Minnesota, back in the national spotlight, wrestles with its public image

For the people who live in Minnesota or have roots here, seeing the state become the center of international attention for tragic reasons now feels like a recurring nightmare.

Minnesota — especially its urban heart, Minneapolis — has been in the global spotlight since the killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent on Jan. 7. For many, the extraordinary scrutiny has been strikingly similar to what followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Last summer’s assassination of Melissa and Mark Hortman and the mass shooting of elementary school students at Annunciation Church also put the state at the epicenter of fiercely partisan political debates.

Whether about race and policing, gun control and mental health, or immigration and federal overreach, Minnesota has been the face of the issues.

It’s a divergence from a fly-over-state image that, until this decade, was easily distilled into a few key themes: the lakes, the cold winters, the Mall of America, Minnesota Nice and hockey.

Minnesotans are fielding messages and calls from loved ones around the nation, checking in and asking if the online images and TV broadcasts are an accurate depiction of life here. Civic leaders are already trying to understand and manage how recent events, and their ripple effects, might shape people’s interest in visiting, establishing or expanding businesses and living here.

“I think it’s less about what the issue is and more about the way we all respond,” said Jennifer Hellman, CEO and president of Goff Public, a St. Paul-based public relations firm.

Explore Minnesota, the state’s tourism agency, is bracing for a downturn.

The agency, like it did after last year’s assassinations and school shooting, has temporarily paused marketing efforts to ensure it’s “efficiently spending funds,” a spokesman said.

“We have no data that can speak to the direct impact to travel at this time,” he added, “but based on experience and knowledge from colleagues from other cities, we are preparing for a dip in travel numbers.”

Signs of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions are visible across the Twin Cities — from swarms of federal agents descending on places of business to posters in restaurant windows banning them to protests outside those same agents’ hotels.

Some visitors and performers are rethinking their plans. Comedian John Mulaney, for example, postponed stand-up shows scheduled this month in downtown Minneapolis. In a Facebook group for the American Birkebeiner cross-country skiing race in February, one poster encouraged participants to consider flying into Duluth or Eau Claire, Wis., instead of the Twin Cities.

Meet Minneapolis, the city’s convention and visitors bureau, is receiving daily questions, according to an agency spokeswoman.

“We are having open and honest conversations with meeting planners, event organizers and clients, and that transparency matters,” Meet Minneapolis President and CEO Melvin Tennant said in an email. “It’s always our goal for our visitors and groups to feel safe, welcomed and have the information they need to make informed decisions.”

From Jan. 4-10, Minneapolis hotels were 36% occupied, up 7 percentage points from a year ago. That’s a difference of about 5,500 rooms, according to the most recent data from analytics group STR.

A Meet Minneapolis spokeswoman attributed the spike to the Vikings home game against the Packers on Jan. 4 and the World Junior hockey tournament that ran through Jan. 5. She did not mention the surge in federal law enforcement.

Tennant has said Minneapolis’ recovery from the pandemic lagged other cities for a variety of reasons, including slower business travel and continued fallout from organizations that avoided the city in the wake of Floyd’s killing.

“What people consistently see when they spend time here is a state where community is strong, and people support one another, especially in challenging moments,” the agency said in a statement.

As businesses of all sizes grapple with the effects of the immigration enforcement activity, leaders are mulling their own response.

Hellman, who advises several Minnesota corporations and nonprofits, said organizations often prioritize communicating to the audiences that matter the most. Typically, that means employees and customers.

“What are they saying so that people feel safe, so they create environments where people can come to work and do their jobs but also acknowledge some of the significant events that are going on in Minnesota?” she said. “Businesses and organizations are being measured more on how they respond to a crisis than the crisis itself.”

Mike Logan, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber, said members across the political spectrum agree instability is bad for business.

“So the sooner we can return to a level of calm, civility and proactive focus on things with common respect across society, I think the better for all of us.”

Greater MSP, which recruits large companies and projects to the metro, typically in high-paying industries, has yet to receive many questions from businesses considering a move to Minnesota or an expansion in the state, said Matt Lewis, the organization’s vice president of partnership strategy.

That doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention. Businesses often deliberate over those decisions for longer periods of time, Lewis said, allowing them to examine a region’s fundamental qualities — such as infrastructure, the skilled workforce and the local supply chain.

“That’s usually going to transcend any media cycles or something that might be highly disruptive for a short period of time,” he said. “Unless it feels like there’s going to be a sustained reality for the long term or if those incidents change the fundamentals over time.”

In the past few years, a large portion of real estate agent Mike Smith’s clientele have been people looking to move to Minnesota from more conservative states.

It’s too soon to gauge the impact of the ICE crackdown on the state’s housing market. Winter is always the quietest — and most erratic — time of the year in Minnesota, with cold weather and snow affecting activity from week to week.

But sales data from Twin Cities Realtors groups shows the housing market in Minnesota, and especially the Twin Cities, had been largely resilient since the pandemic and the Floyd-related civil unrest.

“I am not getting phone calls with people needing, wanting to vacate Minneapolis in general,” Smith said. “The tone is frustration and sadness and yet resilience. People knowing that this is a storm that’s going to pass and knowing that they still want to be in our community.”

Katie Breslin, 33, and her wife moved to Minneapolis in 2023 from Indiana, drawn to the state’s reputation as a refuge for queer people, she said.

In recent weeks, she’s fielded messages from family, friends and former colleagues asking what it’s like here. It’s bad, Breslin tells them, mentioning how ICE agents have injured some of her friends.

“It’s a place that hasn’t had a lot of attention on it, and now attention is there,” she said, “and I hope that what people can learn from it is that there’s some really amazing people here, really great values.”

Sitting at the bar at Black Hart of St. Paul, Stacey Lehmann, 58, underlined his neighbors’ support for one another as a bright spot in a difficult moment.

“For me, it’s hard because I feel like we don’t want to be in the spotlight,” Lehmann said. “We just want to be safe in our city, and I feel like what’s happening now is not making us safe.”

He and others noted how the flurry of social media coverage, complicated by disinformation and artificial intelligence, has made it hard to discern what’s true. All of that has contributed to highly polarized reactions.

“The incidents that we have been experiencing as a community, that have been in our public discourse, those things are not just happening in Minnesota,” said Lewis of Greater MSP. “We are experiencing a lot of them. But people outside this place may be perceiving and experiencing that those are American phenomena that connect to broader trends and not just this place.”