Fail: The 2026 City Council Organizing Meeting

When the previous Minneapolis City Council held its organizing meeting in January 2024, things didn’t go so well. The meeting was characterized by antisemitic signs and chants allowed by the new Council President Elliot Payne. The new Council’s first order of business was putting itself in the foreign policy business with a resolution about Gaza.

I attended last Monday’s organizing meeting of the council elected this past November. I expected it would go much better. For one thing, the DSA-affiliated majority, had its wings clipped, from a 9-4 majority to a 7-6 majority. Still a majority, but one I thought might be humbled by its thinness. I hoped it would be more  inclined to get along with the other side, consisting of mainstream Democrats.

Silly me.

In spite of some lofty rhetoric, the new council majority showed no inclination to work with, or even respect, the six other council members. Nor did it seem have any interest in working with the three newly-elected Council Members  who just want to govern the city effectively rather than ideologically.

It quickly became clear that the next four years in newly-renovated council chambers won’t be different from the last two. Mayor Frey, make sure your veto-stamp pad has plenty of ink; you’ll need it.

The antics could be viewed as just one more of many tiffs between the two factions on the city council. But, in fact, they represent loss of a huge opportunity to make things better in Minneapolis.

Let me start with a short tutorial of the two factions on the Minneapolis City Council. No one votes 100% with either faction so while I admit to oversimplifying, this classification goes a long way to explain the deep divisions at City Hall. We have the once-large majority, now razor-thin majority, made up of members aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). We’ll call them the “Chugleys.” Then we have the now larger minority who align themselves with traditional Democratic programs and policies. We’ll call these the “Palmvilles.”

The main battleground last Monday was a bizarre initiative from CM Payne (who remains the Council President) to enlarge council leadership. He said he wanted to share the leadership load more broadly, and build an overall agenda that could be shared across the entire council. His idea was to add a Majority Leader and a Minority Leader to the to the President and Vice-President offices (held by DSA-aligned Jamal Osman).

Those titles could have been an olive branch, a way to bring the Chugleys and Palmvilles together given that the two factions are almost evenly split. No, nothing of the sort.

Though he never did define “majority” and “minority” to the satisfaction of the Palmvilles, it quickly became clear there would be no place in leadership for them. On 8-5 and 7-6 votes, the majority and minority leaders elected were. 10^th Ward Council Member Aisha Chughtai, Vice-President in the previous term, was elected “Majority Leader.”   2^nd Ward Council Member Robin Wonsley was elected “Minority Leader.” Both are DSA members, so it is not clear what the “majority” and “minority” are. Given Wonsley is not part of the DFL, or of any other political party, it can’t be based on political party like it was when Cam Gordon claimed minority party status as a Green Party member.

So what, exactly, are the majority and minority that they lead? Council President Payne doggedly attempted to explain this but honestly failed. The best I came up with was that the majority leader would lead those uncontroversial policy initiatives where all or nearly all CMs were aligned. The minority leader would lead those where there weren’t seven votes to pass, but maybe, somehow, they could be “led” to passage.

Confused? Then you understand.

The always-outspoken CM Wonsley, however, showed no confusion. She was entirely clear on who and what she would represent as “minority leader.” She would represent the council majority: the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and its agenda. She would use her new role as a platform to push for public grocery stores and income taxes on the rich. In other words, as minority leader, she would vigorously represent the DSA-affiliated majority.

George Orwell would be proud.

So we now have a leadership team of four people, all of them DSA-affiliated, yet supposedly, according to Payne’s lofty but vague rhetoric, reflecting the diversity of thought on the council. At the same time, the actual diversity of thought between the Chugleys and the Palmvilles has been suppressed by the DSA majority. Both Chughtai and Wonsley have titles that sound really impressive that they can put in their email signatures. In the last term, Payne voted 94% with Wonsley so now Payne gets a DSA-led City Council without having to actually apply for endorsement from the DSA. He gets to have it both ways.

The Palmvilles, who apparently were not consulted on any of this, did not exactly burst into a chorus of Kumbaya. The new council intended to spend the next several days in retreat-style discussions of future direction of the Council, so Council Member Michael Rainville asked if the question of the  majority-minority leadership could be delayed until after the retreats so they could get much-needed clarity on how this new structure would work. On a 7-6 vote, this request was denied.

This prompted longest-tenured Council Member Linea Palmisano to press Council President Payne. She said:

“You said the council minority needs to be represented, but you just voted against listening to the minority. The council leadership doesn’t want to change anything. It only wants to “entrench our divisions.”

Fourth Ward Council Member Latrisha Vetaw was even more blunt:

“We’ve been lied to. We have two people (Chugtai and Wonsley) in these new leadership roles, with the same agenda. This is the complete opposite of what President Payne said in his initial description of the majority and minority leader positions – that they were created to share the leadership load and build a shared agenda among the council. But this is the complete opposite.”

So now, we go into the 2026-29 Council term with a leadership team that purportedly represents the 13-member council in all its diversity but in fact is comprised entirely of DSA-affiliated CMs.

Did the Palmvilles on the council at least get the committee leadership assignments they may have been promised? You know the answer. Council President Payne passed out a list of committee chairs and vice chairs. Some of the Palmvilles saw it for the first time the night before. Some, maybe most, were not consulted.

Regardless of reality, Council President Payne stated “we have spent days and weeks on the committee structure,” which prompted Council Member Palmisano to ask who is “we”? She reminded him that just that morning, in the council inauguration ceremony, they were challenged to favor unity over division, inclusion over exclusion, and to build bridges over differences. Yet hours later council members were simply handed a list. “Is this really how you want to lead, again?” she asked President Payne. “This is really a poor start. It shows poor leadership.”

New member Pearll Warren added, the Chugleys “made all these decisions without asking anyone anything about what we want to do.”

It should be noted in fairness that one pair of amendments to the list was adopted: Council Member Shaffer was added to help lead the budget committee; Council Member Warren was added to the climate and infrastructure committee, per their wishes. The vote was 11-2, meaning two of the Chugleys did not want to make even the slightest accommodation to Palmville member wishes. One of those was Council Member Chavez, who was explicit in giving the Palmvilles even the slightest crumb. He said he “strongly urges (his) colleagues to reject these changes.”

The hour-plus it took the council majority to demonstrate complete disrespect for its colleagues in the minority could easily be written off as just a continuation of the rancor that characterized the 2024-25 body. But the cost to the city is far larger.

When voters in 2025 deemed that the DSA-affiliated faction should keep a majority, but  that majority should be reduced to one vote, all 13 members should have seen the message: Minneapolis residents want the theatrics to end, they want the council to work together, with collegiality, and they want it to solve the large problems of the city like finance, housing, and public safety. It is a familiar list.

Sure, when the Chugleys could command 9 votes, sometimes 10, they could override mayoral  vetoes, they could do as they pleased. But with 7 votes, it became almost imperative for the two factions to work together to create sound public policy. If they can’t figure this out, nothing large will be accomplished in the next four years. Large but ill-considered initiatives will be passed, then vetoed by the mayor. Overrides will fail. Real progress that requires compromise will not occur. In four years, there will be minimal accomplishment. And our city will continue to suffer from poor leadership.

But the theatrics will continue!

In organizing itself for 2026-29, the council would have been far wiser to build a coalition government: a Chugley president, a Palmville vice president, committee chairs divided about equally between the two factions. That would have created the best chance actually find compromise and agreement among 13 people. We would substitute sound governance for finger-pointing rhetoric.

The renovated city council chambers look great. Very regrettably, the task of renovating the council itself remains unfulfilled and our city will be worse for it.