The 2017 Minneapolis City Council election was held on November 7, 2017, to elect the members of the

Minneapolis City Council The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections ...

. The political composition remained unchanged, with the

Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) is the Minnesota affiliate of the U.S. Democratic Party. As of 2022, it controls four of Minnesota's eight U.S. House seats, both of its U.S. Senate seats, the Minnesota House of Represen ...

(DFL) retaining 12 seats and the

Green Party of Minnesota The Green Party of Minnesota is a green political party in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is affiliated with the Green Party of the United States. History The Minnesota Greens Confederation, founded 1990–91, fostered the development of loca ...

one seat. Three DFL incumbents were defeated by intraparty opponents. The new City Council convened on January 8, 2018.

Retiring members

DFL

* Elizabeth Glidden, Ward 8 *

Jacob Frey Jacob Lawrence Frey ( ; born July 23, 1981) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota since 2018. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, he served on the Minneapolis City C ...

, Ward 3 ** Ran for mayor of Minneapolis.

Electoral system

The 13 members of the City Council were elected from

single-member district A single-member district is an electoral district represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders. Single-member districts are also sometimes called single-winner vo ...

s via

instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the Un ...

, commonly known as ranked choice voting, for four-year terms. Voters had the option of ranking up to three candidates in order of preference. Municipal elections in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

are officially nonpartisan, although candidates were able to identify with a political party on the ballot.

Write-in candidate A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be poss ...

s must have filed a request with the Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services Division for votes for them to be counted.

Candidates

Results

There were clear winners in several wards on election night.

Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...

Council Member

Cam Gordon Cameron A. Gordon (born 1955) is an American politician who was a Green Party of the United States, Green Party member of the Minneapolis City Council from 2006 to 2022. He was a co-founder of the Green Party of Minnesota and was called "the mos ...

(Ward 2), who did not have an opponent, won re-election. Other council members who won on election night include DFLers Lisa Goodman (Ward 7),

Lisa Bender Elizabeth Peterson "Lisa" Bender (born May 11, 1978) is an American politician, city planner, and a former member of the Minneapolis City Council from the 10th Ward. In 2018, she was unanimously elected president of the Minneapolis City Council. ...

(Ward 10),

Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Dem ...

(Ward 12), and Linea Palmisano (Ward 13). Ward 8 DFL candidate

Andrea Jenkins Andrea Jenkins (born May 10, 1961) is an American politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, serving sin ...

also won, replacing retiring DFL Council Member Elizabeth Glidden. Wards which did not have a clear winner underwent several rounds of vote transfers on November 8. Three incumbents lost re-election. DFL Council President Barb Johnson (Ward 4) lost to DFL candidate

Phillipe Cunningham Phillipe M. Cunningham is a former city council member for Minneapolis Ward 4 and the first transgender man of color to be elected to public office in the United States. Cunningham won the council position in the 2017 Minneapolis City Council el ...

, DFL Council Member Blong Yang (Ward 5) to DFL candidate Jeremiah Ellison, and DFL Council Member

John Quincy Colonel John Quincy (July 21, 1689 – July 13, 1767) was an American soldier, politician and member of the Quincy political family. His granddaughter Abigail Adams named her son, the future president John Quincy Adams, after him. Two days aft ...

(Ward 11) to DFL candidate Jeremy Schroeder. DFL Council Members Kevin Reich (Ward 1), Abdi Warsame (Ward 6), and Alondra Cano (Ward 9) retained their seats. In Ward 3, DFL candidate Steve Fletcher won over Socialist Alternative candidate Ginger Jentzen, who won the most first-choice votes but did not gain sufficient transfer votes. This was the first occurrence of the initial leader not ending up the winner of an election in Minneapolis since it switched to ranked-choice voting in 2009. A similar situation subsequently occurred in Ward 4 in which Johnson lost to Cunningham. Jenkins and Cunningham are the first transgender persons to be elected to the City Council.

Ward 1

Ward 2

Ward 3

Ward 4

Ward 5

Ward 6

Ward 7

Ward 8

Ward 9

Ward 10

Ward 11

Ward 12

Ward 13

President of the City Council election

After the election, which resulted in the defeat of Council President Barb Johnson, it was reported that DFL Council Members

, Linea Palmisano, and Council Member-elect

were seeking to replace her. When the new City Council convened on January 8, 2018, it unanimously elected Bender to be president. Following Bender's election, it was revealed that Jenkins and Palmisano were respectively seeking to be elected president and vice-president as a ticket. Bender said that while she had the votes to defeat them and install her supporters as chairs of choice committees, she wanted to avoid the Council splitting into factions that had sometimes characterized the previous City Council. As part of a deal to get her unanimous support and to present a united front, Bender agreed that Jenkins would be vice-president, who was also elected unanimously. A new committee structure was agreed to and council members that did not nominally support her would be given choice committee chairs. Bender said that all council members had to compromise. A final deal was not reached until January 7.