DULUTH – City Council President Terese Tomanek is banned from Duluth Coffee Company, its owner said, after she confronted an employee while ordering.
Employee Brandon Parker, a former council candidate who suspended his campaign last month, said Tomanek approached him at the counter last week and told him she was disturbed by something he had written online related to a citizen-led right-to-repair ballot measure involving rental rights, which the council rejected. It will still go before voters in November.
Parker said Thursday that in frustration, he had facetiously used two inappropriate words − listing an off-color sample petition name and address − to criticize the city’s efforts to derail the right-to-repair ballot measure, after councilors approved their own version. She took him to task for it, he said, shocking customers as she “lectured” him on tone and civility, he said.
“There’s a power dynamic at play, with an elected official approaching a constituent in that manner, in a work setting,” Parker said. “It was humiliating and inappropriate and to me it comes off as an intimidation tactic.”
Parker, who frequently attends council meetings and has been vocal online about city business, said Tomanek invited him to coffee to discuss it further.
Tomanek, a former chaplain, has been a city councilor since 2020. She said in a text message Thursday that she called Parker twice after the exchange. Duluth Coffee Company owner Eric Faust gave her Parker’s phone number with Parker’s permission, she said. She left a phone message for him apologizing for “bringing up an issue at his workplace,” she wrote.
She did not respond to an interview request.
Faust sent a public email to Tomanek, Mayor Roger Reinert and the entire council Wednesday about the incident.
