Charlie Rybak’s piece “There’s something rotten in Minneapolis politics” spurred a discussion online about the DFL endorsement process and the role of political actions committees in local elections. Here are the responses we received via our website. Thank you for sharing your insights with us. We think this dialogue is important this election year.

Mr. Rybak, kudos to you for such a timely, spot-on and well-written piece. You hit the proverbial nail on the head. I fear that the development of these PACs, combined with the ever-undemocratic caucus system, will continue to destroy the essential fabric of Minneapolis–irreparably I fear. I also think that as an Emily Koski supporter/endorser, I have witnessed up close the dynamic that has created an environment that makes it almost impossible for candidates dedicated to represent the interests of all Minneapolitans vs. PAC members to have a realistic chance of winning a mayoral election.  Good writing again. -Jim Rowader, former Minneapolis City Attorney

This is a lazy, superficial analysis, and having read your work since Southwest Voices began, I know you can do better Charlie. Regarding PAC, this isn’t an even playing field. The "progressives" started a PAC only years after being (successfully) hammered by one well-funded "moderate" PAC after another. There are rules around earning electoral power, and refusing to use tools because they are distasteful proved an effective way to lose. Mpls for the Many is an effort to balance a very uneven playing field.

Caucuses and conventions are inaccessible, yes. You take the easy path of offering a critique without offering an alternative. The obvious alternative is a primary or going directly to the general election with ranked choice balloting. Elections are demonstrably influenced by big-money PACs, as elections favor those with big piles of money, or those who have the support with money,  to flood mail and media. If PAC money is a problem, keeping a tool that can be influenced by passion and organizing (DFL endorsements) is better. Maybe you have ideas about how to make DFL endorsements more accessible? I do, and there are folks working on that. -Janne, 30-year Minneapolis resident and local political advocate

I agree completely. I attended one caucus two years ago after many years away and was shocked at how pre-programmed it was amidst low attendance. Caucuses are undemocratic. Million dollar PACs are undemocratic. It is almost impossible for outsiders to run for office. I have been disenchanted with City politics for some time with significant long term issues being ignored in favor of "warring groups of political insiders." I love this City, and we need to do better. -Michele F.

This is not a very effective article. The author takes great pains to publicize the problem as being attributable both to progressives and moderates. However, the author misleads by making a false equivalence.  The moderate PACs have existed for many years longer than the one progressive PAC. In reality, the resources provided by the conservative activists in Minnesota to these "moderate" PACs, are far greater and have been constant for years.  It would be easy to include an accounting in the article to inform readers, but Southwest Voices chose not to so as to maintain framing of a false equivalence.

This is not, as the author states, a "new development." "Moderates" have been acting the same way in Minneapolis elections for over a decade, as the author is well aware. The unstated argument in this editorial is that Minneapolis politics were fine until progressives started standing up to the PAC that Minnesota Republicans fund to influence Minneapolis politics. Let's not take a cue from national politics. Blaming citizens, fighting against corruption, for the strife caused by the corruption does not inform the readers. -Jesse L.

The caucus and convention process are awful. Long days, arcane rules set through an even more arcane process. A small handful of people set the game, the rules, and know how to change them. This is classic bureaucracy to dissuade participation, and a common critique of the DFL in general.  It is certainly fair to point out the "money in politics" problem by discussing the two or three PACs active in Minneapolis, though I would have liked to actually have the difference in fundraising and what they spend fully stated. I wish we had a system that capped overall spending on an election, sort of what the Political Contribution Refund tries to do, but the PACs really ruin any opportunity to do that.

I would also point out that the complete lack of Republican Party presence in Minneapolis politics has a massive negative impact on the DFL. Republicans who want to be involved in local politics are forced, or encouraged, to be part of the DFL process, causing a wider rift than would otherwise be present. This is certainly visible in the head of the We Love Minneapolis PAC and the Uptown Association being a known past republican donor. This one-party town system causes a ton of infighting and manifests in nasty mailers and barbed interview responses.  I'm not pretending to have solutions as long as Citizens United is in place. It certainly feels like we could bypass the caucus and convention nonsense altogether and just have the ranked choice general election.  We could focus our city efforts on hosting more roundtables, Q&A sessions, and events–more touch points for candidates to be introduced and interact with community wherever they are at. -Anonymous local political volunteer

I really appreciate this piece, it’s an important topic right now. If caucuses were well funded, I think there are good things about them. My recent experience a few weeks back was that they are chaotic and confusing and poorly managed. But I do think there is a benefit to a group of people who live within a few blocks of each other coming together in person to meet and to make decisions about who they support to run their community. And I do think it's good when candidates go and make short speeches to these neighbors so they may learn more about the candidates in person, as opposed to just getting mailers or "doing research" on candidate websites or through PAC literature ahead of a primary vote.

I also think that the reason there is such a tense and "zero-sum" fight right now is that in 2016 a bunch of young people, people of color, immigrants, and other newcomers got involved in the caucusing process and that pissed off the old Minneapolis DFL machine that was generally whiter and wealthier. As a new candidate in 2017 I was often met with a "do you even go here?" mentality and treatment from establishment party people. This surprised me because I thought that a party that supports and encourages democracy and participation would be welcoming of new and younger participation in their party process. I think there are cynical people, particularly on the right in Minneapolis, that participate as candidates or pundits in our caucusing process who would be more at home in the Republican Party. They are not pro-labor or pro-worker, and they may not even be pro-choice. Yet they still attempt to shift the DFL because it is the only game in town for accessing the levers of local power.

The PACs are bad, and Mpls for the Many should more loudly say they want them gone. But what is an alternative for the progressives to do in battling against corporate money? I hope that this progressive wing continues to promote the values of democracy, farm and labor in our party, and I am glad some of them are fighting tooth and nail in the current process we have in place. -Jono Cowgill, Stevens Square resident

What is your solution for replacing the caucus and convention system? Both the caucuses and conventions are incredibly painful–time-consuming, boring, mind-numbing. Do we need party endorsements at all? With ranked-choice voting, can we dispense with endorsements and move right to the election? How do we get the parties to agree to this? -Alan, Ward 11 resident

When money became equated to freedom of expression, our entire political process went from financially-skewed to legally-corrupted. The fact that all types of PAC funds pull political power out of the hands of individual voters is very important to point out. This is a local problem with a Supreme Court required solution. What do we do from here? -Jina Penn-Tracy

Charlie, this is a great summary of some things very wrong with our electoral process in Minneapolis. I think it's worth noting that a substantial amount of the money in those PACs come from out of Minnesota. We should really ask ourselves why there is out-of-state money flowing to our mayoral and City Council and school board races. I love this city and am so proud of Minneapolis in so many ways but we need to stop emulating national politics with the us vs. them approach and do what we do best here–work together for the greater good. As Paul Wellstone says, "We all do better when we all do better." -C J Kujawa, Minneapolis resident and Minneapolis Public Schools teacher

Well, I intensely dislike the system we have, too, Charlie, from the funding mechanisms to the wretched caucus/convention system, to the apathy of the vast majority of the electorate, all too many of whom just vote for any DFL-endorsed candidates each November believing that "that person has been vetted." Even though, as you've pointed out, little could be farther from the truth. Because the fact of the matter is, when more than two reasonably qualified DFL people want to run for any office, there is no reason to expect a DFL convention to endorse anyone, needing 60% agreement.

That the DFL has not ended up endorsing for mayor since 2009 is a tribute to there being enough money involved in the mayoral campaign process. On the other hand, the ward conventions endorse far too often, and far too easily, lousy candidates. They do so because money is scarce at that level, and the local neighborhood faction that can dominate an obscure process. The group that can best game the system, such as it is, wins. We have a number of wards this year with multiple candidate races. If some of those wards emerge from the convention with "no endorsement," you will know that the process has been balanced enough to have finally started to work for us. -Jim Klein, Ward 11 resident, active in the DFL

Are you recommending voting out all current office holders? Who are the demagogues? -Logan, Southwest resident

Great article, well written. One of my signs at home is,  “Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” This is true of our city. -Judy Longbottom, Uptown UPS Store franchise owner

I personally live on Nicollet Avenue and am a first-time homeowner. I witnessed very alarming police behavior in summer 2020 and subpar departmental management before and after that time. My perspective is informed by these experiences.

It is a fact that the influx of money into Minneapolis politics via PACs started with moderates. It is my opinion that this influx of money helped to shield Jacob Frey from meaningful accountability while enabling criminal behavior on the part of the police. Whether you agree with that opinion or not, we should not forget the facts: our current knowledge of the murder of George Floyd began with an attempted cover-up, and subsequent investigation revealed deep corruption that Frey excused and minimized on his path to another term as mayor.

During that term he was newly empowered by the "strong mayor" amendment. All of Mpls helped bring this into reality. And yet my life as a resident and worker in Minneapolis did not improve. I had to deal with things like strangers smoking crack on the sidewalk outside my home, two blocks away from a police station. And the encampments! The same people shunted from one block to another, again and again, belongings destroyed, dehumanized in the winter and ignored in the spring. Jacob Frey's response to both of these issues? Blame other people. Claim that the City Council–newly legally disempowered relative to the mayor–is still blocking change, somehow. Don't ask him, or All of Mpls, how. Even they can't come up with credible spin for these issues.

I am not opposed to holding progressives accountable for failing to deliver on campaign promises, nor am I opposed to holding progressive ideas to a basic standard of feasibility and evidence-based evaluation. It is not divisive to look at existing money poured into politics, money that comes from powerful business owners and wealthy families, and conclude that their goals and ideas are counter to your own. Consequently, you may need to meet money with money, organization with organization. I don't think I'm the worm in any apple for finding the false equivalencies in this article both false and insulting to insist upon. I agree that the city’s politics are broken, but I disagree that more lies will fix it. -Candace Palmer, Lyndale neighborhood resident

Kudos to Charlie for writing what I thought was a timely and well thought opinion piece on our upcoming city elections. One that didn't take sides, but pointed out what's clearly broken in both our political financing and party election systems.

Given the horrible Super Court campaign finance decision, it would seem a Sisyphean task to reform the money problem, not that we shouldn't try to hold our candidates and elected officials to account for it.  This problem is made all the more intractable in today's environment when PAC money from outside our "Mini Apple" can so easily be used to serve outside agendas in ways that distort our local political process.

With regard to our election system, we should eliminate the outdated, broken and painfully cumbersome caucus system. I have experienced this first hand, with great frustration, and would like to see efforts reinvigorated to make this reform.

Charlie's call for us to collectively pay attention, probe deeper by asking good questions, and to exercise our vote, needs to be heeded by more of us if we want a return to more fair, effective and civil City governance. -Marty Berger, longtime Minneapolis resident  

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Article updated on April 28 at 1:30 p.m.