The Business Candidate for Mayor
It’s a September day, and Jazz Hampton is just a little late to the former car repair shop in Northeast that’s now a coworking space for tech startups. It’s where he runs his company, TurnSignl. It’s also where he runs his campaign for mayor. Just this morning, Hampton, 35, met with five small-business owners across Minneapolis, from southwest to Lake Street to North Minneapolis.
The University of St. Thomas grad and southwest Minneapolis resident rattles off the concerns he heard: “They were like, ‘We have bathrooms that we find needles in. We have security footage of people stealing from our stores. And we feel like no one is following up when we tell them the person’s first and last name. We installed bulletproof glass that cost $40,000’—I just hear all these concerns from folks, and not only do I appreciate that … I know what it takes to run a business.”
In this year’s mayoral race, Hampton could be described as the business candidate. He launched his app, TurnSignl, in 2021 with co-founders Andre Creighton and Mychal Frelix. It’s a sort of OnStar for legal aid, available in all states, with, Hampton says, well over 200,000 users. Designed for use during traffic stops, it connects drivers with lawyers and was inspired by the police killings of Philando Castile in 2016 and George Floyd in 2020.
Before TurnSignl, Hampton was a corporate attorney at Minneapolis’ Foley & Mansfield. He also teaches entrepreneurial finance at the University of St. Thomas, although he’s paused his teaching to campaign.
Hampton is happy to wear the business candidate label—but what exactly does that mean? For Hampton, it has to do with empathy. “It’s not that I’m going to put business needs above all,” he says. “It’s that I know what it’s like to grow a business.”
He’s eager to discuss an entrepreneurial approach to city government. Hampton references three principles from TurnSignl’s startup:
- Manage your employees. “It means having success markers that you’re tracking. … I feel like people forget that the city has over 1,000 employees.”
- Manage the budget. “If you don’t know how to walk through a profit and loss statement … I don’t think you’re equipped and ready.”
- Track ROI. “If I give you this [funding], what is the success I will see? I believe we are dramatically failing at that within the city.”
Hampton hears often about red tape such as inspection wait time and permitting. Business owners are concerned about wages (minimum wage will rise to $16.37 an hour on Jan. 1) and the prospect of a Labor Standards Board, which the City Council has championed. “What we need is someone that can actually sit at that table and be able to hear all folks,” Hampton says. “That is what we’ve been struggling to do—even in the Labor Standards Board conversation.”
