Introduction
Josh Bassais wants Hennepin County to do its job, on public safety, housing, transit, and county services, and he has a plan to get there. Central to his pitch is better collaboration across levels of government, particularly with the state, at a moment when the legislature holds the fate of HCMC in its hands.
District 3 is shaping up to be one of the more competitive Hennepin County Commissioner races this cycle. Bassais is challenging 12-year incumbent Marion Greene, whom I interviewed last week. Two other candidates, Kevin Chavis and Abdihakim Ibrahim, have also announced.
For Bassais, HCMC isn’t an abstraction, it’s personal. His mother was a young single mom who depended on Hennepin County Health Services, and as a child he benefited directly from those county resources. His father, a severe diabetic on disability in his 30s who suffered two strokes, received long-term care at HCMC. “I remember sitting in dialysis with him at HCMC,” Bassais says, “and it extended some years onto his life.” His father died at 37. That history shapes how Bassais talks about the hospital’s uncertain future: potential closure, he says, “would be an absolute tragedy, not just for folks who live in the county, but the entire state.” He points to HCMC’s Level 1 trauma designation as a resource the region cannot afford to lose. On the funding question, he’s skeptical of the state’s current approach: “What’s proposed at the state is very much a band-aid” that may only hold for a year. He also faults county leadership for not seeing this coming, arguing that after the 2024 election, administrators should have been planning immediately, not scrambling at the last minute before session ends.
Interview Summary
Josh Bassais, a lifelong Minneapolis resident and District 3 candidate for Hennepin County Commissioner, explains why he’s challenging a 12-year incumbent. A product of Minneapolis public schools and Ward 8 resident for nearly five decades, Bassais frames his candidacy around a single, urgent argument: Hennepin County has substituted political theater for actual governance, and the consequences, visible in encampments near his home, stalled transit projects, and an HCMC funding crisis, have fallen hardest on the people the county is supposed to serve. His core pitch is collaboration over gamesmanship, bringing private-sector discipline in budget management and stakeholder alignment to a board he believes has drifted from its basic responsibilities.
On housing and homelessness, Bassais argues for individualized wraparound services that treat the crisis as the public health emergency it is, rather than accepting outdoor encampments as a viable long-term strategy. He criticizes the county’s $200 million investment in the Fort Snelling housing project, roughly $1 million per unit, as a misallocation when affordable units could have been built closer to where people actually live and work. On transit, he uses the Green Line extension as a case study in poor planning and lack of stakeholder engagement, pointing to the community’s tunnel demand as a foreseeable cost driver that should never have blindsided administrators.
Bassais also weighs in on HCMC’s funding uncertainty, the Lyndale Avenue reconstruction’s effect on small businesses, the Sheriff’s office controversy, and youth corrections, consistently returning to the theme that better outcomes require cross-agency collaboration, data-driven accountability, and leadership willing to listen before acting. He closes with a pointed contrast to his opponent: after 12 years, many District 3 constituents don’t know who their commissioner is. Bassais says he’s not in this for the salary, he left corporate America to try to make a difference, and that visibility, empathy, and transparency will define how he serves if elected. The DFL endorsement convention is June 13th.
Thank you for reading and caring about Minneapolis — and Hennepin County.
