The traditional path to Minneapolis City Hall starts at the neighborhood level, with a stint lobbying the powerful about potholes and controversy close to home while building a broad network of community contacts.
But the 2017 election season brings a slate of City Council candidates who have made names for themselves in a different way — through advocacy on specific high-profile issues, from legalizing same-sex marriage to passing a citywide $15 minimum wage. Council races in more than half the city's 13 wards include candidates who have led or worked with local activist groups.
"We're on the ground. We're doing this work. We're passing policy," said Stephanie Gasca, a Fourth Ward council candidate who works for workers' rights organization Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha. "We deserve to lead and be the decisionmakers as well."
It's not clear how issue advocacy will translate to wins on Election Day. But left-leaning groups organizing around national political turmoil have propelled many of the activist candidates to DFL endorsements and fundraising hauls.
Steve Fletcher, a Third Ward candidate and founding director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), won the DFL endorsement after just one round of voting at the May convention.
In November, Fletcher will face Tim Bildsoe, Samantha Pree-Stinson and Ginger Jentzen. Jentzen led the push for a citywide $15 minimum wage and raised more than $60,000 for her campaign in the first part of 2017 — the second most of any council candidate.
The winner will have to pivot from community organizing to governing, and candidates say they are stressing their breadth of experience to voters.
"I was at NOC for three years and people think, 'Oh, he's an activist,' " said Fletcher, adding that most of his career has been in technology and academia. "But that's the big public work. That's the thing that makes headlines."