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John is joined by co-host Jason Garcia for a conversation with Aisha Chughtai, who's running for Minneapolis City Council. We start with an inappropriate degree of fawning from an uninvited special guest. Aisha wants to know how long this show will go (we have no good answers). Aisha talks about balancing work and running for office as she enters the heart of the campaign. And what it's like to be...

John has a conversation with Minneapolis City Council candidate Katie Jones. We talk about the incredibly high stakes for this election while Katie sits on the floor of her attic. In a time like this, why disrupt your life to become a candidate? John chides Katie the engineer for not laughing at his jokes and expresses frustration with election year distraction politics. What is Katie's response t...

On the thrilling conclusion of BET Candidates Week: Steve Brandt. John begins by asking Steve to give his assessment of where Minneapolis stands after the events of the past year or so. How would Steve explain the BET to a normal human being? What would Steve do if the Council needed his help raising the tax levy to fund alternative public safety priorities beyond what's contained in the mayor's b...

Pine Salica is our first guest for BET Candidates Week! We start off with the basics. What is the BET? Why do you want this job? Are you a fiscal conservative or are you willing to provide budget flexibility to fund essential city priorities? We talk about the public safety charter amendment and the recent ballot language controversy. Pine tells us about their desire to have Minneapolis raise mone...

John is joined by Jeremiah Ellison who represents Ward 5 in North Minneapolis. Jeremiah says he's a progressive outlier in a historically low-turnout ward that tends to elects more conservative council members ("we made people feel like it was worth voting" in 2017). We talk about a housing crisis Jeremiah faced early in his first term; the rent control charter amendment (and mayoral veto); public...

John is joined by Erica Mauter for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the 2021 election. Erica reacts to John's narration of what he calls "the Kneecapping of Erica Mauter" by the Star Tribune Editorial Board. Erica talks about her experience campaigning for City Council as a Queer Black woman in an especially white part of Minneapolis (Ward 11), and how that influenced her decision to...

It's a wide ranging election year conversation with longtime local journalist ("40 years of sedimentary layers in Minneapolis"), and Twitter Dad to all , David Brauer. David talks John through the various scenarios, ranking them on a scale of how likely they are to make you poop your pants. After covering the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and the various City Council races, we discuss two charte...

John is joined by Jason Garcia and investigator Taylor Dahlin. Taylor has untangled the web of mystery and deceit that surround the Mickey Moore campaign for Minneapolis City Council in Ward 9. Questions beget more questions in the quest to understand the real Mickey Moore. Does Mickey Moore really live in Ward 9 where he is currently running for City Council? Did he ever live in the 5th District...

John and co-host Elissa Schufman start off the show with an extended period of delightful co-host banter, demonstrating mutual respect and admiration — making a convincing case to listeners that they enjoy being in each other's presence. John asks, does Elissa consider herself to be the Wedge LIVE equivalent to the late Andy Rooney, of 60 Minutes fame? Does she who know that is? What's the deal wi...

John and co-host PeggySue have a conversation with Jeremy Schroeder, who represents Ward 11 on the Minneapolis City Council. First we ask about chickens. Then we talk about his first term, the leadership role he's taken on housing and public safety, and how city hall has been more political and less collaborative than he expected. PeggySue's cat derails the episode by obliterating John's script. T...

John is joined by co-host Pine, a Senior Political Analyst who is currently managing the only citywide DFL endorsed campaign in Minneapolis. After some co-host banter, Nick Kor arrives for a conversation about his run for the Ward 7 seat on the Minneapolis City Council. We talk about the political geography of Ward 7 (East of Hennepin Ave vs. West of Hennepin Ave). How do you convince the apartmen...

John is joined by Jason Garcia and Taylor Dahlin to dole out conventional wisdom on everything that's happened through the first half of the 2021 election year in Minneapolis. Did Mayor Jacob Frey really win by losing, as traditional media personalities would have you believe? Will the city council swing conservative or progressive? We can help you interpret the meaning behind DFL endorsements and...

John is joined by guests Ash Narayanan and Elissa Schufman to talk about what's wrong with Minneapolis streets and how to fix them. Ash is educated as a civil and traffic engineer, but decided to use those powers for good, as the executive director of Our Streets Minneapolis . Our Streets is an organization that "works for a city where biking, walking, and rolling are easy and comfortable for ever...

John is secretly very tired of talking to candidates for Minneapolis Park Board, so he combined two of them into one episode, just to get this over with quicker. Becky Alper ( beckyforparks.org ) is running in district 3 and Tom Olsen ( olsenforparks.org ) running citywide at-large. We talk about parkways and how to use them. John maintains that not even the biggest automobile enthusiast goes to a...

John is joined by co-host Jason Garcia for a conversation about public safety and election year politics with guest Asma Mohammed Nizami. Topics for co-host banter include the conservative effort to quickly build out an array of new organization to match progressive political infrastructure in Minneapolis; an update to the Wedge LIVE endorsements venn diagram and voter guide; the Yellow Pages; Joh...

John talks to Eric Moran, who's running to represent North Minneapolis (and a tiny part of the North Loop neighborhood) on the Minneapolis Park Board. Eric says he's running a campaign focused on both physical and digital access to the parks system and its government. With recent news of Minneapolis dropping in the ranking of best urban parks systems (based on the percentage of people who live wit...

A year after George Floyd's murder by four Minneapolis police officers, rising rates of violent crime (locally and across the country) have created a backlash to the backlash. Demands for a new system of public safety have been met with calls for more police from a reinvigorated law-and-order political coalition. John and co-host Jason Garcia speak with Logan Carroll about his story in the Minneso...

John is joined by guest co-host PeggySue Imihy. The guest is Kate Knuth, candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. We start the show by playing PeggySue's theme song. Then we poke fun at a rival podcast host. John expresses disappointment in PeggySue's late decision to become a city delegate and reveals he takes pleasure in the pain of Ward 10 candidate David Wheeler. Kate and PeggySue bond over their s...

John is joined by guest co-host Jason Garcia, and they begin by chatting about the state of the race for mayor. Then, a conversation with Sheila Nezhad, candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. Sheila's a policy organizer with Reclaim the Block, who's spent the past few years pushing Minneapolis elected officials to divert funding away from police into alternative approaches to public safety. What does...

Minneapolis DFL caucus registration closed on April 30, so we're checking in with data wizard (and cat tour cinematographer) Conrad Zbikowski for an early look at the results. Over 10,000 people registered -- 3,000 of them in the final two days. 4,500 yet-to-be-confirmed caucus registrants have until midnight on May 7 to input the security code mailed to their home address. We don't know who has t...

Parking has an impact on everything from the environment to housing affordability to public health to foreign policy. John talks with two people excited that the city of Minneapolis is about to eliminate car parking minimums once and for all. Linnea Goderstad's concerns about climate change led her to join up with Neighbors for More Neighbors, and work to move us away from the car-centric way citi...

John interviews Risa Hustad, who once led him into danger on Lyndale Avenue. Risa is running for Minneapolis Park Board in District 6 (southwest Minneapolis). Because the Minneapolis Park Board is the meanest level of municipal government, John challenges Risa to "prove to us you're not a malignant personality." Topics include Burger King, Lake Chipotle, Embers family restaurant, keeping pollution...

Our guest is Steve Fletcher, who represents Ward 3 on the Minneapolis City Council. In the wake of the police killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, we talk about how to break the cycle, the need for a new system of public safety, and Steve's work fleshing out what that looks like in Minneapolis. John bemoans a year of crime and safety politics that haven't made sense, and worries that we're...

John is joined by co-host Pine, who is unreasonably excited about the opportunity to interview Ward 13 candidate Mike Norton. Pine's connection to Ward 13 consists entirely of finding the name Palmisano on a mailbox during a visit to Italy. Norton is an award-winning business leader who was once falsely accused of being a media mogul by a crime-themed Facebook page. He tells us he he felt compelle...

2021 election season is underway in Minneapolis! In a conversation continued from our previous episode, Taylor, Jason, and John give their endorsements for Mayor and City Council (note: only John's endorsements are approved by the Wedge LIVE editorial board). Check out John's written endorsements at wedgelive.com/caucus . To have a say in the virtual Minneapolis DFL endorsement process, register t...