Howie Hanson is Minnesota’s Columnist, writing about power, money, sports and civic life across the state. His daily column is sponsored by Lyric Kitchen . Bar of Duluth.
Cities are not run on press conferences. They are run on budgets, policy decisions, development negotiations, infrastructure planning and the slow, often unglamorous work of governing. The best mayors understand that reality. They spend less time marketing the city and more time managing it.
In Duluth, people tend to respect the public official who shows up with a notebook more than the one who shows up with a photographer. Somewhere along the way, running the city started to look a lot like promoting it.
For the average Duluth resident trying to pay the mortgage, shovel the driveway and keep up with the property tax bill, the constant stream of ceremonial announcements and congratulatory photo opportunities can feel strangely disconnected from everyday life. People are not looking for a running commentary about how well the city is being represented. They are looking for evidence that the city is being run.
Which is why Duluth City Councilor Arik Forsman stands out.
Forsman has quietly built a reputation at City Hall as something that has become surprisingly rare in modern politics: a steady hand and a prepared mind. He is not a loud politician. He is not a grandstander. There is no sense that a photographer needs to be nearby in case a ceremonial moment breaks out.
Instead, he does something far more unusual. He reads the material.
None of this suggests that Forsman agrees with everyone, or that every vote he has cast on the council has been universally popular. That is not how public service works. What it does suggest is that he approaches the job with seriousness, preparation and a temperament that places governing ahead of performance.
Forsman, who serves on the Duluth City Council and previously held leadership roles there including council president and chair of its finance committee, has spent much of his public service focusing on the fundamentals of civic leadership: budgets, economic development, housing growth and the long-term infrastructure decisions that quietly determine whether a city prospers or drifts.
The mayor of Duluth is not merely a public personality. The position functions as the chief executive of a municipal government responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in public spending and thousands of daily decisions affecting streets, water systems, housing development, public safety and economic opportunity along the Lake Superior shoreline.
That job description suggests management more than marketing.
Forsman appears to understand that distinction.
Professionally, he works in economic development for Minnesota Power, where the daily conversation tends to revolve around business investment, workforce needs and whether communities are positioning themselves for the future. That experience provides a practical understanding of how local government decisions influence economic growth and regional competitiveness.
It also shapes how he approaches policy.
Housing shortages, infrastructure investment, workforce development and economic growth are not separate debates in his mind. They are pieces of the same civic puzzle. A city either puts those pieces together thoughtfully, or it spends the next decade wondering why opportunity keeps landing somewhere else.
Forsman tends to approach those questions in a calm, analytical tone that would probably not excite a political campaign consultant.
Which may be exactly the point.
For much of Duluth’s history, the mayor’s job looked different. The old-school mayors understood that the work was less about visibility and more about responsibility. They negotiated infrastructure projects, managed city finances, worked through neighborhood disputes and occasionally took political heat for decisions that weren’t popular but were necessary. They represented the city, certainly — but they also ran it.
Humility is not always fashionable in modern politics. The incentives tend to reward volume, visibility and constant reminders of who deserves credit. But humility still matters in government. It allows a leader to listen longer than he speaks, to study an issue before announcing a solution, and to remember that public office is not a stage performance.
It is a responsibility.
That quieter approach is one of the reasons Forsman has earned respect at City Hall. Colleagues frequently describe him as thoughtful, well-researched and collaborative — a public official more interested in understanding a problem than performing around it.
In many ways, that temperament is exactly what municipal leadership requires.
The next decade will present Duluth with a complicated set of decisions: housing development pressures, infrastructure investment needs, downtown revitalization, fiscal discipline and the broader question of how the city positions itself economically in a changing regional landscape.
Those choices will shape Duluth for a generation. They will not be decided during photo opportunities.
They will be decided in budget meetings, policy negotiations and development discussions that require patience, preparation and the willingness to occasionally say the most dangerous phrase in politics: let’s slow down and think this through.
Cities eventually reveal what they value in leadership. Some reward the loudest voice, the most visible personality or the most energetic public campaign. Others quietly gravitate toward leaders who prepare carefully, listen closely and treat the work of governing as something serious.
Over time, those choices shape the culture of a city as much as any single ordinance or development project.
Duluth will eventually decide what it wants from its next mayor. Every election becomes a kind of civic mirror, reflecting the leadership style a community believes it needs.
If Duluth decides it prefers less marketing and more governing, voters may discover that the model for that kind of leadership has been sitting in plain view at City Hall for several years. His name is Arik Forsman.
