In three leafy, affluent – and high-turnout – voting precincts around Minneapolis’ Cedar Lake, Ward 7 candidate Scott Graham trounced his opponent Katie Cashman in last week’s City Council elections.
But Cashman won almost everywhere else, carrying eight of the ward’s 12 precincts on first-choice ballots alone. That was enough to close the gap. City officials declared her the winner, with nearly 51% of the vote, after counting second-choice ballots.
Cashman’s victory helped a coalition of left-leaning groups and critics of Mayor Jacob Frey clinch a majority on the City Council in the elections. Candidates endorsed by the Minneapolis for the Many PAC – or their allies, including those endorsed by the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists – now control seven of the council’s 13 seats.
MinnPost broke down first-choice voting data by ward and precinct, which helps illustrate where the closest races were decided.
Another political action committee, “All of Mpls,” which supports Frey, spent at least half-a-million dollars in hopes of giving more allies a seat of power at City Hall. Despite this financial advantage, All of Mpls won only one of the three races where the PAC went head-to-head against the left-wing coalition.
The lone victory? Ward 8, where incumbent Andrea Jenkins held onto her seat by 38 votes. Her strong showing in the Regina, Field and King Field neighborhoods appears to be part of the reason she was able to hold off three challengers, Soren Stevenson chief among them.
Here’s the same map, but re-colored to show the races where All of Mpls backed a candidate:
Note that the map still shows voting data from wards where the Minneapolis for the Many coalition did not field a candidate.
For example, in Ward 6, Jamal Osman was able to win a three-way re-election race by racking up huge margins in the Phillips and Ventura Village neighborhoods. Challenger Kayseh Magan performed strongest in a few downtown precincts and a sliver of Cedar-Riverside.
Many political operatives expected the race for the open Ward 12 seat to be close. Aurin Chowdhury had the backing of the Minneapolis for the Many coalition. Luther Ranheim was All of Mpls’ pick in the race. Both had strong fundraising numbers – and a third candidate, Nancy Ford, was doing her utmost to make it a three-way race.
But in the end, Chowdhury won all but two of the ward’s 12 precincts outright. The only two where she didn’t win on first-choice ballots? Morris Park, which borders the airport (by two percentage points), and one precinct that runs along 38th Street (by one percentage point).
Adding those precinct-level results together results in this map:
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