Gail Dorfman was elected St. Louis Park Mayor in 1995 and served in that role until 1999. She had been an at-large member of the City Council from 1991 to 1995.
Dorfman received her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Ohio State University, a Masters degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and has served as a Fellow at the Mondale Policy Forum of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
She started her career in politics and sparked her passion for public service working at Ohio State, appointed to a public relations position by Governor Jack Gilligan in an office set up to better relate to students after the 1970 killings of four students at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen. She later worked in Washington, DC as a congressional staff member and served in the Washington office of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis before coming to St. Louis Park.
In the April 2018 issue of City Lakes Magazine, Donna Trump provided an overview of Dorfman’s political career:
“I was the only woman on the council for the first two years,” she says. “I felt like I had to do everything that much better in order to be taken seriously.” She ran, she says, on a platform of “establishing a vision,” noting “Vision St. Louis Park”—now in its third evolution—still drives city government. “It was no more ‘business-as-usual,’” she says. “We wanted to establish a vision with the whole community… Through a process she describes as creative chaos, committees distilled the ideas brought to the meeting and came up with 300 recommendations. “It wasn’t just a plan on the shelves but included how to implement new ideas,” she says.
“She was great,” says Jeff Jacobs, former St. Louis Park city council person and mayor who served with Dorfman as at-large representatives in the early ‘90s. Currently a lawyer and labor arbitrator, Jacobs calls Dorfman “a true public servant whose major role was to do that which is best for the public. She championed public process. She was one of my mentors. I can’t say enough good things about her.”
“I’ve tried throughout my career to encourage women to run for office,” she says, adding Betsy Hodges was once her intern, and colleague Cathy ten Broeke is now head of the office to end homelessness at the state level. Senator Tina Smith chaired her first two campaigns. Anne Mavity, current St. Louis Park city council person, ran one of Dorfman’s county commissioner campaigns and worked in her county board office.
Dorfman is proud of St. Louis Park’s commitment to innovation—first city in the state to do curbside recycling, for example. “The challenge,” she says, “is to hold on to that spirit.”
Another major innovation Dorfman can claim as Mayor of the Park is the launching the first phase of the Excelsior and Grand project.
After serving as mayor, Dorfman successfully ran for a seat as Hennepin County Commissioner in an interim election to replace retiring Mark Andrew in 1999, serving on that board until 2014. In 2006, she ran unsuccessfully against 10 other DFL candidates to replace Martin Sabo as Minnesota’s 5th District Member of Congress. Keith Ellison won the party’s endorsement after four ballots.
Dorfman retired from the County board in 2014 to take a position as executive director of St. Stephen’s Human Services. She was appointed by Governor Mark Dayton in March 2015 to the Metropolitan Council, representing St. Louis Park, Golden Valley, Crystal, New Hope and many neighborhoods of Minneapolis on the 17-member board.
The Met Council’s Livable Communities Act, created in 1995, helped fund the Excelsior and Grand development, one of its first grantees. Transit Oriented Development (TOD), walkable, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use communities with affordable housing and centered around high-quality public transportation like the light-rail has been a Met Council priority and, since the approval of Southwest LRT, figures strongly in St. Louis Park’s Comprehensive Plan for 2040.
Dorfman also serves as board Chair of FairVote Minnesota, lobbying for ranked choice voting (RCV) statewide. The St. Louis Park City Council unanimously adopted RCV in 2018.