Hennepin County Attorney-elect Cedrick Frazier owes a debt of gratitude to residents of Minneapolis. The legislator and former public defender won 62% of votes within city limits, earning as many as 86% in a precinct in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.
Still, he couldn’t have scored the very narrow win over his opponent Anders Folk without some suburban support. And despite promoting policies similar to outgoing County Attorney Mary Moriarty, an analysis of precinct-level data shows Frazier had a tougher race on his hands than Moriarty did as he sought to make his case to suburbanites.
Take a look at Moriarty’s decisive 2022 win over Martha Holton Dimick, in which Moriarty earned nearly 70,000 more votes overall. The progressive former public defender was broadly popular in both Minneapolis and the suburbs, with Dimick’s big wins coming largely from the county’s wealthiest areas, like Minneapolis’ Ward 7 and its neighbor Edina, and rarefied enclaves like Deephaven and Woodland…