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Katherine Knuth
Katherine Knuth (Democratic Party) was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing District 50B. She assumed office in 2007. She left office in 2013.
Knuth (Democratic Party) ran for election for Mayor of Minneapolis in Minnesota. She lost in the general election on November 2, 2021.
Knuth completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Elections in Minneapolis are officially nonpartisan, but the Minneapolis City Charter allows mayoral and city council candidates to choose a party label to appear below their name on the official ballot. Ballotpedia includes candidates' party or principle to best reflect what voters will see on their ballot.[1]
Biography
Katherine Knuth was born in New Brighton, Minnesota. Knuth's professional experience includes working as an author. She founded Democracy and Climate LLC, which provides strategy, policy, research, writing, and consulting services. Knuth earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 2003, a degree from Oxford University in 2005, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2019.[2]
Knuth has been affiliated with the Bryn Mawr Neighborhood Association Board the Northern Star Council of the Boy Scouts of America.[2]
Committee assignments
2011-2012
In the 2011-2012 legislative session, Knuth served on these committees:
2009-2010
In the 2009-2010 legislative session, Knuth served on these committees:
- Commerce and Labor
- Energy Finance and Policy Division
- Environment and Natural Resources Finance Division
- Finance
Elections
2021
See also: Mayoral election in Minneapolis, Minnesota (2021)
General election
General election for Mayor of Minneapolis
The ranked-choice voting election was won by Jacob Frey in round 2 . The results of Round are displayed below. To see the results of other rounds, use the dropdown menu above to select a round and the table will update.
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Total votes: 143,974 |
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 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Endorsements
To view Knuth's endorsements in the 2021 election, please click here.
Campaign finance
Endorsements
This section lists noteworthy endorsements issued in this election, including those made by high-profile individuals and organizations, cross-party endorsements, and endorsements made by newspaper editorial boards. It also includes a bulleted list of links to official lists of endorsements for any candidates who published that information on their campaign websites. Please note that this list is not exhaustive. If you are aware of endorsements that should be included, please click here.
Click the links below to see endorsement lists published on candidate campaign websites, if available.
| Noteworthy endorsements | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Endorsement | Frey (D) | Knuth (D) | Nezhad (D) |
| Elected officials | |||
| Gov. Tim Walz (D) | ✔ | ||
| Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) | ✔ | ||
| Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)[3] | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) | ✔ | ||
| Minneapolis City Councilor Lisa Bender | ✔ | ||
| Minneapolis City Councilor Steve Fletcher (D) | ✔ | ||
| Minneapolis City Councilor Jeremy Schroeder (D) | ✔ | ||
| State Sen. Erin Murphy (D) | ✔ | ||
| Individuals | |||
| Former Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton | ✔ | ||
| Former state Rep. Jean Wagenius (D) | ✔ | ||
| Organizations | |||
| AFSCME Council 5 | ✔ | ||
| IUPAT DC 82 | ✔ | ||
| Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council | ✔ | ||
| Minneapolis Firefighters Local 82 | ✔ | ||
| SEIU MN State Council | ✔ | ||
| Teamsters Joint Council 32 | ✔ | ||
| TakeAction MN | ✔ | ||
| MN 350 Action | ✔ | ||
| Minnesota DFL Environmental Caucus | ✔ | ||
| OutFront Minnesota Action (2nd rank choice) | ✔ | ||
| Sierra Club Minneapolis Political Committee | ✔ | ||
| OutFront Minnesota Action (1st rank choice) | ✔ | ||
| Run For Something 2021 | ✔ | ||
| Twin Cities DSA | ✔ | ||
2010
Knuth won re-election to the District 50B seat in 2010. She had no primary opposition. She defeated Russ Bertsch (R) in the general election on November 2, 2010.[4]
| Minnesota House of Representatives, District 50B (2010) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Votes | Percent | ||
 Katherine Knuth (DFL)
|
8,455 | 52.4% | ||
| Russ Bertsch (R) | 7,667 | 47.51% | ||
| Write-In | 14 | 0.09% | ||
2008
On November 4, 2008, Katherine Knuth won election to the District 50B Seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, defeating Lori Grivna. [5]
Katherine Knuth raised $56,178 for her campaign.[6]
| Minnesota House of Representatives, District 50B (2008) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Votes | Percent | ||
| Katherine Knuth (DFL)
|
11,968 | 56.51% | ||
| Lori Grivna (R) | 9,185 | 43.37% | ||
| Write-In | 26 | 0.12% | ||
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Katherine Knuth completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Knuth's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am running for mayor because I love Minneapolis, and I have the skill, relationships and experience to serve effectively in this moment in our city. I have the commitment to making a city that works better for everyone, and a track record of working within large, public bureaucracies to make them work better for the times we are in.
- Minneapolis is demanding a public safety system founded on one key value. Every person – regardless of race, gender, age, income, ability, or zip code – should be safe in our city. Voters are rightly asking for this vision and a concrete path toward it. I will bring both to the Mayor’s Office.
- We need an unabashed climate justice champion in the Mayor’s office. As mayor, I will make Minneapolis a national leader in addressing global climate change at the city level.
- I am running for Mayor because we need new leadership. We have the opportunity to potentially transform our systems that have not been working for too many of our citizens for far too long. I come in with a deep commitment to doing the hard work can enable everyone one of us to build a better Minneapolis.
We need to ensure that the development/redevelopment of any property whether that is housing or commercial properties are built equitably and do not continue to perpetuate the harms that have marginalized so many in our community. To combat gentrification, I will work with community organizations in areas that are potentially most highly impacted, invest in pathways to collective ownership models in multi-unit buildings, and increase focus on homeownership/business ownership, especially along our major corridors on Broadway and on Lake Street where too many are owned by large corporations.
- How will the project help to build racial justice and equity in our city?
- How does the project help us build climate resilience as a city either by reducing emissions, helping adapt to climate change or both?
- How does this capital investment help to maintain/strengthen our city’s current infrastructure? Or how pressing is the maintenance aspect of the project?
I’ve spent my career leading on climate. As a parent who kept my daughter inside because of bad air last summer, I know climate change is a health and safety issue. Our water infrastructure is not climate-ready. As mayor, I will make Minneapolis a national leader on climate change. Minneapolis is more than ready.
I will update the city’s climate action plan in my first year, increasing our ambition to align with what science demands. I will use the tools of the mayor’s office to deliver on the ambition of our city’s transportation action plan. We will put environmental justice at the center, reducing pollution in neighborhoods overburdened by unhealthy air. We will create our city’s first climate resilience plan, while actively undoing the racial injustice in our city’s geography that makes redlined neighborhoods 10 degrees hotter than non-redlined neighborhoods on hot days.I’ll also mobilize public and private sector resources to go block by block to weatherize, insulate, and electrify homes and businesses rather than asking individual property owners to figure it out themselves. I’ll prioritize creating economic opportunity for communities of color through good-paying climate jobs and clean energy ownership.
We need to ask police to do less, so they can focus more on what we need them to do – responding to, investigating, and actually solving violent crime. And we need to dig in to have real transparency and accountability for misconduct.
As mayor, I will build a powerful coalition to address the power of the Police Federation in our city, with transparency and accountability as a foundation.
Two key pillars of my plan to Build Community Safety and Transform Policing are particularly important here:
- Whole-System Approach - Create a Department of Public Safety that dramatically expands the Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) and puts Police, Fire, OVP, and emergency management under a unified structure.
I worked with dozens of community and policy leaders to develop my Building Community Safety & Transforming Policing plan. It’s a vision & path toward becoming a city in which every person feels and is safe.
The key pillars of my plan are:
Economic Security. Economic security is the foundation of safety. I would invest the $133 million from the American Relief Plan on economic security - particularly focusing on Black and brown communities.
Whole-System Approach - Create a Department of Public Safety that dramatically expands the Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) and puts Police, Fire, OVP, and emergency management under a unified structure.
Invest in Young Men - Launch the “Claim Our Future” Initiative for young men ages 10-26, expanding OVP’s current work into a citywide program of leadership curriculum, mentorship, wraparound services, and employment.
Unbundle and Transform MPD Ask police to do less so they can focus on what we need them to - responding to, investigating, and solving violent crime. Build trust by ending over-policing and ensuring transparency and accountability.
Active Leadership - Use the Mayor’s office to bring together leadership to make real progress here. Serve as a proactive leader on holistic public safety and police transformation.
I see the work we are doing to build a holistic, effective public safety system in Minneapolis as an essential part of building a multiracial democracy. For our democracy to work, every person needs to feel safe in our city, which is fundamentally connected to feeling fully connected to and invested in our city.
But despite all these things, I have heard something deeper throughout the campaign. The people of Minneapolis love this city. They are more than ready to dig in to build it together. So many are, in fact, already doing so. I am approaching my campaign, and would approach my mayoral administration, from the foundational value that together we are building a multiracial democracy. We are building a place in which every person can live with dignity and act with power in public life.
In Minneapolis, I’m excited to show what it means to build a real multiracial democracy at the most local level. As we reimagine and build a holistic public safety system, I’m committed to radical transparency in this work, and working through people’s and neighborhood organizations to build trust in this work. I am excited about how the people in our city will dig into the possibilities of Minneapolis truly leading on addressing the climate crisis, which I also envision as part of the legacy I hope to leave.
I started my campaign by asking people in Minneapolis to step forward with the courage to imagine a better Minneapolis and then step forward into actually building it. When I ask for support, I ask for something more. I ask for people to join in the hard, joyful work of building our city. I know we in Minneapolis have what it takes to meet this moment and make it a real turning point toward a Minneapolis that works for every person in our city.
Building this system requires taking seriously both the prevalence of community violence and the harm caused by policing – particularly in Black, brown, and Indigenous communities. As we work together to create a system for public safety that works for everyone, we need to recognize this history and repair harm. I am committed to intentional collaboration with Black, brown, and Indigenous communities in the city to ensure we’re addressing concerns from the most highly-impacted communities. I will appoint city leadership in our Office of Violence Prevention and police departments that are grounded in and responsive to highly-impacted communities. I will push these leaders to engage effectively with communities more heavily-impacted by violence, make sure the resources are available to support this work, and back up their leadership with actions as mayor.
As a former state representative, I have strong relationships with legislators, and I understand state policymaking processes. I will use these relationships and skills to make sure Minneapolis and our state government are effective partners.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Note: Community Questions were submitted by the public and chosen for inclusion by a volunteer advisory board. The chosen questions were modified by staff to adhere to Ballotpedia’s neutrality standards. To learn more about Ballotpedia’s Candidate Connection Expansion Project, click here.
Campaign website
Katherine Knuth's campaign website stated the following.
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Here’s what I believe:
Moving toward a truly just future requires courageous, bold action – from each of us. We can build the Minneapolis we deserve right now. I hope you will join in this work. We want to use this campaign to help Minneapolis move through this unsteady moment in a way that helps us build the city— and the city government—we want and deserve. Doing so will take engaging in thoughtful conversation, healing as individuals and as a community, and stepping forward with purpose toward a changed city. It will take courage, creativity, and commitment. We need to use and build tools, processes, and spaces where people can work across differences of race, geography, class, and generation to to share ideas, experiences, wisdom, hopes, and fears. We need to wrestle with the challenges we face in real and, let’s be honest, challenging ways. While doing so, we need to hold onto the promise that doing so will help us move toward a city in which every person in Minneapolis can thrive. I am excited to connect with you throughout this campaign – in online community meetings and events and on the phone (and hopefully in-person soon) – as we work to reshape our city into the home each of us deserves and dreams to make real. In the weeks and months to come, we will be engaging with leaders and communities across the city to build out a community-informed vision and supporting plans. Centering racial justice and antiracism in all policies and processes.Minneapolis is at a moment of reckoning on racial justice. Decades of policy rooted in white supremacy have resulted in unacceptable levels of disparity along lines of race and class. The geography of our city—and things like home ownership and pollution exposures—still reflects the racist zoning and redlining in the first half of the 20th-century. Police violence harms certain communities—particularly Black, Native, brown, disabled, immigrant—more than others. In order to build a city that truly works for everyone, we need to actively understand how we got here, repair harms, and build deliberate government policies, systems, and supports to advance racial equity. Our aim is to make antiracism and racial justice at the core of all policy and the processes used to develop policy. This aim is reflected throughout the vision and policy below.
Building a new public safety system that honors the dignity of all people.Every person in Minneapolis, no matter their race, gender, class, zip code or level of ability deserves to feel safe in their home and throughout our city. This is the foundational value underlying my holistic public safety plan to Build Community Safety and Transform Policing. Minneapolis needs a public safety system that invests in violence prevention and intervention at meaningful levels and includes police as part of this holistic vision. We need to ask police to do less overall, so they can focus on what we really need them to do, which includes responding to, investigating, and actually solving violent crime. We also need to rebuild trust between MPD and Minneapolis residents. Rebuilding this trust means much more than a PR campaign. It means actual change in our policing system so policing no longer harms people in our community, particularly Black, brown, Indigenous, and immigrant neighbors. I am committed to unequivocal transparency in policing, both in the racial injustices of our current system and in police misconduct. I will champion accountability based on this transparency. Our current system was never intended to keep all people safe. We cannot afford to continue to invest in a system of policing that fails to keep all of us safe, that fails people in marginalized communities. That’s why I am in support of the public safety charter amendment, and my vision for implementation includes police as an essential part of a holistic public safety approach. Minneapolis has an opportunity to lead the nation and the world in building a public safety system that values all people. I believe we are up to the challenge. Check out my comprehensive public safety plan to Build Community Safety and Transform Policing that I created with input from dozens of policy experts and community leaders.
Ensuring safe housing for all.=Housing is a human right. An affordable, safe, and stable place to call home is the foundation of living with security, opportunity, and dignity. The effects of redlining and other racist housing policies in our city continue to be barriers to housing and further perpetuate the deep racial wealth gap. We have a responsibility to make sure we are moving unhoused people toward stable housing and increasing access to sustainable affordable housing options for every person and family, especially those with low-incomes, renters, retired and elderly people, people with disabilities, citizens returning from incarceration, and anyone else facing systemic barriers to housing.
Addressing climate change at the urgency and scale that is required.The 2020s will be the defining decade on climate action. Minneapolis should be at the forefront of climate action. Minneapolis has taken good steps on climate change, but more than good work is needed in this moment. Our city needs a Mayor who puts climate action as a central to building a city that is safe and healthy for every resident. The science of climate change shows that we need large-scale, fast action now to reduce emissions across sectors and make sure every person can thrive through the climate change era. Even more, we need action that creates equitable access to the benefits of a clean energy transition, provides accessible low-carbon transportation options, and builds climate resilience for everyone. Climate resilience for everyone will require targeted efforts in communities that are more vulnerable because of systemic racism, historic underinvestment, and financial insecurity. It also means creating pathways into the work of building the clean energy economy and climate resilience for everyone – Black, brown, white, Indigenous, immigrant, young, and old.
Advancing a multiracial democracy.Our future as a democracy depends on advancing a multiracial democracy built by us and for us. In Minneapolis, we have the opportunity to show the world how to do this. We can advance a truly multiracial democracy in which every person lives with dignity and can act with power in public life. The current crisis of our democracy—one that we saw unfold in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol— is rooted in systemic racism and historical harms. Now, more than ever, it’s essential that we work to understand, reconcile, and repair harms so we can rebuild a strong democracy and future that works for all of us—Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant, white. Together we can reimagine and reshape our governance processes and create pathways into a public life for each person in the city.
Building prosperity for all people.Despite promises to address deep inequities, Minneapolis still leads the country in racial disparities in unemployment, housing, health, and income. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased economic instability to so many people and families, and it’s only increased the deep wealth gap we have between low-income people and wealthy people in this city. It’s essential that we work across multiple sectors to rethink and reimagine how we deliver pathways to prosperity for everyone in Minneapolis. We need to build infrastructures and supports that advance workforce development and family-wage income opportunities, and we need to ensure that we center the human dignity and self-determination of all people to choose what kind of life they want to build for themselves and their families. We can build a city where people and small businesses flourish and everyone can share in the prosperity of what it means to live in a vibrant, resilient, healthy community.
Centering economic justice and workers' rights.We need to build an economy that works for every worker—where everyone makes a living wage and can join a union. Our city must be willing to protect and prioritize the lowest paid and most marginalized workers. As a city, we have to build an environment where we don’t fall into a scarcity mindset. We can’t continue to pit small businesses and workers against each other while allowing corporations to not contribute their fair share.
Demanding environmental justice for all people.Communities that have faced disinvestment, where mostly Black and Indigenous people live, have been forced for too long to carry the weight of pollution and environmental degradation. This has real impacts, like higher rates of asthma in the Philips neighborhood and communities on the Northside. We must invest in communities that have borne the brunt of past environmental racism and injustice and work with people in these communities to find and fund solutions.
Improving transit + investing in climate-resilient infrastructure.Our streets should be safe and comfortable for people to get where they’re going, however they choose to travel. That means vibrant public spaces, safe and welcoming sidewalks, green infrastructure, protected bikeways, and transit that works. Historically, our transit system has perpetuated injustice. This continues today as busy roads bring increased pollution and accidents to the communities that surround them. We can undo this, and build a transit system that aligns with our values.
Advancing public health.The health of our communities is an environmental, racial, and social justice issue that demands all of us to rise up to advance the health and well-being of everyone in our city right now. Our air quality is a public health issue that must be addressed. Asbestos and lead in our buildings and homes is a public health issue that requires strict regulation. Our deep racial disparities in this city are a public health issue that call for immediate action. Substance use disorder is a public health issue that requires us to advance harm reduction strategies and meet people where they are. And the mental health condition of our friends, family, and neighbors requires us to work towards solutions and supports that center their well-being.
Rebuilding with equity and resilience after COVID-19 and civil unrest.=The COVID crisis, recent civil unrest, and the health and economic fallout reinforce what we already knew. Our city isn’t working for all people. Our city has significant work to do to rebuild in light of immediate crisis. We also need to do so in ways that make us truly resilient and able respond to crises – whether health, safety, economic, or climate – in effective and equitable ways going forward. So many people in our city have already stepped up to help each other, to support struggling families and small businesses, to help shelter unhoused people, and more. This work shows the best of who we are as a city, and we need a city government that will partner with, support, and resource the leadership we are seeing all over the city. As we move through immediate crisis and look forward, we will also need to make sure our rebuilding efforts center the need to maintain and grow opportunity and wealth in historically-marginalized communities.
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Campaign finance summary
Ballotpedia currently provides campaign finance data for all federal- and state-level candidates from 2020 and later. We are continuously working to expand our data to include prior elections. That information will be published here as we acquire it. If you would like to help us provide this data, please consider donating to Ballotpedia.
Scorecards
Taxpayers League of Minnesota
The Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a Minnesota-based taxpayer advocacy organization, releases a legislative scorecard for the Minnesota House of Representatives and Minnesota State Senate once a year. The scorecard gives each legislator a score based on how they voted in the prior legislative term on tax issues and “their efforts to balance the state budget without a tax increase.” The organization also compiles a legislator’s individual "Lifetime Score."[8]
2012
Knuth received a score of 0% in the 2012 scorecard, ranking 124th out of all 134 Minnesota House of Representatives members.[9]
2011
Knuth received a score of 23% in the 2011 scorecard, ranking 75th out of all 134 Minnesota House of Representatives members. [10]
See also
2021 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ City of Minneapolis, "Common questions about filing for office," accessed September 10, 2025
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 8, 2021
- ↑ Patch.com, "Rep. Ilhan Omar Announces Endorsements In Minneapolis Mayor Race," October 20, 2021
- ↑ Minnesota Secretary of State, "2010 Election Results," accessed March 9, 2014
- ↑ 2008 General Election Results
- ↑ Follow the Money's report on Knuth's 2008 campaign contributions
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Taypayers League of Minnesota, "Legislative Scorecards," accessed May 15, 2014
- ↑ Taypayers League of Minnesota, "Legislative Scorecard, 2012," accessed May 15, 2014
- ↑ Taypayers League of Minnesota, "Legislative Scorecard, 2011," accessed May 15, 2014
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