I found Lisa Bender to be divisive, often pitting renters, or bikers, or low wage workers against homeowner, or small business owners, or the trifecta: white wealthy single family homeowners. Uptown bore the brunt of this approach with her dismissive approach to concerns of business owners or property owners coming up again and again, most recently during the riots last year and earlier this year. She could never bring herself to sell a compelling vision of how all of Minneapolis could move forward, how these changes were beneficial to the whole city, it was always about her chosen constituency at the expense of others, making it clear that if you were not struggling you did not need a voice at city hall. No better encapsulation of this than her national news moment, when she was still talking “defund the police” and when asked what she would say to people who were worried no one would answer when they called 911, she deflected, claiming that basic expectation “came from a place of privilege” - dismissing one group of constituents needs and priorities to double down on a different group she chose to prioritize. Ironically that cavalier attitude contributed to the defeat of her attempt to pull MPD under city council control and made an otherwise failed mayor look good in comparison to the options.