The documentary Precarious State has been making headlines. It claims Minnesota—and Minneapolis especially—are failing, losing jobs, businesses, and people because of crime and political ideology. It’s a neat story, dramatic enough to grab attention. But it’s also incomplete.
Over the past few weeks, I interviewed three of the four leading candidates for Minneapolis mayor: Jacob Frey, Jazz Hampton, and Dwayne Davis. I reached out twice to Omar Fateh’s campaign but never heard back. What struck me in those conversations is what Precarious State ignores—Minneapolis still has strengths, and serious ones.
All three candidates agreed: the people are the city’s greatest treasure. Add to that world-class parks, top-tier restaurants, and a quality of life many cities envy. That doesn’t erase the problems. But it shows the narrative of pure decline is a caricature, not the full picture.
So what really threatens Minneapolis? Mayor Jacob Frey hit on what I believe is the city’s deepest problem: its broken system of government. For years, Minneapolis ran on a weak mayor model. Recently it shifted to a strong mayor system. Yet governance—how decisions are made, who is accountable, and how mayor and council work together—remains the city’s Achilles’ heel.
This matters because without clarity, nothing else works. The city faces political polarization that its governing system can’t absorb. Betsy Hodges’ election marked a generational shift in DFL politics, but the new coalitions haven’t learned to govern together. The result? Paralysis and mistrust that strangle progress.
And polarization is only one piece. Minneapolis is undergoing a rapid demographic transformation. Like many eastern cities decades ago, it is becoming more multiracial and multicultural. That is a strength—but only if leaders know how to govern amid change. Instead, racial disparities in housing, education, and criminal justice persist and deepen, threatening to split the city into two unequal halves.
This is not a new problem. More than 25 years ago, while at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Race and Poverty, I helped document how Minneapolis was already “two cities”—separate and unequal. Those disparities were easy to ignore when the city’s population of color was small. They cannot be ignored now, as Minneapolis edges toward becoming a majority-minority city.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the schools. Mayors don’t run them, but schools shape where people live. Disparities in education push families out—to suburbs, private schools, or religious institutions. And when families leave, they take their tax dollars, jobs, and civic investment with them. That exodus hollows out the city.
Housing policy makes matters worse. By restricting single-family homes, the city undermines its own middle class. Urbanologist Jane Jacobs reminded us that cities thrive on diversity—including in housing. Cities need homeowners and renters, families and singles, apartments and houses. Drive out the middle class, and you drive out taxpayers, workers, and consumers. That is a path to decline.
Businesses follow the people. Precarious State was right to note jobs leaving, but the question isn’t just who exits. The real question is: who arrives? Where are the new businesses, new jobs, new ideas? Capitalism is about creative destruction, but Minneapolis has lost its edge as an incubator of innovation.
If the city cannot attract new energy, it will stagnate. Retaining employers matters, but building an economy that draws in fresh talent is even more important. Without that, the city can’t pay for the quality of life it advertises or the promises its leaders make. This isn’t just an economic problem—it’s a political one.
Look at St. Paul. Its collapsing tax base and misguided priorities have left it unable to fund the programs it champions. Minneapolis is flirting with the same fate. The warning signs are clear: without a strong tax base and disciplined governance, lofty promises crumble into empty slogans.
Here’s the reality: Minneapolis is precarious. But not for the reasons the documentary says. It is not crime alone, nor ideology alone. It is a tangled knot of governance failures, political polarization, racial disparities, housing missteps, and economic stagnation.
And the city will not untangle these problems with slogans or scapegoats. It will only succeed with a government structure that works, one capable of cutting through division and tackling problems head-on. Minneapolis has the people and resources to thrive. What it lacks is the political will—and the governance—to make it happen.
Until it solves that, the city risks remaining what it is now: not a failed state, but a precarious one.
The system produces candidates for mayor and city council who are unqualified to serve. This year, for the first time and after voting every time I had the opportunity over five decades, I attended the both the DFL Ward 3 caucus and nominating convention for city council. I have spent a lifetime practicing law and working in and teaching governance and I have never seen such a display of incompetence. Many left unhappy or downright scornful of the process. The message and conclusions of many were clear The system and party has failed and has been coopted by narrow agenda fringe groups. I don’t support the DFA candidates, but some of the candidates that did not advance had supporters who were well organized and eloquent. I just didn’t agree with their views, but I can respect their passion and their effort to work within a broken system.
David accurately describes the changes to the charter and the theoretical shift in the roles and power between the mayor and the city council . But the challenge is to find a mayor who has the capacity, the experience, and the executive and leadership qualities necessary to bring this city forward and city council members who have the qualities necessary to meet their primary responsibilities as opposed virtue signaling and achieving their own private agendas. To those who say that these nominees are acting upon the views of their constituents, I say baloney. Some of you can’t be bothered to live in the wards that you wish to represent or continue to represent and at least one of you can’t be bothered to live in Minneapolis once you were elected. Very few people elected you and the party has disenfranchised most of your constituents.
I urge my fellow citizens to get involved, at the very least vote, and, if you can, attend local political party meetings to make sure your views are communicated.
You lead with “All three candidates agreed: the people are the city’s greatest treasure.”, thus it must be important…
Name me a city where the city’s people are not then city’s greatest treasure……
What politician would disagree with that statement?
It is unserious.
I have not watched the documentary, but have read enough to get the gist of it. And I agree with David Schultz, on all points, with these caveats:
1. I’m glad Schultz cited the city’s history as a “weak mayor” system of government. But he underplayed the significance of that. Minneapolis had, since the 1920’s, a bizarre and dysfunctional city charter. It was unlike anything in the United States of America: power held by 13 fiefdoms, and no unifying management whatsoever. The Mayor was mostly a figurehead; the City Coordinator was a ministerial position with no independent authority. I’m a retired municipal attorney, and can attest that anyone with experience in city government knew how ridiculous this, was, and knew that the city just had to be dragged into to modern world. Attempts to amend the city charter were made several times over the years, but the concepts are abstract, and it was too hard to convince people to vote for what seemed like a threatening change. Especially when the opponents painted the “strong mayor” model as creating a near-monarchy–so un-Minnesotan. When in fact, this is the model used by every large American city. (Smaller cities, including those across Minnesota, have a different model, where the mayor is really just one member of the city council; and central management is assigned to a professional city administrator or manager.)
We now operate under the standard city governance structure, but the culture of the city council has not turned on a dime. It’s still dominated by frustrated council power brokers, who have not adjusted to their role. The result is the present chaos, characterized by demonization of the mayor. I think this transcends ideology, and is separate from one’s feelings about the merits or demerits of Jacob Frey in that role. (I think he’s done as good a job as one could do, under nearly impossible circumstances). I fear it may take a generation to get past this.
2. I don’t think it’s possible to underestimated the twin crises of George Floyd and COVID. Especially COVID, which utterly transformed the function of the office, and hence the functioning of downtown. To blame the problems of downtown on ideology seems ludicrous to me, almost like blaming climate change on space lasers. All cities are grappling with this, some better than others. Some, like Chicago, are so big, that the effects are less severe. I don”t have the answers, but strongly disagree with answers that are simplistic and uninformed. David Schultz’s analysis is much more productive, in my view.
As usual, Mr. Schultz makes reasoned points. Polarization within the city’s governance is a continuing problem that is not only due to the make-up of the City Council so much as it is the failure of our “new” strong mayor to consistently lead with a vision and to learn to work with the Council to attain that vision. As a Star Tribune columnist who previously covered City Hall and the Metro commented, the mayor simply doesn’t have a long view of how to lead Minneapolis to vibrancy. He says things, he openly argues and picks fights with the Council, but as a Minneapolis resident I agree that a truly strong mayor is as effective as his skills in working with elected office-holders. For that matter, the DFL doesn’t help by continually berating the DSA and not working to develop the considerable common ground that’s there. The DFL became what it is by fusing with the Farmer-Laborites, showing that this can be done. The TV video was a pathetic disgrace. It also doesn’t help when folks like Mr. Welby dismisses the DSA as lunatics and, much more shallow and non-sensical, “communists.”
Bringing up “racial disparities” without mentioning the fact that Minneapolis is a sanctuary city that welcomes illegal immigrants, almost entirely of races claiming disparities, and not pointing out the fact that if an individual arrives penniless of their own volition, the fact that they have less assets than the citizens should not be blamed on racism. The same can be said of refugees and those in Minneapolis due to chain migration. Anyone who grew up in Minneapolis can attest to the dramatic change in population. It is high time issues are discussed with integrity rather than to fuel racial animus.
I found the doc dissatisfying for several reasons (see my review here: https://open.substack.com/pub/catchgroove/p/a-precarious-state-a-review?r=5hgtj&utm_medium=ios).
I think you and I would agree that it was not nuanced. A variation on what you said is that the doc failed to recognize that there is a genuine political spectrum in Minneapolis, ranging from pure communism on the left to a traditionally moderate GOP on the right. I believe the DSA left will not be silenced, and the right and the middle must find a way to work with it.
The takeaway from the doc is that if we could get rid of the four DSA lunatic City Council members, all would be good. My bigger concern is not the true DSA minority (which I think is a legitimate point of view of some of Minneapolis). Still, the three to four supposed DFLers who reliably vote with them (for example, my City Council Member, Ward 7 Katie Cashman, who I believe is out of step with her constituency). Those supposed DFLers need to pick a side and not trick their voters into thinking they are more moderate than they are.
A well-run city will need to accommodate most of the political spectrum from left to right – one side can’t dominate.
I also don’t think the documentary gives enough grace to the extraordinary double whammy of the pandemic and George Floyd—a one-two punch that would knock out most, if not all, cities.