Several list members have questioned whether a black candidate can win and become the councilmember for ward 3.
I believe that the results of the 2001 ward 5 campaign between Cherryhomes and Johnson Lee show that message is more important than race in determining who wins the ward 3 contest. (A year ago, I saw tables listing both voting results and ethnic breakdown of ward 5 by precincts. Conor Donnelly, our wonderful map guru, has provided me with information on voting results by precinct. However, despite two weeks of efforts, I have been unable to find the ethnic breakdown for ward 5 precincts. The figures I refer to are based on the memory of what I saw a year ago. I am sorry if they are not exactly correct, but they are close enough to make the point) Ward 5 is amazingly diverse, stretching from public highrise housing along Olson Highway to the chic new quarter million dollar townhouses along the river. The precincts in ward 5 are equally diverse, ranging from populations that are nearly 90% white in on precinct to nearly 90% non-white in another. In the 2001 city council election, the precinct that was close to 90% white voted about 55% Cherryhomes and 45% Johnson Lee. The precinct that was close to 90% non-white voted about 55% Johnson Lee and about 45% Cherryhomes. What this indicates to me is that race was not the deciding factor for most voters in the 5th ward. If most people were voting on the basis of race, then I would have expected the vote total to more closely reflect the makeup of the precinct. So in the precinct that was almost 90% white, I would have expected Cherryhomes to pick up maybe 80% of the vote, not 55%. What this suggests for the ward 3 contest is that it will not be race that will decide the success of a candidate, but the appeal of the message. If memory serves me correctly, northeast has a majority of the registered voters in ward 3 This means that any black candidate, or any candidate from the northside, must pick up a bloc of votes from northeast to win. On the other hand, a northeast candidate could run a successful campaign by concentrating her campaign and her message pretty much exclusively on northeast, hoping to go over the top by mortheast outpolling the northside. A black candidate, or for that matter any candidate from the northside, must have a message that appeals both to the northside and to northeast in order to have a real chance of winning. Finding a message that appeals equally to north and northeast Minneapolis is a tricky endeavor. Take, for instance, crime. Both northside and northeast residents are acutely concerned about crime and the police. But exactly how the issue of crime plays out on each side of the river has some marked differences. In northeast, a neighborhood meeting focused on crime is a guaranteed crowd drawer. But most residents believe that they live on primarily safe streets, and that crime, when it happens, is an unexpected anomaly, usually carried out by people outside of the neighborhood. Most northeasterners see the police as friends and allies, people to look up to and respect, people who might even live just down the block. Northsiders, if anything, are even more preoccupied with crime. But for people in the most embattled neighborhoods, crime is not an unexpected anomaly, but an everyday worry and threat that twists every routine in a person's life. You worry that when your kids wait for the bus they might find a used condom in the bushes. You rush from you car into the house at night, for fear of what could happen if you stay outside too long. You are afraid to answer the door because they could be gang members shaking you down. For many northsiders the criminals are as likely to come from the house across the street as from an address two miles away. Often northsiders feel as if they are hanging on by their fingernails, and see the police as their one remaining hope. The vast majority of northsiders are desperate to have the police do a first-rate job of protecting the community. I remember that one block, after a drug raid, threw an impromptu street party, with one resident even dancing with the police. The next day the block brought over cans of nuts and candies to the police station as a token of appreciation for the work the police had done. While I worked at Jordan Area Community council, neighbors worked closely with police to shut down 50 drug houses in 18 months. The neighbors responded by hosting potlucks and celebrations, they organized parades with hundreds of people that went by the drug bust locations, and gave neighborhood awards to the police. The neighbors were desperately grateful for the police doing a good job. And yet I found that even the most ardent supporter of the police, when I scratched below the surface, would often express misgivings about how some police carried out their responsibilities. For instance, i remember one woman who kept an absolutely immaculate house and yard, and participated in the block club and the bike patrol. She complained to me one day about how, when she saw a burglar breaking into a neighbor's house, the police officer told her that what did she expect, she lived in north Minneapolis. This was a complaint I heard again and again in Jordan. I was also amazed at how many people would tell me about how they or a friend or a relative had been mistreated by north Minneapolis police. In the past week, I have heard from someone who is white, someone who is black and someone who is Hmong who told me about how they or a relative had been slammed down across the hood of their car during a traffic stop. During last summer's drug dealing on 26th Ave., neighbors exhorted the police to aggressively combat the drug dealing, and applauded when the police scored a victory. Yet several times I privately heard people question whether the police were going all-out to close down the drug dealers or were just going through the motions. I even heard a couple of people wonder if the police were willing to allow continued drug dealing on 26th, because at least then they knew where the drug dealers were. In short, on the northside people are scared of crime and want the police to do a good job, but many at the same time feel a deep ambivalence about how police officers sometimes do their jobs. The differing perceptions in north and northeast about crime and the police is just one example of the challenges facing any candidate trying to fashion a message that can appeal to both sides of the river. Doing this is the key to any black and/or northside candidate winning the 3rd ward race. Jay Clark Cooper _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
