Minneapolis holds municipal elections in November 2025. On the ballot, for four-year terms, will be Mayor, City Council, Park Board, and Board of Estimate and Taxation. Although this ranked-choice election is 8-9 months away, and there is no primary, candidates are announcing now, and groups that align with the DFL’s Far Left vs. the Pragmatist flanks are organizing their slates.
Why so soon? Because precinct caucuses are on April 8, initiating the Minneapolis DFL endorsement process, and in DFL-dominated Minneapolis, candidates who secure DFL endorsement almost always secure local seats. This happens because party endorsement constrains voters’ choices before they are even aware. Candidates who lose DFL endorsement often exit the race when the process concludes: The contest exhausts their resources, and/or the party pressures them to leave. Candidates who remain are severely handicapped by the enormous benefits which the DFL bestows upon its endorsed candidates. In competitive jurisdictions, those benefits do not determine who gets the seat, but in DFL-dominated jurisdictions, they usually do.
To illustrate, consider what happened in the January 2025 Senate District 60 (SD60) special election. SD60 covers northeast Minneapolis, along with the University of Minnesota, Como, Prospect Park and Cedar-Riverside. DFL candidates for statewide offices routinely win more than 80% of SD60’s votes; the SD is DFL-dominated. DFLer Kari Dziedzic had represented SD60 in the Minnesota State Senate since 2012, until she died on December 27, 2024. Two days later, on December 29, Governor Walz issued a writ for the special election. Contestants had to file their affidavits of candidacy by 5 PM on December 31. The contest between the DFL and GOP nominees would be on January 28; voters would choose their party’s nominees in the primaries on January 14.
Because SD60 is DFL-dominated, whoever won the January 14 DFL primary almost certainly would win the seat, so the real contest would be just 16 days after the Governor issued his writ. Eight candidates filed for the DFL primary. All ascribed to standard DFL principles. One eventually withdrew. Four were novices. Three (Doron Clark, Monica Meyer, Peter Wagenius) had extensive experience, through elected office and/or party office and/or organizing. These three quickly raised funds and elicited individual endorsements from current and former DFL elected officials.
Initially, the competition unfolded on a level playing field, as all candidates had the same 16 days to mount websites, raise money, print promotional materials, knock doors. But on December 30, one day after the Governor issued his writ, the DFL SD60 Executive Committee Chair announced a “special endorsing meeting” for January 8, six days before the primary. Candidate Wagenius objected immediately; four more eventually joined his plea. They, and some residents, argued that such a move was unprecedented, that it was unfair, that the SD60 Central Committee should wait until after the primary to endorse.
The Executive Committee was unmoved. The January 8 meeting commenced. About 60 attended, 32 with voting privileges, in their roles as precinct chairs, SD60 officers, or other unnamed statuses. Carefully adhering to Robert’s Rules of Order, with the gavel wielded by a DFL Parliamentarian who lived outside SD60, members of the SD60 Central Committee politely listened, as a motion to postpone endorsement was made and seconded. Then there was a debate.
Candidate Doron Clark spoke against the motion; he favored proceeding with endorsement that night. Ten days earlier, Clark had been a member of the SD60 Executive Committee; he resigned to run for the seat. A year earlier Clark had been the SD60 Chair. Clark was friend and mentor of the current SD60 Chair.
The other candidates, many with endorsements from prominent DFL elected individuals, but none embedded with SD60 leadership, spoke for the motion; they favored not issuing a party endorsement that night.
The debate concluded. The 32 Central Committee members voted overwhelmingly to proceed. Then, each member completed a paper ballot. Tellers, not from SD60, collected the ballots. While the candidates observed, the tellers counted the ballots. The result was announced: 23 (72%) had voted to give the party endorsement to Doron Clark.
The next morning, the state party revoked access to its voter database to all candidates except Clark. SD60 leadership immediately recruited door-knockers and phone callers for Clark; the state party prohibited everyone holding a DFL office from campaigning for Clark’s competitors. DFL-allied organizations and individuals began issuing their endorsements for Clark, who now was branded as “THE DFL-Endorsed Candidate”.
Six days later, on January 14, Clark won the DFL primary with 2073 votes, a 38% plurality. Treating Table 1 as a system of simultaneous equations, the solution models number of votes as a function of money, influential individual endorsements, and the party’s endorsement:
Estimated number of votes =
0.019 *(Dollars) + 314 * (Weighted Individual Endorsements) + 740 * (DFL Endorsement)
With equal amounts of money and individual endorsements, the party endorsement was worth 740 votes. As Clark’s margin over Meyer was only 191 votes, the model predicts that she would have won had Clark not been DFL-endorsed, and that given his party endorsement, she needed an additional $10,048 to match his votes.
| Table 1. Number of Votes in the 14JAN25 DFL Special Primary for SD60, as a Function of Campaign Contributions and Number of Endorsements from Elected Officials | ||||
| Candidate | Y: Number of votes in the 14JAN25 DFL Primary | Campaign Resources Assembled by Candidates, from December 29, 2024 through January 14, 2025 | ||
| X1: Campaign Contributions Received ($) | X2: Number of endorsements by DFL elected officials1, weighted2 by stature and % of SD60 served | X3: DFL Party Endorsement (1=Yes, 0=No) | ||
| Doron Clark | 2,073 | $17,014 | 3.21 | 1 |
| Monica Meyer | 1,882 | $23,700 | 4.55 | 0 |
| Peter Wagenius | 1,203 | $19,552 | 2.83 | 0 |
2. List of endorsers, offices, and weights. Weight is defined as the product of the endorser’s stature and the percentage of SD60 precincts covered by the endorser’s jurisdiction (0.1% for endorsers outside of SD60). |
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The party’s endorsement, granted by 23 people six days before the primary, gifted the SD60 seat to Doron Clark, which is why other candidates had objected so strenuously when the special endorsing meeting was called. This also is why, in 2023, DFL endorsement proceedings for Minneapolis City Council were fraught enough to attract FBI attention. The Minnesota Reformer reported that the Bureau was investigating multiple allegations of cheating and chicanery: “The FBI agents’ take is that in one-party cities like Minneapolis, the endorsement process is key … The process, the agents told the source, is “ripe for fraud””.
Such accusations long have accompanied DFL endorsements in Minneapolis, because the high stakes incentivize bad behavior, and even if nobody succumbs, the threat and suspicion is there. Disgruntled participants, FBI attention, bad press: It all reflects poorly upon the DFL. So why does the party endorse in Minneapolis, if the process tarnishes its brand by inviting such fractious controversy?
Partly, the process continues because powerful actors mobilize to prevent changing a system that benefits them. And partly, the DFL is institutionally stuck. It so habitually “endorses” for everything, it has not stopped to think: When does this help us and when does it not?
We offer some free thinking on the party’s behalf: The party benefits when it endorses candidates for partisan seats in competitive jurisdictions. Under these conditions, the process helps the party identify promising candidates, likely to perform well against GOP nominees. And because endorsement proceedings conclude by early June, 10-12 weeks before the August primary, the party can use that time to rally its activists behind its endorsed candidate, so that person emerges from the primary in a strong position to compete against the GOP nominee.
But these conditions do not exist in Minneapolis. The seats are non-partisan. There is no primary. There is no competition with the GOP. Party endorsement in Minneapolis does nothing except enable small activist groups to gift seats, which invites perceived if not actual abuse.
The party could reform by limiting endorsements to partisan seats in competitive jurisdictions, where they help, and eliminating endorsements in party-dominated jurisdictions, where they hurt. But the DFL only considers such sweeping institutional change at state conventions in even-numbered years. The next opportunity will be May 2026. Consequently, the seat-gifting process is underway in Minneapolis right now, for the 2025 municipal elections, which will determine city governance for the next four years. Unless voters change their behavior, small activist groups who capture DFL endorsement processes will decide who governs the city over the next four years.
Ordinary Minneapolis voters can participate if they wish. They can attend their precinct caucuses on April 8, and from there, they can become delegates to their ward conventions, where they can vote to endorse, or not. But those who choose not to participate should be aware: The less than 2% of registered voters who participate this spring will constrain everyone’s choices in the fall, sometimes to no choice at all. The SD60 Special Election demonstrated what the impact can be.
Thank you for this. The entire process was rotten. Any voter who knows about it has no choice but to take it as an insult to the democratic process and the principles that are supposed to be guiding the party. Without the endorsement, Meyer wins. And the endorsement was demonstrably flawed.
They were not bound by any rule or even any general principle to make ANY endorsement, let alone ONLY endorsing Clark. He was not the only candidate prepared to serve. He was not the only candidate in alignment with DFL values. He was the previous SD60 chair and mentored the current chair. His friends wanted him to have the job, and they did what they could to make it happen. Any other explanation is, again, insulting. Pure gaslighting from party insiders whose egos are our of contro.
This op-ed is incorrect.
SD60 DFL central committee meets on the first Wednesday of every month. Due to January 1 being News Year Day, we moved the central committee to January 8 prior to our December meeting. On December 30, 10 days before the monthly central committee meeting, I sent out the agenda with consideration for an SD60 endorsement in the proposed agenda voted on by the executive committee.
Candidates who sought it, were given central committee members contact information and our questionnaire beginning December 30. We published those questionnaires publicly on our website & sent out the updated agenda 72 hours before our central committee meeting on Jan 8. No endorsement was on the agenda first.
Your op-ed erroneously claims there was a “special endorsing meeting” 6 days before the primary and both claims are false and rather duplicitous. Please do better.
I am happy to provide email receipts for the editor-in-chief, publisher and/or readers.
Kaytie Kamphoff
SD60 DFL Chair
Anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention knows that you simply wanted to make sure your very good friend and mentor..and previous SD60 chair…got the job he wanted. It’s not more complex than that, and no attempt to hide behind process explanations changes that. It’s insulting to voters. You were all too busy trying to help Clark that you couldn’t even be bothered to make sure you were on the same page as labor. What does the L stand for in DFL? Why were you not in alignment with the only labor endorser?
Again, it’s clear why. You didn’t care. You wanted to tilt the scale in favor of Clark, and you did so. That’s it. It’s not more complex than that. And it had NOTHING to do with readiness to serve or alignment with DFL party values. It was 100% a group of party insiders elevating one of their own on defiance of any actual principles that should guide the democratic process.
And you still don’t care. You’re happy about it. This was all very fun, it seems.
All evidence suggests that you had decided as early as December 30 that you were going to gift the seat to Doron Clark by gifting the endorsement to him. Your comment suggests that you attempted to set things up so that it would look like it was not pre-planned, but you were not very successful at obscuring what you truly were trying to do, despite your comments: “I sent out an email with consideration of endorsement….” and “No endorsement was on the agenda first”.
Consider:
This “routine” SD60 Central Committee meeting, rescheduled to Jan 8 to accommodate Jan 1 as a holiday, was arranged like an endorsing convention before a single vote had been cast. You had registrars from outside SD60 checking people in as they arrived, and giving them pre-printed badges, where the badges designated where they could sit, as directed by Sergeants-at-Arms. You had tellers already identified and ready to work, including slips of paper where those with voting privileges could mark their choice. Who has registrars and badges and Sergeants-at-Arms and tellers at a routine Central Committee meeting? Nobody, but everyone has these resources at an endorsing convention, and all of it must be pre-planned.
You said that you distributed an endorsement questionnaire on December 30. Indeed you did. Why would you have distributed an endorsement questionnaire if you were not planning to endorse on January 8?
One of your friends from outside SD60, who helped run your endorsing convention, sent out an email on December 30 saying, “A number of us will be assisting with the SD60 endorsement meeting for the late Sen. Kari Dziedzic’s seat … Since their meeting is so time-sensitive, and is an “all hands on deck” situation, we are prioritizing their event that day.” (I too have receipts).
Do better.
Thanks for this. I did not know a few of the details you provided on this bogus “endorsement”. The situation is worse than you paint it, though, because there is one thing you’ve missed. You wrote:
“The party benefits when it endorses candidates for partisan seats in competitive jurisdictions. Under these conditions, the process helps the party identify promising candidates, likely to perform well against GOP nominees.”
That is not always true. I used to volunteer for roles on the campaign leadership teams for candidates for DFL legislative offices in the East Metro suburbs and exurbs, back in the aughts and early teens, when many of those districts were GOP-leaning or swing districts.
What our DFL caucus/convention endorsement system does, when at its best, in districts like those, is do an early weed-out when there is one qualified, electable candidate and one or more lesser candidates with considerably lesser credentials. And that was, in fact, the norm. However, in the rarer cases when there are two or more legitimate, qualified, electable DFL candidates, the system we have, even in districts like those, is every bit as corruptible, if not inherently corrupt. I could tell you war stories, but most of the players (especially those who lost) are long forgotten so far as being DFL office aspirants, so that wouldn’t be useful.
The point is that it is the caucus/convention/endorsement system itself (as well as its corruption by Central Committees, as in your SD60 example – which may be a new low, even for us) that is the problem – not its implementation in overwhelmingly DFL urban districts alone. Given the right scenario, it can be just as dreadful a system in a swing district suburb.
Thank you for this info! I only have been involved (as a witness or participant) in Minneapolis; someone from an area like yours described the ideal scenario when I was ranting (LOL) about Mpls. Can you say anything about how DFL endorsement works in GOP-dominated jurisdictions? Curious to know if there are improvement opportunities there as well
WOW! Just WOW! Thanks for elucidating just how undemocratic the DFL endorsement process is. Who really is controlling our DFL party at the state level, which mandates how Minneapolis will operate? A thorough house-cleaning is in order.