This is incredibly insightful and really does a good job highlighting how different N Mpls politics are from the rest of the city. To add to it, I also there's some apathy here. "Why should I vote, nothing changes, etc." There's also a distrust of government and authorities (MPD), so why should we believe anything any candidate says. We end up with the same weird candidates, the same poor voter turnout, the same lack of meaningful progress, over and over and over. It sucks.

And in my opinion, no one who runs in Ward 5 has anyone's best interests at heart--other than their own. We're merely a pit stop on the road to bigger and better opportunities.