Nisswa City Council passes vote of no confidence in Mayor Jennifer Carnahan

Nisswa, Minn., Mayor Jennifer Carnahan has been removed from committee assignments and censured after the City Council passed a vote of no confidence in her this week.

The vote is largely symbolic and doesn’t carry any legal effect. It comes after months of tension within this rural, conservative lake town that has been embroiled in controversy over Carnahan’s conduct.

Carnahan, former chair of the state GOP, just completed her first year as mayor, during which she faced a revolving door of staff leaving city hall.

Tensions reached a boiling point around the holidays when Carnahan claimed on Facebook that she was physically assaulted by a resident outside the Ye Old Pickle Factory, a municipal bar. That resident denied assaulting Carnahan, and prosecutors twice declined to press charges.

The incident prompted council members to call for a special meeting in December to discuss Carnahan’s conduct. The mayor didn’t attend the meeting, but dozens of residents did to voice their concern and disapproval of the drama in Nisswa.

Council members directed the city attorney to draft a resolution of no confidence that passed at the Jan. 20 council meeting .

In an unusual move, Carnahan made the motion to adopt the resolution herself, calling it “very thin.”. Though she criticized the measure, she indicated that it had little consequence and she wanted to move past the drama. It was seconded by Council Member Jesse Zahn, who called on Carnahan to resign.

The resolution states that “in recent months, various incidents involving Mayor Carnahan have been the subject of council meetings,” and city policy states that council members “who intentionally and repeatedly do not follow proper conduct may be reprimanded or formally censured by the council.”

Carnahan said in the meeting that the resolution does not allege misconduct or establish any violation. She said all it does “is basically say, ‘We don’t like Jennifer and we don’t want her to play in our sandbox anymore’ because I decided not to resign.”

“I’m still the mayor of Nisswa,” she said. “Rather than elevate these antics and carry this drama forward another month, it’s time for us to get back to city business.”

Carnahan declined interview requests but provided a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune that read, in part:

“I was elected by the people of Nisswa, not the council, and will continue to be a positive leader for our city. I ran on a promise to lower taxes and bring transparency to Nisswa — and in my first year, we delivered a historic negative tax levy for 2026, reducing taxes instead of raising. That is exactly what I promised, and that is exactly what I delivered."

Resident Sandra Potthoff said “the key issue here is that another resident was accused of assault that was not substantiated by police.”

“If I were in her shoes, I would be traumatized,” Pothoff said.

The accused resident, Sophie Foster, 27, has previously told the Star Tribune that she feels supported by her community as many people attended recent council meetings in solidarity with Foster, who works at a local restaurant and is a lifelong Nisswa resident.

Carnahan’s ties to Nisswa date back to when she was a child vacationing there with her parents. After the 2022 death of her husband, U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, she moved from the Twin Cities to Nisswa, where she has owned and operated a boutique.