Minneapolis’s City Question 2 was a ballot measure to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a “Department of Public Safety” that ...
Minneapolis’s City Question 2 was a ballot measure to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a “Department of Public Safety” that would employ “licensed peace officers” and use a public-health approach to policing.
The New York Times has called the race, reporting that the ballot measure has been defeated. The margin is currently 43 percent “Yes,” and 57 percent “No.”
A defeat for this anti-police ballot measure (and it’s not particularly close) in Minneapolis should spell the end of the radical “defund” movement nationwide. To give you an idea of how progressive Minneapolis is, the same voters who shot down the anti-police referendum approved a referendum to allow rent control. If it can’t win in that city, with those voters, it’s finished.
The current margin almost exactly matches Star Tribune polling for black voters in Minneapolis. The minorities that the anti-police crowd claim to support have rejected many of its key messages.
The two most prominent politicians to support the referendum were Representative Ilhan Omar and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison. Governor Tim Walz and Senator Amy Klobuchar opposed the measure. A win for their faction of the Democratic Party over the Omar–Ellison faction is about as close to a conservative win as you’ll get in Minneapolis. But the real winners are the people of Minneapolis, who won’t be subjected to a radical progressive experiment in police abolition.
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