Can the Greens survive the DFL’s attention?

A troubling aspect of the Minneapolis political landscape in this year’s election is the redistricting plan that has literally changed the lines of Minneapolis’ thirteen wards, and shifted most City Council seats to the right.

“The redistricting process isn’t meant to re-draw entire districts. It’s a process that happens after every census, where you account for changes in population,” said incumbent 6th Ward Council-member Dean Zimmermann, a Green Party member. “Typically you make some changes around the edges, and keep the old wards largely intact. That’s not what happened,” he told Pulse.

Zimmermann has good reason to be upset by the new district boundaries. When the new map was approved, without public input, his house was sitting on the other side of his ward boundary. Particularly troubling, Zimmermann said, is that the lead architect of the new map had served as campaign manager for Dean Kallenbach, the DFLer Zimmermann defeated in 2001. While Zimmermann isn’t floating any outright conspiracy theories, he candidly suggested that the redistricting decision looks like dirty politics.

In the 9th Ward, Green-endorsed mechanical engineer Dave Bicking is challenging incumbent Gary Schiff. The candidates don’t have large differences of opinion on issues of small-business support or controlling city development, and neither supports public money for a new downtown stadium. Bicking is a lifelong peace and justice advocate, and wants to ensure police accountability in the city. Schiff has acknowledged the redistricting process is one that has hurt the Greens.
Four years ago, the Green Party was celebrating a sea change. Unlikely mayoral challenger R.T. Rybak had just defeated a solid DFL incumbent by relying on the support of independents, rebellious Democrats and the Green Party. And those same Green-leaning voters had come out in unprecedented numbers for Council candidates throughout the city, electing the scruffily unorthodox Dean Zimmermann over a well-groomed opponent, pulling in big numbers in South Minneapolis, and nearly almost (but not quite) electing Cam Gordon in the progressive 2nd Ward. But probably the biggest upset occurred on the least-traditional Green Party turf, the Northside, where neighborhood fixture Natalie Johnson-Lee defeated Council President Jackie Cherryhomes by a nano-thin margin of 72 votes.

This year things have changed, and the Green Party is fighting hard just to keep from slipping back into outsider status. The two Green incumbents on the City Council are locked in difficult races, and with the retirement of independent Barret Lane in the 13th Ward, there’s a real possibility that the DFL “establishment” candidates will sweep the Minneapolis elections for the first time in decades. But due to vagaries of the local electorate, it could also take a progressive swing. Unexpected turns of events will ultimately reveal a great deal about the challenges third parties face when establishing themselves in America.

First, it’s safe to say that Minneapolis’ political landscape has shifted since 2001, that the old labor-backed power circles have grown more fractured. The new political crop—Mayor Rybak, along with Council members Robert Lilligren, Don Samuels and Paul Ogren—are more grassroots-savvy than the old Sayles-Belton/Jackie Cherryhomes coalition. As a result, when candidates have campaigned this summer, it’s been harder for outsiders to make the case that the system needs a radical correction. Plus, at the national level, Democrats are highly unified in the face of Republican control of both the White House and Congress.

Greens, for their part, are aware that the tone has changed in city politics. Cam Gordon, who served a term as Green Party chair, admitted that “campaign finance hasn’t been as much of an issue this time around.” He pointed out that the Green Party didn’t endorse Ralph Nader in last year’s presidential election, and that David Cobb, who did get the Green endorsement, promised not to launch an all-out campaign in the swing states (such as Minnesota). But, Gordon said, “Greens are having success by sticking to their core principles of grassroots democracy, ecological wisdom and social justice.” It remains to be seen whether that message is enough to undo the damage of Bush vs. Gore and sway uneasy Democrats over to a third party.

While the 2001 commission that drew up the new City Council map was bipartisan, the Green Party, clearly Minneapolis’ second most influential group, only had one representative. That was due to a technicality in the city charter, which granted seats on the commission according to the largest statewide parties. Back in 2001, those rules meant multiple appointments from the DFL, the Republicans and even the newly founded Independence party.

Needless to say, that kind of ideological distribution doesn’t fit the typical Minneapolis voter profile—combined, the Republican and Independence parties polled a mere 2 percent of the final 2001 city vote. That those parties held five seats on the commission while the Green Party had only one seat is an injustice that should go down in the annals of unrepresentative democracy … that is, if it is remembered at all.

Faced with the newly redistricted Minneapolis map, Councilmembers Johnson-Lee and Zimmermann, along with a handful of concerned citizens, filed a lawsuit accusing the commission of gerrymandering the city map. But challenging redistricting in court is notoriously difficult. The law requires that wards be contiguous, simple and representative, which are all subjective terms.

Zimmermann, who was involved in the lawsuit, alleges that the ’02 ward map failed on multiple counts. “First of all, it packs the 5th Ward,” Zimmermann told Pulse. “Now, if you look at it, you’ve got an 80 percent minority ward.” At the time, Johnson-Lee was more pointed, and called the new ward boundaries “racist and classist.”

There are a number of other allegations against the new city map, like the questionably long and skinny 3rd Ward running along the river in Northeast, or the shifted 8th Ward, where almost half of its primary votes came from the (wealthiest) two of its 10 precincts. But despite the litany of argument, the judge deciding the redistricting case ruled against Johnson-Lee, Zimmermann and their coalition of litigants. The ‘02 redistricting map was upheld, and it, as much as anything, is the reason why the political landscape for this election looks so different from the one four years ago.

This year, Greens haven’t spent much time campaigning on the redistricting trickery. Behind the scenes, though, it continues to be a nagging irritant causing many a sleepless night for affected Green candidates. And, as Woody Allen famously quipped, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s recent indictments involve redistricting in his home state of Texas, where the Republican majority gerrymandered up to seven new congressional seats for the last election. Just the possibility that the same thing might be happening in the grassroots stronghold of Minneapolis is a troubling thought.

As a result, Zimmermann and Johnson-Lee are locked in close races against incumbent opponents, and there’s a very real chance that Greens will lose representation on the City Council. Faced with the prospect of a one-party town, Zimmerman sounded defiant. He pointed to better-than-expected success in the mayor’s race, where Green upstart Farheen Hakeem pulled in 14 percent of the vote. “The Green Party is the only political party in this country that’s growing,” he said. “No matter what happens, we’re going to be here. Our platform and our values represent the mainstream of American thinking,” Zimmermann said.
In the short term, though, the Green Party is sitting on the brink of either relevance or obscurity. At the moment, all three top-tier Green candidates—Zimmermann, Johnson-Lee and Gordon—are confident they’ll win on Nov. 8. If they do, the Green Party will have done much to solidify its legitimacy as a voice within Minneapolis politics. On the other hand, if the new ward boundaries translate into a DFL sweep, Cam Gordon believes that something important will be lost. “That would be tragic for the political conversation in Minneapolis,” Gordon said. “A level of accountability, ideological diversity and an independent voice in City Hall would disappear.”