BY ED FELIEN
Where I grew up, around Roosevelt High School, folks in our corner of the City were considered very conservative, and folks around Kenwood and Loring Park were considered very liberal.
That’s changed.
Aurin Chowdhury
The 12th Ward DFL Convention rejected a challenge from a middle-of-the-road, law and order liberal in favor of an idealistic, we’re going to change the world for the better, radical.
I have a special affection for Park Commissioner Becka Thompson. She was one of the minority on the Park Board to vote against the Hiawatha Plan that will flood neighborhoods around Lake Hiawatha. I have, for years, written about the dams on Minnehaha Creek blocking water from leaving Lake Hiawatha, thereby raising the water level of the lake and the water table for the surrounding community, but the Park Board staff refuse to listen. They dream of creating a new swamp, a bigger and better swamp than the Mud Lake that Theodore Wirth dredged in 1933. Wirth created a park, a swimming beach, a golf course and a lake with fish in it. Park Board staff think a mud hole will be much more attractive, and they’ve already spent more than a million dollars just talking about it.
The only time I asked for a meeting with a Twelfth Ward Council Member was when Andrew Johnson was in office. I wanted to talk to him about dredging Lake Hiawatha to remove the tons of sand that had accumulated
Becka Thompson
there. Every winter the city spreads sand on the streets to give traction to cars. That sand washes into the storm sewers and eventually quite a bit of it ends up in Lake Hiawatha. This has reduced the depth of Lake Hiawatha from Wirth’s 33 feet to a sandbar in many places. Johnson brought in a couple of staff people who told me in no uncertain terms that they were returning the lake to its natural state—a mud hole.
The new Council Member for the Twelfth Ward, Aurin Chowdhury, had office hours once in a coffee shop last year. I stopped by and asked her about removing the sand from Lake Hiawatha. She smiled (a little too much, perhaps) and said, “I’ll ask staff about it.”
Clearly, she had been forewarned and armed against my pleading.
I know of two people, supporting opposing candidates, who submitted the same question to candidates at the DFL Twelfth Ward endorsing convention: “Would you get the Public Works Department to remove the
Elizabeth Shaffe
sand and restore water quality to Lake Hiawatha?” The question never came up at the Convention, but it is a worthwhile question to pose here to the candidates aiming to represent the community surrounding Lake Hiawatha and I hope for an answer by June 20 for our July edition.
Chowdhury easily won the DFL endorsement, but Becka Thompson is challenging her in the November election.
Over in the Seventh Ward, by Lake of the Isles and Loring Park, things turned out quite differently.
There, Park Board Commissioner, Elizabeth Shaffer, another of the sane minority on the Park Board to vote against the flooding of South Minneapolis, was able to win 60.49% of the vote and the DFL endorsement for City Council against incumbent Katie Cashman. The landlord lobby, We Love Mpls, spent heavily to turn out their people for the caucuses and the ward convention in support of Shaffer. Cashman has a record of defending renters; she was also the author of an ordinance that makes it easier to convert empty office space downtown into apartments.
There were unusual fireworks in the Second Ward DFL Convention.
Katie Cashman
Robin Wonsley, unquestionably the most eloquent and consistent defender of progressive causes on the City Council, didn’t want the DFL endorsement, but she (or her supporters) didn’t want anyone else to have it either. Some of the more conservative DFLers in the Second Ward sought a court order to delay the convention to a date when classes at the U would be over and students would have left. Thanks in part to the legal work of attorney Erin Emory, the convention was held as originally scheduled, and supporters of Wonsley were able to block an endorsement of any challenger.
The Second Ward DFL has a history of not endorsing a candidate to run against a progressive incumbent. Cam Gordon, running as a Green Party candidate, represented the Second Ward for years. He says, “After I won against an endorsed DFL candidate they didn’t endorse anyone the next four elections. They didn’t even run anyone for the next three, which I
Robin Wonsley
won. I can’t really take the credit, but I had some big fans within that party who definitely worked at it. One year they even passed a resolution supporting not running anyone against me at their convention.”
