Table of Contents
Howie's column is powered by Lyric Kitchen · Bar
Duluth has seen its share of mayors. Some smiled for the cameras, some cut ribbons, and some talked a good game. But one stands apart. Don Ness was Duluth’s finest modern mayor.
He didn’t arrive with polish or fanfare. He was a kid from Duluth’s Central Hillside. He knew the city from the inside — the neighborhoods, the politics, the challenges. He wasn’t selling a brand. He was living it.
Ness came of age working for the late Congressman Jim Oberstar. For nearly a decade, he ran Oberstar’s campaigns, knocked on doors, organized volunteers, and studied how government worked. It was the best training ground that rewarded grit, discipline and substance.
He carried that experience into City Hall. Ness won an at-large seat on the Duluth City Council in 1999, served eight years, and held the council presidency twice. Those years toughened him. They gave him a close look at where Duluth’s finances creaked, politics stalled, and the hard decisions had been punted down the road.
When voters made him mayor in 2007, Ness already knew the city was heading toward a fiscal cliff. Duluth’s unfunded retiree health care obligation had ballooned to one of the most significant liabilities in Minnesota municipal history. Some estimates put it close to $378 million. Left untouched, it threatened to bankrupt the city.
Others had ignored it. Others had issued vague reports and looked the other way. Ness didn’t. He confronted it head-on.
He ordered a full accounting. He empowered a respected independent task force led by Arend “Sandy” Sandbulte, a former Minnesota Power CEO known for bluntness, to put the truth on paper. The Sandbulte report was devastating. It laid out the scope of the crisis and left no room for denial. Duluth couldn’t survive without painful change.
Plenty of politicians would have buried that report. Ness embraced it. He used it as a blueprint. He pushed through reforms to align retiree benefits with active-employee plans. He endured lawsuits. He took the issue through the courts, where Duluth won the authority to adjust benefits. The liability was cut dramatically, and the city’s finances stabilized.
It wasn’t glamorous work. There were no ribbon cuttings or smiling photo ops. It was spreadsheets, legal briefs, and late-night calls. It was unpopular, politically dangerous, and thankless. But Ness did it anyway. He spent down his political capital to save the city from financial collapse. That’s leadership.
At the same time, Ness dealt with another crisis that would have crippled most mayors. For years, Duluth depended on $6 million a year from the Fond-du-Luth Casino — revenue earmarked for basic city services, especially street repairs. When the Fond du Lac Band stopped making payments, Duluth sued— and lost.
The court decision wiped out that $6 million overnight. It was a devastating blow to the budget.
Ness didn’t sulk. He didn’t spin. He fought. His administration worked to bring the Band back to the table, offering new terms to salvage some of what had been lost. The Band refused. Duluth was left without the revenue it had counted on for decades.
But Ness didn’t sit on his hands. He showed up, fought to the end, and made clear he was willing to battle for Duluth even when the odds were stacked against him.
Those two challenges — the retiree health care crisis and the casino fight — defined his mayoralty. Together, they represented hundreds of millions of dollars in risk to Duluth’s future. Together, they could have broken the city. Ness didn’t let them.
He also provided something more challenging to quantify: stability. Ness’s steady voice calmed a city rattled by dysfunction. He carried himself with seriousness. He made Duluth believe leadership was about doing hard things, not just chasing headlines.
Here’s the record, plain and simple:
Ness was a Central Hillside kid who grew into a leader. He spent nearly a decade working for Oberstar, sharpening his skills. He spent eight years on the City Council, twice as president, studying the city’s problems up close. He served two terms as mayor. He faced down a retiree health care obligation so large it could have bankrupted Duluth, and he won. He fought to salvage $6 million in lost casino revenue, knowing residents needed someone in their corner. He took the hits, burned the capital, and left the city stronger than he found it.
That’s the legacy. Duluth didn’t get brochures and branding campaigns. It got grit. It got courage. It got a mayor willing to carry the weight of unpopular fights so future budgets could be written in black ink instead of red.
Plenty of mayors cut ribbons. Ness cut liabilities. He took on the most challenging problems and proved that authentic leadership isn’t about comfort but courage.
Ness set the bar. Every leader who comes after should measure themselves against it.
