President Steve Brandt
Steve Brandt is a fifth-generation Minnesotan of German and French Canadian stock. He grew up in St. Paul and Roseville, and moved to Minneapolis to study at the University of Minnesota. He’s lived most of his adult life in the city. That includes 49 years in the King Field neighborhood home where he and his wife, Lynda McDonnell, raised two sons. He spent 40 years as a Star Tribune reporter, covering state government, agriculture, Hennepin County, and Minneapolis from back alleys to City Hall. His reporting on the farm crisis of the 1980s won three national awards and he was awarded the coveted Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Award for his lifetime body of work. He studied at the University of Michigan under a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1983-84. He was a devoted activist in what was then known as the Newspaper Guild of the Twin Cities.
An avowed Minneapolisphile, he participated in the community life as much as permitted under journalistic restrictions, and especially since retirement. Pre-retirement, he served on his neighborhood board, coached women’s and children’s soccer, led two church councils, helped to lead a scout troop, while initiating the city-spanning RiverLake Greenway. Post-retirement, he spent five years on the city’s capital budgeting task force, lobbied to restore the vote to released felons and to grant driver license privileges to undocumented immigrants. He’s on the steering committee for the Great Northern Greenway, reviewed more than 9,000 deed covenants through the landmark Mapping Prejudice Project. He helps to organize commemorations of the 1934 trucker strike that made Minneapolis a union city. He’s helped his largely immigrant parish to protect its undocumented members. He raises vegetables and flowers, runs and bikes long distances, and loves to read history.
