Make no mistake, beating an incumbent city councilor is not an easy task, ask Jensen who had to spend $127K and lucking out by having primary voters (who rarely vote in city elections) help him achieve the task.
Obviously it doesn’t hurt that Soehl now has two challengers, a well-intentioned, all around family guy and a fierce citizen advocate. We could likely see them in the run-off or one of them crushing the 51% threshold.
But what really makes Soehl beatable is that he really isn’t an incumbent because the Central district he was elected in doesn’t exist anymore and you really don’t need the McKennan park elite’s vote to win in Central.
The re-districting commission now have included parts of Whittier and Cathedral neighborhoods. Match that with Pettigrew Heights and you have pretty strong working class voters.
While it will be a challenge for the other two candidates to battle with an incumbent, Soehl is really an incumbent with NO home and will NOT be re-elected.
In the 2018 run-off election, Zach DeBoer beat Soehl in the neighborhoods in and around McKennan Park. One of those precincts brought DeBoer nearly his largest precinct margin of victory.
But to agree with your point, Soehl did not fare well in the precincts which include downtown, penitentiary hill and the area directly west of downtown (west of Minn Ave).
Can also make the case that Soehl abandoned his Central District constituency well before the Redistricting Commission moved the Central District cheese away from Soehl.
“penitentiary hill”, that sounds so exclusive. It even shares a root origin with Pendar Lane, except not everyone can live just anywhere, just as some are never caught. #PettigrewHeights