In Brief:
- Democrats won big in municipal and state elections Tuesday night.
- Voters backed a mix of young progressives and more moderate establishment candidates.
- They also approved a handful of measures promoting more housing and transit in big cities.
This article is part of Governing's Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up to subscribe.
Democrats accomplished more on Tuesday than winning a couple of governorships and the mayoralty of New York City.
They won, importantly, most of the biggest mayoral elections of the night. Alongside New York, new Democratic mayors will take office in Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Paul, while Democratic incumbents were re-elected in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Minneapolis. And all of them seem to have found an iconic word to focus on: affordability.
Clearly a strong show of support for Democrats from urban voters. But the issues that drove the winning campaigns reflected a mix of local and national concerns, and the results pointed to divergent, sometimes contradictory, priorities for big-city voters. Does the party’s progressive or moderate wing have more momentum? Currently it’s yes to both.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s election to a third term, for example, comes five years after he slunk away from a crowd of protestors chanting, “Go home, Jacob, go home!” when he refused to support abolishing the city’s police force. Frey faced a handful of challengers in a ranked-choice election, the most formidable of whom was Omar Fateh, a Minnesota state representative aligned with the democratic socialists. Fateh was pushing for more aggressive police reform measures, and had criticized Frey’s clearing of homeless encampments, calling it expensive and ineffective. He earned 32 percent of the first-choice votes to Frey’s 42 percent in the first round. The progressive left didn’t get its candidate in the mayor’s office, but it held its majority in the City Council, and has proven to be a durable force in the city’s politics.
“There’s a deep frustration with the Democratic Party for being unable to break the status quo,” says Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “Even in cases where there has been change, the frustration is still there that there’s not more change.”
It’s a dynamic that Democrats are grappling with nationwide. Sifting through the election results for “the future of the party” is a kind of choose-your-own-adventure. Zohran Mamdani’s win was bracing and decisive, but it’s not obvious how it could be repeated outside of New York’s singular electorate. The affordability concerns that drove the campaign resonate basically everywhere; they’re also what drove a raft of Republican wins in the last election. But some of Mamdani’s main proposals — like freezing rents in rent-stabilized apartments and eliminating fares for millions of bus riders — don’t have easy parallels with broad appeal in smaller cities.
Seattle’s mayoral race, between incumbent Democrat Bruce Harrell and progressive challenger Katie Wilson, still has not been called. The campaign was animated by issues of homelessness which have plagued Seattle for years. Wilson attacked Harrell for his tough approach to clearing homeless encampments, something that’s become more common among leaders in western cities since a U.S. Supreme Court decision affirmed cities can ban outdoor camping. Democrats, including Harrell and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have sparked a backlash from progressives and homeless advocates who’ve said they’re effectively criminalizing homelessness. A question in Seattle is whether the more aggressive approach could cost an elected official their job.
There’s a generational shift underway in Detroit, meanwhile, with the election of 38-year-old Democrat Mary Sheffield, the first woman to become the city’s mayor. Sheffield, the city council president, was endorsed by outgoing three-term Mayor Mike Duggan, who has earned national attention for overseeing a turnaround of the city’s fortunes. Sheffield’s campaign focused on alleviating the city’s still-rampant poverty.
Miami’s 13-candidate mayoral race is advancing to a runoff next month, with Eileen Higgins, a Democratic Miami-Dade County commissioner who earned the most votes, facing Republican Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager. The outgoing Miami mayor is a Republican.
More Housing and Transit
Voters may have sent mixed messages with their mayoral selections on Tuesday night, but their message on ballot measures was straightforward: more housing and more transit. In New York City, voters approved three ballot measures that will streamline the process of permitting new construction. The measures chip away at the power of city councilmembers to block new housing because of localized opposition, or demand more affordable units or other amenities in exchange for their support. The new approach gives more power to the planning commission and the mayor’s office to decide where housing can be built.
Voters in Bozeman, Mont., rejected a measure that would have required developers to provide reduced-rent units in exchange for water rights in many cases. The measure was opposed by a big-spending coalition of real estate groups as well as tenants’ unions that said it could effectively block all development in the city.
The biggest win for public transit — amid a cascade of challenges around the country — was in Charlotte, where voters approved a sales tax increase to pay for transportation infrastructure. The measure is expected to raise some $19 billion over the next 30 years. At least 40 percent of the money will be spent on roads, part of a local effort to get sign-off from a skeptical state legislature. But the measure will also support the expansion of bus service and new commuter rail and light rail projects, which locals have long craved. Another big win for transit was in northwest Colorado, where voters approved a new regional transportation authority. Next year will be a big test for the future of urban transit, with a major funding measure planned for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Redistricting Shift
Another big win for Democrats on Tuesday was the passage of Proposition 50 in California. The measure advances a new congressional map that could give Democrats five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the effort in response to the redistricting effort in Texas, supported by President Donald Trump, to pull five more seats to Republicans. State legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina also approved new maps, adding a seat each for Republicans.
Opponents to mid-decade redistricting are mounting legal challenges to most of the efforts so far, including California’s. Meanwhile, GOP leaders in Kansas announced they couldn’t get the votes to call a special session for redistricting, though they may still try during their next regular session. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun recently called a special session for redistricting there, though there are still doubts about whether all the state’s Republican legislators are on board with the move.
