Mayoral Candidate Answers

The following candidates running for Mayor filled out our survey. Click a name to see all that candidate’s answers. The score next to a candidate’s name represents their rating, on a scale of 1 to 5. One is “does not align with any values,” and five is “aligns with all values.” Ratings are not endorsements.

• Kate Knuth

• Sheila Nezhad

If elected, how do you plan on being accountable to your constituents? Please emphasize ways in which marginalized and oppressed people who have been neglected in the past will be a part of your accountability plan.

To earn your support, I want you to understand my values, vision, policies, and how I will approach governing. I want to earn your trust through intentional relationship building and ongoing mutual accountability. I recognize that I am a white woman running to lead the city during a time where there’s so much work to be done to repair harm and rebuild trust with Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color. If I have the honor of becoming your Mayor, I will depend on the people to bring their best selves to governing and building our city. Some might call this co-governance, participatory democracy, or civic engagement. I will strive to uplift – and build new if necessary – pathways and processes for the people and communities who have been left out of public and government power for too long, and look forward to co-developing this accountability plan together.

How are young people included in your campaign, and how will they be included in your decisions if elected?

I’m proud that young people are leading in my campaign. Our Co-Campaign Managers are 23 and 24 years old, recently graduating from the University of Minnesota. Not only is it important that young people are reflected in our campaign team, but also that they have an active role in decision making at City Hall. I will continue to engage with students and young people, especially MNYC, for direct feedback and guidance through regular meetings or check-ins . I want to be in relationship with you to co-create bold solutions to tackle the housing crisis, public safety, police violence, and climate change. I’m excited to dig in with you all and learn more about the work you are leading.

How would you describe your relationship with mass movement work and non-violent direct action? If you are elected, what will you do to try to protect people who organize and participate in this work?

One of my first times demonstrating was at an anti-war protest in 2002 in Chicago. As someone engaged in climate movement work for years, I have seen how non-violent direct action has been a key part of building the power of the climate and climate justice movements. In much of my work as an elected and appointed government leader, I have tried to translate movement demands into policy change. This is work I would continue as Mayor. I will always protect first amendment rights and have called for the ban of chemical weapons used by MPD. I think it’s a failure of our current mayoral administration that we seem to respond to grief with militarization more often than not.

Last summer in Minneapolis, Uprisings occurred in response to the murder of George Floyd and against state-sanctioned violence and militarized, white supremacist police. How have the events of last summer impacted your leadership and relationship to your community? If you were involved in any way, we would love to hear about it.

After George Floyd was murdered, like many I wanted to take action in my community to make progress on racial justice. I reflected on what it means to feel safe in one’s community and the work I needed to do as a white person. As a member of the Bryn Mawr Neighborhood Association Board, I challenged our board to take action for racial justice as a majority white, relatively wealthy neighborhood that includes some homes that had racial covenants. The board formed a racial justice committee, which I now co-chair. Our committee actions include developing and implementing a racial justice issue review process for the board, hosting anti-racism trainings for neighbors, working to increase the diversity of our board (including race, age, and housing owner/renter), and more.

When you began considering running for office, who did you speak with who helped inform your decision to run? What motivated you most in deciding to run for office?

It’s not an easy time to run for office or to lead a city. After a lot of thought, and after consulting with people I know and love and with many I’d never met, I made the big decision to run for Mayor of Minneapolis. I’m running because I see this moment in our city as both a call to action and an opportunity. Ultimately, our city is worse off than it was four years ago and we cannot afford to wait any longer to tackle the housing crisis, police brutality, and climate change. This moment calls for bold, courageous leadership, and real commitment to shaping a city where everyone— across neighborhoods and across race, faith, ability and gender— feels safe, valued and a part of our community.

Why is your campaign more capable of reaching and connecting with voters, and why are you more able to represent your ward than other candidates in the race?

I am the candidate who can build the broadest coalition so we move on the community’s demands for a new Department of Public Safety. We need to bring folks together from Linden Hills to the Northside to create the transformative change we desperately need. I also have strong leadership and government experience having served in the Minnesota Legislature for 3 terms, and can leverage my relationships with lawmakers across the city and state to advocate for Minneapolis at the Capitol. I don’t have all the answers, not even close, but I am committed to meeting people where they’re for conversations that will guide my decision-making.

Please feel free to tell us anything else you would like us to know here.

I wanted to provide more context for some of our yes/no responses that we were unable to indicate on the form. I generally do not feel comfortable making policy commitments without having the opportunity to dig in and consult with community members on the issue in detail to inform my position. I want to be clear that I do support passing rent control in Minneapolis, however, could not answer “yes” to question 7 because the resident-written ordinance has not been drafted yet. If the rent stabilization charter amendment makes it on the ballot in November (which I would vote in favor of), I would work as Mayor alongside tenants, small landlords, and housing justice organizations to implement a just rent control policy. I also could not answer “yes” to question 16 for this reason. I want to clarify that I could potentially support this mandate if the language was developed in coordination with tenants and small landlords as well as energy conservation/efficiency advocates and if the city was required to provide financial assistance in order to avoid the unintended consequence of small landlords being displaced to the benefit of large developers and/or the loss of deeply-affordable housing. I am very interested in working to do deep energy conservation and retrofits in housing across the city. She sees this leadership on energy conservation as essential economic justice, housing affordability, and climate action.

If elected, how do you plan on being accountable to your constituents? Please emphasize ways in which marginalized and oppressed people who have been neglected in the past will be a part of your accountability plan.

We can build accountability for the mayor’s office at multiple levels. One barrier to accountability is many residents only hear about changes after they’ve been made. I would propose greater investment in the city’s communications department to make it easier for people to know what’s happening at city hall. I would push for the city to establish participatory budgeting, which puts power in the the community, with an emphasis on funding programming that serves BIPOC, LGBTQ and working class people. I support bi-annual budgeting, so we don’t spend half the year fighting for funding for the next 6 months, and so a mayor can’t promise something one year only to cut it the next year. Part of collaborative leadership and accountability is having evolving, emergent strategy. I will have open dialogue with other working class, and marginalized folks to develop accountability mechanisms that meet the evolving needs of communities.

How are young people included in your campaign, and how will they be included in your decisions if elected?

Most of my campaign team is under 30, and includes queer, trans and BIPOC youth leaders. I am also hosting a policy session this summer and inviting youth leaders to come speak about the issues that are important to them. I saw thousands of young people mobilize around the cause of defunding the police and abolition during the uprising last summer, and I know that young people are ready for a government that is going to meaningfully involve them and meet their needs. I have experience bringing coalitions together, and young people would absolutely be included in crafting solutions to key issues like housing, climate justice, mental health, public safety & violence prevention.

How would you describe your relationship with mass movement work and non-violent direct action? If you are elected, what will you do to try to protect people who organize and participate in this work?

I have been involved with mass movement work throughout my life but most recently with my work at Reclaim the Block and MPD150. I’ve participated in many direct actions, from Standing Rock to the streets last summer. As an LGBTQ person who was out when my identity was criminalized, I know that it takes mass action to shift laws to do what’s right. As mayor, I will support the right of people to organize against injustice and fight to protect their health and wellbeing, including calling on law enforcement to not arrest protesters, which we saw happen this past April during the Brooklyn Center protests.

Last summer in Minneapolis, Uprisings occurred in response to the murder of George Floyd and against state-sanctioned violence and militarized, white supremacist police. How have the events of last summer impacted your leadership and relationship to your community? If you were involved in any way, we would love to hear about it.

I was involved in two ways: as a street medic and policy organizer. I am a street medic and spent most nights medic-ing at protests. I saw the violent force used by MPD against protestors, many of whom were really young. I was shot by a tear gas canister while helping a teen who had been shot in the chest by a rubber bullet. As a then-volunteer with Reclaim the Block, I worked with local organizers and a Black-led movement to identify what policy we could move immediately to address state-sanctioned violence. We started a charter amendment campaign that would replace the police department with a Department of Community Safety & Violence Protection. Although the charter commission squashed our efforts, Brooklyn Center just instituted a department of the same name, which I believe was influenced by our organizing.

When you began considering running for office, who did you speak with who helped inform your decision to run? What motivated you most in deciding to run for office?

When I was thinking of running, I held three community feedback sessions with people who I had organized with on labor, renter, policing, LGBTQ, and racial justice issues to find out if they wanted me to run, and if so, what they wanted from a mayoral campaign. Working on the city budget for the past three years motivated me to run. I saw how much was left on the table each year because of a lack of political will, and how our marginalized and oppressed communities bear the brunt of that lack of will.

Why is your campaign more capable of reaching and connecting with voters, and why are you more able to represent your ward than other candidates in the race?

My campaign is dedicated to reaching out to all communities in Minneapolis, including a focus on those who are typically not engaged, particularly young people, BIPOC and immigrant communities, LGBTQIA+ folks, and the working class through our field program. I have never been just one thing in my life. I have been a graduate student while also a decade-long restaurant worker, ran an evaluation firm while doing on-the-ground organizing, worked in an art studio and as a policy analyst. I’m mixed race (Persian-Anishinaabe-White), daughter of an immigrant and a rural North Dakotan, I’m a queer femme, and as a renter I’ve lived across the city. I believe that my broad experiences help me understand issues across class, identity, and lived experience in a way that other candidates do not have. I’m running because I know that power comes from the people, and we need electeds who can follow that leadership.

Please feel free to tell us anything else you would like us to know here.

I indicated that I do not support “community control over police officers and public safety officers.” I indicated this because I have seen civilian oversight be continually co-opted by the Minneapolis or State of Minnesota governments, and the Federation. Minneapolis’s first civilian review board was in 1963, the Civilian Review Board (1963-1963) followed by the Civil Rights Commission (1967-1971), then the Civilian Review Authority (1991-2021), Police community Relations Council (2003-2008) and now the Office of Police Conduct review (2012-present). You can read the full history of each of these civilian bodies, their original investigation and disciplinary capabilities, and their results here. As organizers, we have visions, which lead to strategies, which are then implemented through tactics. It is our charge to develop tactics that are resilient against co-optation by the system and those who benefit off oppression. We must not become married to the tactic at the expense of strategy or vision. Therefore, learning from the history of our movement elders and ancestors who have, rightfully, called for accountability, and chose the tactic of civilian oversight, to shift tactics in service of our ultimate vision of justice and an end to police violence.