Recently Council President Elliott Payne wrote in the StarTribune Opinion page a piece called, Minneapolis doesn’t have a strong mayor, it has strong donors: It’s a context you should consider when you hear attacks on the City Council. He stated that:
”All of Mpls is a corporate-backed super PAC that was created by the Chamber of Commerce. Its purpose is to advance the interests of its large donors who are able to maximize their profits by influencing outcomes at City Hall.”
Who is All of Mpls? There are currently two PACs messaging in Minneapolis. One is All of Mpls, which advocates for moderate perspectives and candidates. The second is Minneapolis for the Many, which advocates for far-left/socialist perspectives and candidates, including Council President Payne.
Both PACs are legally the same. Both put out messaging that supports candidates and issues but cannot be coordinated with candidate. Both can raise unlimited amounts of money, but neither can give money directly to a candidate. Both operate year-round, unlike candidate campaigns which come and go with election seasons.
Who is Funding Minneapolis for the Many?
Before looking at All of Mpls, I want to give context to context with the PAC that is supporting Council President Payne. 85% of Minneapolis for the Many’s funding comes from one group, the Movement Voter PAC. Movement Voter PAC is based in Massachusetts. It supports over 300 organizations across the country, doing essentially what Minneapolis for the Many is doing here. 1.2% of its funding comes from Minnesota residents. One-fifth of its funds came from one donor, Jay Scheide, who donated $10M in 2024. His only previous political donation was $5,000 once.
An astroturf organization is on that gives the appearance of being a grass-roots organization but is really funded and controlled by one entity. Given that almost all of its money comes from one source, and a source not from Minnesota, Minneapolis for the Many could be considered an astroturf organization rather than a grass-roots organization representing local people.
Who is All of Mpls? How are they funded?
All of Mpls is an independent expenditure political committee organized under Minnesota law. (Minneapolis for the Many is organized under Massachusetts law.) In 2024, it raised $159,000 in 2024, compared to the $97,000 raise by Minneapolis for the Many, although this is misleading. All of Mpls spent $61,000 for fundraising. The fundraising costs for Minneapolis for the Many’s funds from the Movement Voter PAC are born by another non-profit, meaning that in 2024, the two PACs raised almost exactly the same amount, when adjusting for fundraising.
Is it true, as Payne alleges, that All of Mpls is all large donors representing downtown interests? Is it being funded by downtown corporations? The biggest donor for All of Mpls was $20,000 (about 12%) from Karen Sternal, who is retired. About 6% ($10,000) came from Benjamin Hawn who is the Chief Operations Officer at the Pohlad Companies, but the money came from him individually and not the Pohlad Company. About 6% ($10,000) came from Lynne Redleaf, who works at the Lynne & Andrew Redleaf Foundation, which primarily provides grants for healthcare and other social causes. None of the money came from corporations. The rest came from donors who contributed less than 5% of funds, which are small enough donations to make Payne’s claim of huge influence suspect. In contrast, one-fifth of the Movement Project’s money came from one donor and that makes up 85% of Minneapolis for the Many’s money.
All of Mpls had 108 donors, with only 3 outside Minnesota. This as opposed to Minneapolis for the Many with only 1.2% of its funds being raised in Minnesota. All of Mpls is clearly a grass-roots organization, created by people from the Minneapolis community, as opposed to Minneapolis for the Many, located in Massachusetts and funded nationally.
11% of All of Mpls came from small donors who contributed too little to be itemized and 25% donated multiple times, which may have put them over the threshold if they donated small amounts multiple times.
Conclusion
It would seem that Council President Payne’s claims that All of Mpls is “large donors who are able to maximize their profits by influencing outcomes at City Hall” seems inaccurate just based on the data. It would also seem that he is ignoring the substantial issues with the PAC that is supporting him.
Related: Outside Money Buying Influence in Minneapolis
Related: Who Funds Minneapolis for The Many?
Related: Who is Funding “All of Minneapolis?”
Related: Is Faith in Minnesota A Grassroots or Astroturf Organization?
A prickly trope: “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” has important application to the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.
Between 2-3 percent of Minnesotans farm and 13 percent are labor union members. Callous as it is to say, Hubert Humphrey’s 1948 political party concoction is dead and gone and the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party’s name is cogent no longer.
‘Carpetbagger Consortium,’ is suitable for politicians able to be elected from low-voter-participation districts (such as Aisha Chughtai [Ward 10] and Jeremiah Ellison [Ward 5] scuttling placement of a rent control ordinance, which they supported, from the 2023 Minneapolis election ballot, by attending to their Eid al-Adha obligations (coincidentally denying the City Council quorum on the deadline for it being included on the ballot prior to its publication), Aisha Chughtai, Jeremiah Ellison, et al. demonstrated insidious forethought by delaying it for a lower-turnout [2025] election conducive to their electoral horseplay. [Large hoop earrings, sporting stocking caps…apple doesn’t fall far from the the tree]