Minnesota's first Latina mayor will not seek reelection

CATHY WURZER: The city of Richfield is looking for a new mayor. Its current leader, Maria Regan Gonzalez, is Minnesota's first Latina mayor and youngest mayor Richfield has had. And she's stepping aside. Before she leaves office, we thought we'd catch up with Mayor Gonzalez. Welcome to Minnesota Now.

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Thank you so much. Can you hear me?

CATHY WURZER: I can. Thank you very much. You sound great. Say, it sounds as though you're making some life changes and you've got another big job to do. So talk about your decision to step down as mayor.

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Absolutely. Well, I never thought I would be in elected office. It was never something that had crossed my mind. But then as I started to learn a little bit more about the influence you can make in your own community to make improvements for health and connectivity, I decided I want to run for office.

But I knew that was not my aspiration to stay and be in politics. And so I'm ready to continue that journey in making a difference in my community in a way that allows me to have space to have a family, to get married, to have kids, and serve my community as well. And when you are in elected office at the local level, these are part-time stipend positions. But in reality, the role of mayor is 24/7. And so maintaining a full-time job, having a family, and being in elected office just really becomes near impossible.

CATHY WURZER: So you're going to try to have work-life balance-- good for you.

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. Say, when you made the decision to run for mayor, was there ever a time when you thought, what have I done?

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Absolutely, always. And I would say sometimes I think it's good that you don't know what you're getting yourself into, because maybe you might not have made the decision to do it. And I'm very thankful for my time as mayor. I think we've been able to make transformational and generational change that advances equity in the city of Richfield and has modeled that for other cities. But definitely, I feel like I got a PhD in human relations in the past few years.

CATHY WURZER: I can only imagine. Michael Nutter, he was the former mayor of Philadelphia, once said that being a mayor is the best job in politics. He figured you can get things done. You can make things happen-- even if it's just getting the streets plowed fast, which is a key job here in Minnesota. So sounds like you agree with him.

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Absolutely. I love the role of mayor. I would love to be a mayor and a mom. And the fact is that if I'm not retired, I'm not independently wealthy, I need to have a full-time job. And that's just not possible.

But being a mayor is absolutely the best job. It's the closest level of government to the people. We're literally in the grocery store. People can tell me what they think and what needs to be changed. And a lot of times, we can make those changes immediately. And you're affecting the things that affect the quality of life for everyone-- the day-to-day things that matter like water, do you feel safe and connected in your community, do you have access to green space and great housing. That's what we get to work on every single day as mayors.

CATHY WURZER: What's the toughest part of the job?

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: The toughest part of the job. To be honest, I call it the Obama effect. But when Obama became president, there was this thinking of, oh my gosh, all structural racism is gone. We have a Black man in office as president. And people feeling a little bit of that Obama effect, there's one person in this role as mayor, and that means all of this long history of structural racism and inequities are going to go away-- and people really having these outrageous expectations on one person, but not wanting to take accountability and ownership.

We all have a role in addressing these issues. And it's not just on the mayor. It's not just on one piece of our community. We all have to contribute. And people really thinking, in some ways, that's your job, you got to do it, and why did you not fix this years and generations of structural inequities because you became mayor?

CATHY WURZER: Do you do you think you made at least some little bit of an inroad toward trying to rectify some of the inequities in Richfield?

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Absolutely. I actually think we have made tremendous impact. So we have embedded equity as a core consideration to all of our work across the whole city of Richfield. We have our staff looking at what does that mean in every level of what they do.

We were able to work with tenants to secure affordable housing and maintain affordable housing in Richfield. Our inclusionary housing policy is not only focused on affordable housing, but it's also focused on accessible housing for people with disabilities. There's not many inclusionary housing policies that have that focus.

We worked with tenants and MNDOT to say, we need a pedestrian bridge to connect some of our affordable housing neighborhoods to the direct source of pharmacy and grocery with a pedestrian bridge over the highway. And so I feel like I haven't made a little impact, we together in Richfield have made tremendous amounts of generational improvements to concretely improve the lives of all of our residents. And I'm very proud of that.

CATHY WURZER: So then I'm curious, Mayor Gonzalez-- on the state level, and maybe because of where you sit you might have some interesting things to say about this-- Senator Patricia Torres Ray, Representative Carlos Mariamne, they're retiring-- gosh, DFL Senate Caucus Leader Melissa Lopez Frandsen is stepping down because of redistricting issues.

I think there's only one Latina running for a seat in the Minnesota House. So I'm curious-- what's the future of Latino political engagement in Minnesota?

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Yeah. And I have connected with all of those, and they are all mentors and friends of mine. And it is hard to see a lot of us retiring at the same time. And they have all had much longer years of political service.

I will say we have a large group of community members that is growing in their political engagement and their advocacy. We have people in other city councils, Latinas like in Shakopee and other areas, that are running in are in positions currently. And so there is a lot of interest.

And we have the largest growing constituency base of voters and new voters, and a lot of political and social power in the Latino community in Minnesota. And there's a lot of interest and engagement. And even if you look at Richfield, 40% of our students are Latino students. You look at cities like Wilmer, and Worthington, and cities in greater Minnesota, you see Latinos fueling the rebirth of their downtown districts, of their schools.

And so our influence and our ability to make a change in our community is growing. And, while there's four of us retiring, we do have a strong bench of folks that are very politically engaged and are getting more of our residents and our community members engaged in the political process.

CATHY WURZER: Do you think you'll come back into the political process once you maybe get out of it for a little bit, relax, have a bit of a life, have a family, and then might you go back?

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Well, I will always be connected-- and in the sense of one of my biggest passions is supporting and mentoring other young women of color to own their leadership. And so whether that has been supporting people to be candidates politically, start their own nonprofits and organizations-- that is something that I'm always going to do. Future interests in being a candidate again, maybe.

I will say as a mayor, I get to be nonpartisan and I absolutely love that. I get to put the community first above a political platform. And that's what I love to do-- put community above partisan politics.

And so I can participate in so many different ways. So I will always be working on advancing community first. And we'll see all the different ways that looks like. Running for higher office-- I don't know. We'll see.

CATHY WURZER: All right. It's OK. I appreciate your time. Thank you. I wish you all the best. And thanks for what you've done for Richfield.

MARIA REGAN GONZALEZ: Absolutely. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

CATHY WURZER: Maria Regan Gonzalez is the mayor of Richfield.