Steve Fletcher
Steve Fletcher was a member of the Minneapolis City Council in Minnesota, representing Ward 3. Fletcher assumed office on January 2, 2018. Fletcher left office on January 3, 2022.
Fletcher (Democratic Party) ran for re-election to the Minneapolis City Council to represent Ward 3 in Minnesota. Fletcher lost in the general election on November 2, 2021.
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
Fletcher earned a B.A. in American studies from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and a master's degree in social and cultural analysis with a certificate in culture and media from New York University.[2]
Fletcher's professional experience includes work as the director of cloud services for Kaizen Technology Partners, the principal consultant for Strategy99 LLC, the executive director of Minnesota 2020, and a research consultant for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. He also served as the founding executive director of MN Neighborhoods Organizing for Change.[2][3]
2021 battleground election
The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, held general elections for all 13 of its city council seats on November 2, 2021. Fifty-eight candidates—including eleven incumbents—ran in the elections. Minneapolis used ranked-choice voting in the election which allowed voters to rank up to three candidates on the ballot.
Of the 11 incumbents running for city council, six won re-election and five lost. All incumbents were Democrats except Cam Gordon, who ran as Green Party candidate. In the two open city council seats, Jason Chavez won in District 9 and Aisha Chughtai won in District 10.[4] As a result, seven of the 13 city councilmembers were newcomers in 2022. All winners were Democrats except for Robin Wonsley who was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.[5]
On Nov. 12, 2021, Ward 2 candidate Yusra Arab announced she would seek a recount, which was scheduled for Nov. 19.[6] The initial post-election tally showed Arab trailing Robin Wonsley Worlobah by 19 votes in the third round of tallying.[7] On Nov. 22, the Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services announced that Worlobah remained the winner, with the margin decreasing to 14 votes.[8] To read more about recount laws in Minnesota, click here.
The Star Tribune's Kelly Smith described the city council and mayoral elections as microcosms of a more general rift in the Democratic Party, writing "[t]he split between moderate and progressive Democratic candidates ahead of the Nov. 2 election reflects a broader gap across Minnesota and nationwide as the Democratic establishment faces intense competition from a newly energized and insurgent progressive wing of the party."[9] Axios Twin Cities' Nick Halter also observed the rift, writing, "[t]he City Council has been moving to the left for several years now, and a slate of challengers [in Wards 3, 4, and 11] could move the needle back toward the middle."[10]
Following the election, Axios' Halter wrote that the council "that had been moving to the left in recent elections took a step back toward the right."[11] Halter identified the winners in Wards 3, 4, and 11 as more moderate than their predecessors and the winners in Wards 1 and 9 as more liberal, resulting in a net gain of one seat for moderate councilmembers.[11]
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.[12]
Of the 58 candidates who sought election, 42 were Democrats, four were Republicans, and 12 were independent or some other party. While 42 candidates identified as Democrats, the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) issued its own official endorsements in seven wards. The party did not issue endorsements in six races, five of which featured incumbents. Learn more about the Minneapolis DFL endorsement process here.
Elections
2021
See also: City elections in Minneapolis, Minnesota (2021)
General election
General election for Minneapolis City Council Ward 3
The ranked-choice voting election was won by Michael Rainville 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: 13,353 |
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 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
2017
Minneapolis, Minnesota, held a general election for mayor, all 13 seats on the city council, both elected members of the board of estimate and taxation, and all nine members of the park and recreation board on November 7, 2017. The filing deadline for candidates who wished to run in this election was August 15, 2017.
Incumbents ran for re-election to all but two of the city council seats. Ward 3 Councilman Jacob Frey filed to run for mayor instead, and Ward 8 Councilwoman Elizabeth Glidden opted not to run for re-election.[13]
| Minneapolis City Council Ward 3, 2017, Round 3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Transfer |
| Tim Bildsoe - Eliminated | 0% | 0 | −2,734 |
| Steve Fletcher - Winner | 55.8% | 4,861 | 1,758 |
| Samantha Pree-Stinson | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Ginger Jentzen | 44.2% | 3,844 | 246 |
| Undeclared Write-ins | 0% | 0 | 0 |
| Exhausted | 887 | 730 | |
| Total Votes | 9,592 | 0 | |
| Note: Negative numbers in the transfer total are due to exhaustion by overvotes. | |||
| Minneapolis City Council Ward 3, 2017, Round 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Transfer |
| Tim Bildsoe | 29% | 2,734 | 182 |
| Steve Fletcher | 32.9% | 3,103 | 394 |
| Samantha Pree-Stinson - Eliminated | 0% | 0 | −1,007 |
| Ginger Jentzen - Most votes | 38.1% | 3,598 | 301 |
| Undeclared Write-ins - Eliminated | 0% | 0 | −27 |
| Exhausted | 157 | 157 | |
| Total Votes | 9,592 | 0 | |
| Note: Negative numbers in the transfer total are due to exhaustion by overvotes. | |||
This is the first round of voting. To view subsequent rounds, click the [show] button next to that round.
| Minneapolis City Council Ward 3, 2017, Round 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Transfer |
| Tim Bildsoe | 26.6% | 2,552 | |
| Steve Fletcher | 28.2% | 2,709 | |
| Samantha Pree-Stinson | 10.5% | 1,007 | |
| Ginger Jentzen - Most votes | 34.4% | 3,297 | |
| Undeclared Write-ins | 0.3% | 27 | |
| Exhausted | 0 | 0 | |
| Total Votes | 9,592 | 0 | |
| Note: Negative numbers in the transfer total are due to exhaustion by overvotes. | |||
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Steve Fletcher did not complete Ballotpedia's 2021 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
- Click here to view an archived version of Fletcher's campaign website.
2017
Fletcher's campaign website highlighted the following issues. Click "show" on the boxes below for more information about his positions.[14]
| AFFORDABLE HOUSING |
|---|
| "The cost of rent is increasing at a rate that is unsustainable for residents. We’re already seeing a shortage of beds in homeless shelters, and growing wait lists for affordable housing and public housing. We need to build more housing in areas that can support higher density to ease demand, we need to insist that affordable units are included in new development, and we need to protect the housing that’s still affordable in our neighborhoods. Assuring safe, stable, affordable housing is also one of the most impactful things we can do as a city for safety, education, health, and environmental sustainability.
Affordable housing is an issue I’ve worked on for years, and I care deeply about making this a city where everyone has safe, stable, affordable housing. I’ve seen firsthand how our affordable housing shortage hurts vulnerable residents. I’ve visited homes with obviously unsafe conditions, and had the families living in them beg me: “Don’t tell the city.” They’d love to stand up to the landlord who is failing to maintain their home, but if the city slaps a condemned sticker on their door, they know they’ll be out on the street, and back on the waiting lists for housing that is in too short supply. So tonight, and every night until we build adequate affordable housing for our residents, some of our neighbors are making the terrible choice between staying in unsafe housing, or facing homelessness. Leaving our neighbors with that impossible choice is morally wrong, and we need to approach our affordable housing shortage with real urgency and commitment. There is no one magic solution, but there a few categories of work that will all need to be part of our approach. Preserve the affordable housing we already have. Strengthen renter protections. Our city can also provide better support to landlords, particularly around managing the complexity of affordable housing eligibility, and by providing timely and consistent inspections that provide more useful guidance on maintenance. As a city, we have an interest in stable, fair, affordable housing, as do property owners in the long run, and the city has a role in regulating the rental market accordingly. Minneapolis does less than many other cities to empower tenants, and should look to other cities both for inspiration and to learn from unintended consequences where regulations protect tenants from unjust evictions or sudden, steep rent increases. Increase the supply of all kinds of housing. Increased density should mean different things in different neighborhoods, ranging from new high rises near transit corridors and activity centers, to more efficient use of existing single family homes that could house multiple families in other neighborhoods. The City’s Comprehensive Plan should include neighborhood-appropriate upzoning to allow for increased density across the city as a whole to meet our housing need. When single-family housing was built in earlier eras, a single family was likely multi-generational. The shift away from multi-generational living has decreased the density of our city, and we should address it by allowing more 2 - 8 unit buildings - the ‘missing middle’ in housing options – to be either newly constructed, or developed in existing re-purposed single family homes. That’s a way to increase the density of a neighborhood with lower construction costs, and without radically changing the traffic patterns and experience of the neighborhood. It’s also a way to create more affordable family housing – especially 3 and 4 bedroom units for families with children. Some of this new density is causing real conflict, and that’s not going to just go away. Residents are feeling the pressure of change – reduced parking, increased traffic – and not always seeing the benefits of our increased tax base and the increased positive neighborhood activity that follows. Managing that tension, and minimizing the short-term inconveniences along the way as we move toward our vision, will be a major part of the work of the next City Council. One of the things we most need to do is to capture clearer community input in advance of development proposals, so that we’re not just reacting to developers’ ideas. By engaging the community more directly and explicitly about how each neighborhood is going to contribute to our city’s goals to add more housing, we can align our zoning with our community vision for growth in a way that makes life easier for developers who want to build the housing our community wants. Build new affordable housing. We're going to need to use a combination of incentives, investment, and regulation to get more affordable units included in private development plans. I support inclusionary zoning that compels a percentage of new construction to include affordable units. I also support height bonuses for proposed development that help the city achieve our affordable housing goals. A lot of the development we want is more likely to come to fruition with financial support, and I believe that we can do more to redirect the wealth of our new property tax base to directly subsidize more construction of affordable housing units. If we get creative in our public-private partnerships with private developers and non-profits, we’ll be able to direct some of the private investment in residential construction into housing that most meets our needs. We also need to keep public housing on the table, starting with a firm, clear commitment to maintain the public housing we already provide. We can’t afford to build everything ourselves, but public housing should be part of a complete solution to affordable housing." |
| TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS |
|---|
| "The housing development boom in our Ward is a huge opportunity to give more people access to life in the center of the city, and we need to expand transportation options to achieve this vision. The more people can reasonably live car-free in our city, the better off we are from an environmental standpoint, an economic standpoint, and a quality of life standpoint. Whether you’re someone who has to drive every day for any number of practical reasons, or you’re someone who would stop driving if you had reasonable alternatives, we all benefit from creating more transportation options.
Residents are rightly frustrated with some of our city’s recent failures to plan ahead as new density is added and to adjust our road maintenance and traffic plans to meet the new needs of our neighborhoods. As your representative on the City Council, I’ll work to make sure departments are coordinating better, and that we’re planning ahead and keeping our Capital Improvement Plan for transportation infrastructure in alignment with our housing and business growth. That especially means reassessing pedestrian crossings as intersections get busier to ensure we’re maintaining safe streets for everyone. Walkable, bikeable neighborhoods with access to reliable public transportation have several positive impacts for our city. They make the city more accessible to residents who cannot or prefer not to drive. It means we can eliminate the cost of car ownership from working families’ budgets, and close the affordability gap for more people in our ward. And, it means we can reduce traffic, fossil fuel consumption, and our carbon footprint in the process. More people need to be able to use buses and light rail and bikes to get around. To get there, we’re going to need more frequent buses on more routes, and new routes to better connect our neighborhoods. We heavily subsidize car travel with our taxes, and we need to be willing to do the same for public transit. Fares cover less than 30% of the cost of transit, and I support eliminating fares altogether for local buses and trains. If the state won’t do it, I will support city investment in reducing the cost of transit for low-income riders." |
| JOBS & SMALL BUSINESS |
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| "The 3rd Ward is the beating heart of the Minneapolis economy, and if there are going to be great jobs for workers, we need to support and grow small businesses that are owned in the community, spend their money in the community, and stay in the community for the long term.
We have to do everything we can as a city to make sure that jobs in Minneapolis can support a family and meet the current cost of living. Someone working for $9.00 an hour isn’t living well in this city, and we all know it. That’s why I supported Earned Safe and Sick Time, it’s why I support workers’ right to organize, and it’s why I supported a $15 minimum wage without exemptions. In my past work with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Minnesota 2020, and SEIU, I’ve played a role both in organizing in the streets and establishing the policy foundation for the Fight for $15, as well as the statewide minimum wage increase to $9.50, indexed to inflation, before that. Putting money into the hands of workers guarantees it will be spent and re-circulated in our community, and raising the minimum wage is the clearest, most straightforward way to close a persistent income gap in our city. At the same time, as we ask small business owners to be part of our citywide solution to structural inequality, we need to step up as a city and support our small businesses. That means streamlining regulatory and inspections processes to make it easier to launch and maintain small businesses. It means using our own procurement to pump money into our local business economy, and to promote local businesses every chance we get. And, it means re-examining our practice of imposing special sales taxes on downtown businesses to pay for stadiums and convention centers. That may have made sense in a past, tourist-centric version of downtown, but as downtown thrives as a neighborhood, we should reconsider the competitive disadvantage we place on Ward 3 small businesses to pay for amenities the whole metro area uses. The issues that hourly workers have raised around fair scheduling are serious ones that need to be addressed, and underscore a more fundamental problem: a lack of full-time jobs in low-wage industries that have been deliberately 'part-timed'. Workers need to be able to make a genuine choice between full- and part-time work, plan their budgets around relatively predictable hours, and plan their lives without constraint from making plans during their non-working hours because they’re worried about missing last-minute opportunities to earn. Right now, workers bear all of the costs of unpredictable scheduling. A fair scheduling proposal asks employers to share in the cost of disrupting work schedules on short notice. A good fair scheduling bill will provide workers more power over their schedules while addressing the concerns raised in 2015 about the disproportionate burden an overly broad law could place on small and seasonal local businesses. We need to, and we can listen to local business owners and maintain a strong local business economy at the same time we improve quality of life for workers." |
| PUBLIC SAFETY |
|---|
| "There’s an increasing disconnect between those who feel safer when Minneapolis police are nearby, and those who feel less safe, and we need to do better. The tragic deaths of Jamar Clark and Justine Damond and their aftermaths have laid bare a long-simmering mutual mistrust between city residents and the MPD. The growing perception of our police is of a force too quick to draw guns, and too resistant to reforms to give us much immediate hope. Our government only works well when it trusts and respects the community it serves.
We need to shift the conversation on criminal justice reform to a broader conversation on community safety beyond policing. We need to proceed with real urgency to transform the role of police in our city, to align public safety efforts with our city’s equity values. We want a police force of world-class de-escalators, focused on bringing peace to tense situations, and resolving conflict before it ever escalates to crime. That will take re-training and a re-orientation of approach that is long overdue. We are calling on police to solve too many problems, and it has to stop. We need to re-evaluate what functions we ask police to play, so that we have mental health professionals responding to mental health crises, and community service providers responding to non-violent crimes that are symptomatic of homelessness or other failures of our social safety net. This will mean better responses to specific needs, and it will allow police to focus on serious violent threats to public safety. We should, wherever possible, emphasize prevention, diversion, and non-arrest penalties, to minimize arrests for non-violent crimes. The best way to avoid racist outcomes in the criminal justice system is to keep people out of it. This arrest reduction approach takes on special urgency in light of our commitment to sanctuary city status, given Hennepin County’s continued collaboration with ICE. I will use the power of our city budget to reverse the trend of militarization and promote violence prevention and de-escalation strategies, trainings, and policies. By over-investing in technology that has a dehumanizing effect, we’re exacerbating the problems already created by having a police force that largely doesn’t live in the city and doesn’t feel like part of our community. I support community policing strategies that create relationships between law enforcement and people in the neighborhoods to which they’re consistently assigned. Done right, this can pay real dividends in building trust and mutual respect. I support accountability efforts that make policing more transparent and more accountable to the public through independent civilian review boards, and more timely disclosure of information. And, we can design safer streets and sidewalks, eliminating unlit parking lots and alleys, and improving visibility and eyes on the street, to make downtown feel like a safe, healthy place to live, work, and have fun. We should be looking, wherever possible, for design solutions that put eyes on the street, create vibrant street life experiences for us all, and create real public safety." |
| END STRUCTURAL RACISM |
|---|
| "We have the power to make Minneapolis a model of racial equity. Structural racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of our city, and if there’s anything that will prevent us from uniting around a common vision for Minneapolis, it will be our failure as a city to include everyone in the first place.
We need to aspire to better as a city. I want to work toward a Minneapolis where in classrooms, in banks, in job interviews, in police interactions, in neighborhood meetings, in court, in real estate transactions, and in city hall, black lives really do matter. Data and common sense tell us we have a long way to go. We need to get sophisticated about how systems intersect and reinforce each other so that we can short circuit the cycle. There shouldn’t be any decisions made in City Hall without considering the racial equity impact of the decision. I have a strong track record of organizing for racial and economic justice, and I look forward to bringing that experience, and that set of community and coalition relationships, to City Hall. I’ll work to make sure that the people who are most directly impacted by structural racism are valued voices at the table as we move forward together toward a better future. Racial equity isn’t a specific set of policies or approaches – it’s a lens through which every decision has to be viewed. Structural racism is cooked into every aspect of our city, and it will take consistent, focused work to undo that legacy. It’s the undercurrent of every policy area:
These issues are all connected. Other equity gaps in health, education, and more are deeply interconnected with access to affordable housing and jobs. I want the next City Council to be remembered as the Council that finally really dug in and built the political will to make real, sustained investments in equity that transform our city for the better. We can do it, and I promise to do my part on the Council. " |
| PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT |
|---|
| "Our city is not prepared to respond to climate change. We’re still consuming fossil fuels at an unsustainable rate, and have been slow to develop alternative infrastructure to replace it. Our transportation options remain car-centric, even with significant recent improvements in biking, walking, and mass transit. Too much of our water is polluted. Our food supply chain is highly unsustainable, with a great deal of what we eat being shipped great distances from factory farms.
We have the potential to shift our energy consumption to wind and solar, to reduce our reliance on cars, to protect our rivers and lakes, and to develop more sustainable pipelines of locally produced food from Midwestern farmers. Each of those goals would be worth doing for health and quality of life reasons, but they take on increased urgency as a program of local self-reliance to make Minneapolis more sustainable in a world economy that will experience unpredictable disruptions. I support programs to encourage property owners to take responsibility for managing the water runoff from their property. By strengthening water management standards for new development, and providing education and resources to single-family home owners and owners of existing buildings to shift to permeable surfaces, rain gardens, and other proven sustainable water management techniques, we can keep our river clean, even as we add density to our city. I support a policy that sets goals of 100% renewable electricity for city operations by 2021, 100% renewable electricity by 2030 for all Minneapolis energy users, and 100% renewable energy in all sectors by 2050. It is only by setting aggressive goals that we will focus our attention and establish the right priorities. We need to do everything that is in our power to create this kind of urgency. I’ll support the installation of community solar gardens on city-owned rooftops, I’ll use the platform of city council to lobby the PUC and create public pressure for utilities to pay higher rates for solar energy, and I’ll support city policies like smart density and improved transit options that reduce our per capita energy consumption. We can also pair workforce development with renewable energy development to meet racial equity goals at the same time as our climate goals – and we need to make sure that these are good, union jobs that can compete with fossil fuel jobs in the energy sector. I view a shift to community-based solar and wind energy as a strategy for fighting poverty and improving quality of life. I support securing universally-accessible financing that allows all Minneapolis energy users to make energy efficiency improvements through monthly payments on utility bills. We need financing models like this to support the level of installation we need towards energy efficiency. I support an increase in utility franchise fees of 0.5% of Minneapolis energy sales to be re-invested in dedicated long-term funding for local energy solutions. The economic and environmental upside to local energy solutions more than outweighs the .5% cost increase. Finally, I support the goals of the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership, but it should be assessed with a strong critical eye toward results. It’s not enough just to be at the table, and we cannot allow it to greenwash the reputation of our utility corporations without making progress towards our goals. Hopefully, the Partnership will have produced measurable clean energy outcomes in reduced fossil fuel consumption, increased access to clean sources of energy, and an increased percentage of energy generated by renewable sources for our city. However, if we have not made adequate progress toward our aggressive goals for a shift to clean energy, we need to keep structural transformations on the table to instill the necessary sense of urgency in utility companies that have a financial incentive to fully deplete their fossil fuel investments before shifting to renewables. The best case scenario is still for the utilities to partner with us and align with our renewable energy goals, but we almost certainly won’t see that unless we’re prepared to go our own way." |
Endorsements
2017
Fletcher received endorsements from the following in 2017:[15]
- AFL-CIO-Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation
- AFSCME Minnesota Council 5
- International Brotherhood of Teamsters
- Minneapolis Building and Construction Trades Council
- Minnesota DFL
- Minnesota Young DFL
- Our Revolution Twin Cities
- OutFront Minnesota
- SEIU
- Stonewall DFL
- TakeAction Minnesota
- UNITE HERE!
- Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
- Minneapolis City Councilwoman Lisa Bender
- Minneapolis City Councilman Andrew Johnson
- Minneapolis Board of Education member Jenny Arneson
See also
2021 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ City of Minneapolis, "Common questions about filing for office," accessed September 10, 2025
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 LinkedIn, "Steve Fletcher," accessed October 25, 2017
- ↑ Steve Fletcher for Ward 3, "About Steve," accessed October 25, 2017
- ↑ MinnPost, "2021 Election Results Dashboard," November 2, 2021
- ↑ Worlobah defeated Gordon, meaning the seat previously held by the Green Party's Gordon was won by the Democratic Socialists of America's Worlobah.
- ↑ KSTP, "Recount scheduled for Minneapolis City Council race separated by 19 votes," Nov. 15, 2021
- ↑ StarTribune, "Runner-up calls for recount in Minneapolis City Council Second Ward race," November 12, 2021
- ↑ Twitter, "Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services," Nov. 22, 2021
- ↑ StarTribune, "Minneapolis elections highlight divide between progressive, moderate Democrats," September 11, 2021
- ↑ Axios Twin Cities, "What the Ward 11 results will tell us about the future of Minneapolis," Oct. 13, 2021
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Axios Twin Cities, "Minneapolis City Council leans slightly moderate after 2021 election," Nov. 4, 2021
- ↑ City of Minneapolis, "Common questions about filing for office," accessed September 10, 2025
- ↑ Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Elizabeth Glidden Won't Seek Re-election to Minneapolis City Council," December 12, 2016
- ↑ Steve Fletcher for Ward 3, "Issues," accessed October 25, 2017
- ↑ Steve Fletcher for Ward 3, "Endorsements," accessed October 25, 2017
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by - |
Minneapolis City Council Ward 3 2018-2022 |
Succeeded by Michael Rainville |
| |||||||||
