On February 2, Columbia Heights Mayor Amáda Márquez Simula helped form a coalition of a dozen other suburban mayors to create a new political entity. “Cities for Safe and Stable Communities” (CSSC) is an organic response to Operation Metro Surge. That coalition has grown to 26 cities representing 850,000 Twin Cities area residents.
It was an astonishing act of political innovation and engineering: responsible, insightful, prescient and courageous. While there are longstanding examples of metropolitan coalitions (e.g. US Conference of Mayors and C40 Climate Action), the CSSC is distinguished by a combination of uncommon characteristics that makes it different.
The CSSC is organized around a specific, rapidly emerging political crisis rather than addressing ongoing municipal interests or intractable policy problems. Suburban mayors in collaborative effort are the prime movers within the collective power domain, rather than subordinate to central-city leadership.
It also developed a shared operational infrastructure (coordinated mayor and city manager meetings, contracted advocacy staff, coordinated messaging and a comprehensive legislative agenda). It functions as an independent political entity, as opposed to an affiliate of existing municipal organizations.
The CSSC embodies what political scientists call “meso-level governance”: A political power entity situated between individual cities and county-state government. It aims to create collective political action among municipalities, and to project political power beyond the formal governmental authority instituted by law.
The CSSC is a unique embodiment of political power because it is designed to rapidly organize dozens of independently elected suburban mayors around emerging or evolving political issues with unified messaging and coordinated advocacy. That fills an institutional niche that did not previously exist. And it creates a new power dynamic.
Political scientists often distinguish between temporary coalitions and durable political infrastructure. The first are organized around single-issues advocacy or momentary crises; the latter are organized to levy enduring political influence and pressure to effect legislative policy and outcomes.
The CSSC is in the process of creating durable political infrastructure and appears to be organizing for long-term political action. If it survives beyond the immediate issues that created it, this new political entity could alter regional politics in several powerful ways.
First, it aggregates political legitimacy. The CSSC legitimately claims to represent hundreds of thousands of residents, making state legislators and administrators much more likely to engage in solution-seeking on difficult policy issues.
Second, it transforms bargaining dynamics. A coalition representing a unified position changes the political cost of inaction by elected leaders, administrators and power brokers.
Third, it accelerates innovative policy development and diffusion. Cities that share best practices and engage in coordinated policy action function more quickly and efficiently than through independent experimentation. This makes municipal governments more agile and adaptable in serving their respective communities, where policies and programs most directly affect the lives of residents.
Fourth, it creates a platform for coordinated direct action. This includes political coordination (i.e., joint litigation, coordinated issues advocacy and legislative action, coordinated data collection and pooled research, etc.) and operational coordination through networking with community advocacy and interest groups to organize grassroots political activism and political action.
Therein lies the greatest potential benefit of the new political infrastructure, with its new power dynamic, that the CSSC embodies: A potential direct link between collective-coordinated municipal governance and collective-coordinated grassroots power.
Whether that potential will be realized is an open question. Coalitions tend to dissolve when the crisis that created them ends, or when a foundational issue disappears. For the CSSC to survive and grow will require political interest groups, including parties, to evolve and adapt.
They must build a supportive sub-structure that efficiently captures and directs the new power dynamic — through grassroots response and action — to effect meaningful and beneficial change. That can be accomplished by providing the resources necessary to ensure CSSC’s long-term viability: permanent funding, dedicated paid staff, policy research capacity, shared legal resources, institutional relationships with legislators and administrators and benign informed leadership transitions.
In a sense, the CSSC has built a shield to protect the people from further injury by authoritarian government and to seek justice through reparations for injuries already done. That shield is only strengthened when the power of the people, the only sovereign power we recognize as Americans, is brought to bear.
Editor’s note: This editorial, written by a St. Anthony resident, reflects an opinion held behind the desk at the Northeaster. Assuming it is in good faith, political engagement is an essential part of the United States’ makeup. Looking forward, as Matz does, is one of many examples of what this engagement might look like.