‘How lonely the job is’: Trailblazer Andrea Jenkins looks back on her time at Minneapolis City Hall

Andrea Jenkins had worked as a policy aide to two Minneapolis City Council members but never really understood the demands of the job.

Until she was in it.

Her biggest surprise: “How sort of lonely the job is. And how heavy the loads are. And I was right next to two different council members. So that kind of surprised me. I thought I knew, and I didn’t. I learned.”

After 12 years as an aide and eight as an elected council member, including two as council president, Jenkins — the nation’s first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office — decided to end her trailblazing career at City Hall.

After witnessing her south-central Minneapolis ward drift further left, and struggling with an increasingly challenging illness, Jenkins, 64, declined to seek re-election last fall. Her term ended when the new year began.

In a recent interview, she said the sense of isolation grew in recent years, as the acrimony on display in City Council chambers crept into the back corridors, out of public view.

“There’s a lot of tension,” she said.

“In many ways, it’s like family,” Jenkins said. “It used to be more so. Everybody would celebrate everybody’s birthday. We would have holiday gatherings. It was much more collegial.

“Since I’ve been elected, that sort of family atmosphere has sort of dissipated and with this latest council it just completely went away.”

Two years ago, a bloc of more progressive members took control of City Council, and that led to frequent clashes with more moderate Democrats and Mayor Jacob Frey.

Jenkins was part of the more moderate wing of the council, whose members were shut out of leadership and given fewer committee seats.

In the past, she said, the council had a “we’re all in this thing together” attitude. Now, Jenkins said, “It kind of feels like us versus them” even though “we’re all very left-leaning Democrats.”

“We should all be trying to govern this city. I think when you have a stronger sense of collegiality, it helps you govern better,” Jenkins said. “I wouldn’t say the mayor bears no responsibility, but it can’t be 100% just him.”

She said she thinks some of it is generational, with young people who are more drawn to the democratic socialist wing of the party “very unwilling to compromise.”

That more-progressive bloc lost ground in this past November’s election, and its members no longer have a veto-proof majority. The council is now comprised of six progressive members, six comparatively moderate members and one self-declared swing vote, Jamal Osman, who often sides with the progressives.

Jenkins said she hopes the new City Council will show more willingness to “come to the table and talk to each other.” (However, its first meeting didn’t suggest that would happen.)

Before Jenkins ran for the council, she committed to herself and to her partner to serving two terms, knowing she’d be close to 65 years old by the time her run ended.

Jenkins was an athlete throughout her life, and during a send-off at her final council meeting in December, community activist Bill English recalled seeing her dunk a basketball.

One of Jenkins’ favorite activities was walking around the lakes, but after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during her first year in office, she was forced to use a cane to get around, then a walker and, eventually, a scooter.

“Hopefully, removing some of that workplace stress will allow me to kind of regain and at least stabilize the decline,” Jenkins said.

She became council president in 2022 and can rattle off a number of accomplishments that were achieved over the past four years: establishing a poet laureate for the city; creating an arts department; passing the 2040 long-term development plan; leading the 38th Street Thrive strategic development plan to preserve the historically Black corridor.

In December, the council also finally agreed on plans for the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where George Floyd was killed.

In 2021, as she drove out of a parking lot after a Taking Back Pride march, she was “trapped” in her car by a group of activists. They insisted she agree to six demands, including a call for Frey’s resignation and that she “leave George Floyd Square alone.”

“They went too far, but it was also an attack on my integrity and my understanding of the situation,” Jenkins said. “It’s like folks feeling like they have the answer, and that’s final.”

A decision in December 2024 by the full council to reject a city plan for George Floyd Square was another blow, said Jenkins, who lives just blocks away.

“That really hurt. That really hit me hard,” she said.

But in the final days of Jenkins’ tenure, several council members changed their minds. “Maybe there was some sentimentality that I was leaving the City Council,” she said.

“You love to break down the door, and hold it open for others,” she said. “You gave me my first big break in politics.”

With her decision to leave office and the Trump administration “wreaking havoc on American life,” Jenkins said, she feels drawn to reconnect with her artist roots.

“At the risk of sounding morbid, before we move on I want to be able to try and recapture and document and maybe change some hearts and minds through literature and poetry and public speaking,” she said.

Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw said she and Jenkins bonded over shoes, hair and clothes.

“We’re both Chicago girls, here in a different city and really just bonding over loving this city,” Vetaw said during her Dec. 11 farewell speech. “You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

The council is also losing three other members.

Jeremiah Ellison, 36, served eight years representing the North Side’s Ward 5, where he was born. He described his tenure as “two years of prosperity and then 2020.”

“The job can threaten to wear you down,” said Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Pearll Warren, a more moderate candidate than the one Ellison endorsed, won his seat.

The council member who seemed to cause the most tears to be shed during December’s goodbye speeches was Emily Koski, the daughter of former Mayor Al Hofstede.

She briefly challenged Frey for mayor before dropping out of the race in April.

Her seat was won by Jamison Whiting, a police reform attorney for the city.

Elected in 2023, Katie Cashman, whose Ward 7 includes some of the city’s wealthiest enclaves, was the only departing council member who ran for re-election last year. She lost her bid for a second term to Elizabeth Shaffer, a member of the Minneapolis Board of Parks and Recreation, in the most expensive council race. Shaffer raised nearly twice as much campaign cash — $249,000 to Cashman’s nearly $131,000.