a wonderful quality of life, for some.  But both are  hugely segregated by race and income.  It was that way nearly 20 years ago when I worked for the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Race and Poverty and we documented that segregation.  Over a generation little progress has been made. They remain cities with  neighborhoods torn by concentrated poverty, race, crime, and disparate educational outcomes.  They are cities where wealth is concentrated in the urban core and in a few neighborhoods, leaving many others behind.  Mayor Hodges, and before her R.T. Rybek and before him Sharon Sayles Belton, all promised to put money into the neighborhoods, to delivery economic development for the least advantaged, and either failed or ensnared in the demands of downtown urban development.  The same is true for Chris Coleman and before him Randy Kelly and Norm Coleman.
This year, largely  the candidates are failing to talk about the other cities within Minneapolis and st Paul that have been left behind.  The candidates do not seem to run on the quality of city services such as making sure that the streets are safe,  plowed, and pot hole free, that the garbage is picked up, housing codes are enforced, or the police respond when called.   Instead they are running against Donald Trump, talking about bringing more events such as the Super Bowl or other sports events to their city, or being the greenest city in America.  All lofty goals but not what cities are about.  Or in the alternative, when they do discuss the core issues of poverty, homelessness, or city services, they fail to mention something simply–how to pay for it.  Minneapolis and St Paul have finite resources, property taxes are going up rapidly, and the traditional middle class feel squeezed that they cannot afford to stay in their homes anymore, or that they cannot buy or rent a place in the city.  Raising taxes is not the solution.
The issue for Minneapolis and St Paul is social and economic equity. Fundamentally, the defining issue for the two cities is creating economic opportunity for all.  It is making it possible for individuals, regardless of race or neighborhood, to have a decent job, a choice of where to live, a voice in where to send their children to school.  The role of the mayor is steering investment, encouraging economic development, making it possible for people to create their own businesses.  Expand the economic base for all, especially those who are left out already, and that is they way to generate the resources both to finance the city and help those who have been left behind.
Such a vision for the two cities requires several things.  Neighborhoods need to be diversified.  Concentrated poverty neighborhoods are no good for anyone.  There needs to be a mix of people, incomes, and structures in every neighborhood.  Rethinking the two cities’ comprehensive plans is one step.  Allowing in some places for more intensified or mixed development, to allow some people to  invest in their own neighborhoods will help.  Yet private investors and banks will not act on their own to finance this.  Both cities need to think of their own investments in terms of streets, sidewalks, and  other services such as code enforcement.  The cities can help foster the conditions for economic development in their various neighborhoods, but they can also do things such as provide micro-financing to help some communities and guarantee loans in some situations.  Make neighborhoods attractive for all to live and invest it.  Deconcentrating poverty is one step in making neighborhoods more opportunity-based.  Thus, both place-based and mobility strategies are needed.
But that is not enough.  Businesses or people invest where there are skilled workers.  Strategies to attract and remain college graduates and provide real training for those lacking skills too are important.  Better partnerships among the local colleges, employers, and workers to train and connect businesses to people should be on any mayoral candidate’s agenda.    Quality services, the amenities of parks, libraries, and the arts are too what candidates should be discussing.  So too should they be talking about schools.  No, mayors cannot improve schools themselves, that is not their job.  But they can provide the conditions that make it possible for children safely to go to schools, or to live in neighborhoods that support learning though the maintenance of libraries and communities centers, for example.
Finally, both cities must directly confront the discrimination that exists within their borders.  More aggressive human rights enforcement is one answer.  The tragedy of the deaths Minneapolis  and St. Paul residents Jamar Clark and Philando Castile is a story of both racism and failed economic opportunity.
I certainly do not pretend to have all the answers. Yes, I have worked as a city director of code enforcement, zoning, and planning, been housing and economic planner, consulted and trained many local governments, and taught and researched planning and urban politics and local economic development for years.  None of that means I have all the answers.  But what I do know is that a city is its people, that all neighborhoods should have opportunity, and that what the mayoral candidates in both Minneapolis and St. Paul should be talking about is how to grow the economic opportunity  for all and how they plan to pay for the visions they have.

The People v. the Plutocrats and Political Scientists

    Everyone knows that the American political system is supposed to be based on majority will.  True, but only half correct.  It is actually a political system based on majority will subject to limits to protect minority rights.  Our political system was never pure populism and it should not be.  Respect for minority rights should not be viewed as a threat to democracy; instead, as recent debates surrounding ranked choice voting (RCV) demonstrate, the danger comes from the plutocrats and political scientists, both which seem to oppose it because either of fears that it threatens their power or because of the belief that the people are not smart enough to vote this way.
    James Madison  declared in the Federalist Papers (essays written by him, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in 1787 defending the ratification of the proposed American Constitution) that "all government rests on opinion."  Ultimately the best feature of popular government is that the people rule.  It is, as the first three words of the Constitution declare, about “We the people.”  Yet while the rule of the people is the hallmark of a representative government or democracy, the worst feature too can be that the people rule.  There is an ugly strain in American politics that begins with the Salem Witch trials that run to slavery, the subjection of women, the McCarthy hearings, and Stonewall.  Fear and prejudice can do nasty things.
    Yet the genius of the American politics (to borrow a phrase from historian Daniel Boorstin) is a constitutional system that seeks to qualify majority rule to protect minority rights.  It is a complex system of checks and balances, separation of powers, competitive elections, and a Bill of Rights that is supposed to accomplish that.   This is what is known as Madisonian democracy.
    The system does not always work.  Progressive era historians such as Charles Beard in his An  Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States contended that the Constitution was  meant to support the interests of the economic elites in the country that were badly hurt by the first American constitution the Articles of Confederation.  The Constitution was written by rich property owners who supported slavery and property rights.  The minority they wished to protect from majority rule, for Beard, were the rich.  The American political system is one designed not by the people, for the people, and of the people, but one in spite of the people. The fact that 225+ years after the writing of the Constitution the profile of the leaders of this country looks much the same as those who designed it speaks perhaps to the bias against the people in American politics.  “We the people,” as former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall pointed out, excluded the majority or the people in 1787 and the history of American politics has been a struggle to give real meaning to that phrase.
    Now how does all this connect back to RCV, plutocrats, and political scientists?  There have been lots of reforms and efforts to give more power to the people.  Perhaps the greatest threat to a democracy is the economic power of the rich and corporations. Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated it well: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”  The real battle for political reform in the United States needs to begin with limiting the ability of money and economic interests to affect the political process, This is the story of campaign finance reform. 
    But there are many other worthy political reforms that too are needed such as limits on political gerrymandering and guarantees on the right to vote.  But ranked choice voting too is a worthy reform.  It is a terrific experiment to give voters more choices.  It is based on the simple idea that voters have preferences and we should be able to rank our political choices.  We may have our preferred candidate, a second choice, and maybe a third one.  RCV is supposed to address two defects in the current system we use to vote.  The first is that candidates can get elected with less than a majority of the vote–a simple plurality if it is more than a two-person race.  This has been the scenario in Minnesota with the governor–no governor has received a majority of the vote since 1994.  We have had all minority governors.  Second, the current voting system discourages citizens from voting for third-party candidates less they fear they are wasting their vote.  Thus, there is a good argument to be made that the current way we cast votes is actually counter-majoritarian and that it  discourses people from voting for their preferred candidates.  This is hardly democratic.  Other democracies around the world have experimented with alternative voting systems to address these problems, with RCV as one possible solution.
    Minneapolis’ 2009 first use of RCV was inconclusive.  It was not a great test of it because of a popular mayor.  Few of the other races were decided or seriously affected by RCV.  But 2013 is different.  The mayor’s race could have up to 8-10 candidates and running as the candidate who wants to a second choice might make sense in a crowded field.
    But now some are claiming that RCV needs to be abandoned.  These claims come from plutocrats, those who fear that RCV will change the political calculus and upend their preferences.  They claim that it is anti-democratic, or that it is biased against the poor or people of color, or that it disenfranchises some.  There is no evidence to support any of this.  In 2009 there was a lot of voter error and spoiled ballots but in the end, only one ballot in the entire election was not counted.  The problems seen then perhaps were first time learning curve issues that could be addressed with more  voter education and training.  In my study for Minneapolis on RCV, I raised some concerns but ultimately did not find evidence of discrimination and a survey of voters found that 90%+ liked RCV.  Additionally, if a voting system allows for more choice among voters and strives to produce candidates who get a majority of the vote, is this not consistent with majority rule and serving the people?  Our current election system favors high name recognition and candidates with money.  No guarantee that RCV will break these trends, but anything that works to that end would be good.
    But a second criticism is coming from some political scientists who either do not like RCV or do not understand how it works.  Their central criticism is that RCV demands too much from people. It is hard enough, they say, for people to gather enough information and make choices about one candidate, let alone many and then ranked them.  The political science literature, they say, simply says this is beyond the capacity of the average voter.
    This is an elitist argument.  True, voters are perhaps not as well informed about as many things as political scientists would like them to be, but that does not mean that the people are incapable or expressing their preferences.  Under the current voting system, for good or bad, people make choices and there is no reason to expect they cannot also do so with RCV.  They do that in other countries and who is to say citizens in these countries are smarter than Americans or voters in Minneapolis.
    Finally, some political scientists just do not seem to understand or appreciate how RCV works.  They seem to think that electing someone on a second or third round of voting (assuming no first round winner with 50% + one of the votes) is anti-democratic or that the people will not stand for perhaps a protracted count of ballots.  By now Minnesotans are used to recounts and there has been no rioting in the streets.  Conversely, electing candidates to office who may turn out to be the compromise choice of the majority of voters may in fact prove to be more democratic, majority-enhancing, and prone to encouraging voters to learn and compromise than does the current process. The current voting process seems to favor voting against candidates (instead of voting for someone), selection of extremists, or simply support for the current two major parties even though the evidence increasingly suggests that the current political alignment of them does not match with most voters preferences.
    Overall, RCV may be one tool that can give real meaning to “We the People,” favoring the people over the plutocrats and the political scientists.