Nisswa City Council to vote on censure of Mayor Jennifer Carnahan in January
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The Nisswa City Council has taken another step toward a vote of no confidence and censure of Mayor Jennifer Carnahan over her conduct in a dispute with a city resident.
The three council members present at Tuesday night’s meeting directed the city attorney to prepare a resolution for the council to consider at its January meeting. They also plan to consider removing her from all city committees.
The action stems from a conflict between Carnahan and an employee of a Nisswa restaurant, who emailed the mayor saying she overheard Carnahan and her dining companions loudly discussing council member Jesse Zahn.
Carnahan later reported to police that the woman confronted and assaulted her while they were both at a city event last month. Prosecutors declined to press charges.
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Last week, Zahn called on Carnahan to resign, saying the city has been roiled by politics since she became mayor a year ago.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Carnahan said she was elected by voters, and does not plan to resign. She called the council’s actions “performative politics,” and an effort to settle personal or political grievances against her.
Any attempt to regulate the speech of an elected official conflicts with the First Amendment, Carnahan said.
“That protection includes the ability to speak about public policy, government actions, other public officials — including through public statements, social media and interactions with members of the public,” Carnahan said.
Carnahan declined to answer council members’ questions about her conduct, saying she wanted to “keep focused on business at hand.”
Zahn said the issue isn’t a personal one, but about “the conduct of a sitting mayor in the general public.”
“This community does not want politicking,” Zahn said. “We’ve never had politicking here until the middle of this year, and we are trying to have decorum, and maintain, in order to be able to do the people’s work.”
Carnahan formerly served as chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. She was elected Nisswa mayor in 2024, and ran unsuccessfully for former state Sen. Justin Eichorn’s seat earlier this year.
