It’s not the Somalis, it’s the DFL.

The problem with Minneapolis and Minnesota politics is not the Somalis; it is the DFL party.
What we are seeing in all the reported stories of fraud and corruption is not a product of Somali culture being exported to Minnesota via immigration. It is the normal corruption of a party that has been in power too long.

This is also the classic story of patronage politics and spoils gone wrong. Contrary to Donald Trump and other critics, the scandals rocking the Walz administration and Minnesota politics are not rooted in Somali politics. There is what is called the old 98–2 rule among the general population and perhaps among every group. Ninety-eight percent are decent, law-abiding people, but the problem is always the remaining two percent.

The two percent could be white Caucasians, Italians, Asians, Catholics, Lutherans, or whomever. The 98–2 rule says the issue is how to police a system where most people are playing by the rules. This is also the case with the Somali population. The issue here is not Somalis.

Trump and others focus on this because they look at Feeding Our Future, the Housing Stabilization Program, daycare programs, autism treatment programs, medical transportation programs, and other programs and see a billion-dollar scandal involving Somali individuals. And this is true. There has been fraud in all these programs that involved Somali persons. The problem is that they leap to the conclusion that political corruption started when Somali politics were exported to the United States. The real story is that the United States has a long history of spoils and patronage politics that goes back more than two centuries.

The spoils system dates to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The phrase “to the victor belong the spoils” meant the winner of the presidential election staffed the federal bureaucracy with political supporters. In return, these supporters worked for the administration and provided political contributions. Government contracts were also awarded to supporters who often made contributions or performed campaign labor.

I sometimes joke that this was the original form of public financing of elections, where public dollars effectively funded campaigns through graft, corruption, kickbacks, and contracts.

The same pattern occurred across the country. Boss and machine politics dominated many cities for decades. New York City’s Tammany Hall may be the most famous, but Boston, Chicago under Mayor Daley, and Minneapolis had comparable reputations. Lincoln Steffens’ “The Shame of the Cities” described all of this vividly. He even depicted Minneapolis as one of the most corrupt American cities in the early twentieth century, something that residents forget today.

If you wanted a government contract, you paid someone off or made a political contribution. Votes were bought, and public dollars were used to ingratiate politicians. And this wasn’t just people who were here for a long time. Cities have always been centers of ethnic diversity and corruption has always been a part of it. A hundred years ago, corruption was blamed on the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, and the Haitians. Immigrant groups such as Irish Catholics, German Catholics, and Italians were often drawn into political machines as part of assimilation. Politicians courting their votes used the same patronage and spoils practices. When corruption surfaced, it was always blamed on the newest ethnic arrivals.

But the problem was never race or ethnicity. Corruption is never just the fault of the group doing the corruption. It is as much the fault of those who set up the system as those who take advantage of it. It is the political structure of power and lack of accountability that produced corruption.

Robert Michels’ iron law of oligarchy argued that political parties inevitably become elite-driven and anti-democratic over time. Centralized control captures even the most democratic organizations once they become institutionalized. This is especially true in dominant-party or one-party cities. Parties without competition become authoritarian, sloppy, and corrupt.

Political science teaches us that single-party governments always drift toward corruption.
This has been true of the Communist Party in Russia and the ANC in South Africa. Healthy democracies require party competition and credible threats that a ruling party can be removed from office. Without that, corruption becomes inevitable.

For years, I have urged reporters to examine how public funds are used for party building and maintaining political control. I have encouraged them to look closely at the relationships among nonprofits, business subsidies, and government contracts. I have participated in numerous interviews about the Minneapolis bidding process. We repeatedly found contracts structured just below the threshold requiring competitive bidding, allowing them to be awarded directly. It isn’t surprising that an individual brought a lawsuit against the City of Minneapolis alleging that their bidding processes were skewed towards giving money to groups handpicked by the City Council. Or that red flags have been raised about programs like violence interrupters, where again the City Council has directed funds to favored community groups. Or that the City Council picked and chose among who to give contracts to, even after a new procurement process was put in place to reduce Council influence over who got contracts.

The real story about the Walz administration, Minnesota politics, and Minneapolis is not about Somalis. It is not even primarily about ethnic politics. It is about what happens when there are no checks, no competition, and no accountability on the party in power. When that happens, corruption is the inevitable result.

This is the real story.