Tag Archives: DFL

OMG Lindsay Port

2022 Election, 2024 Election, ,

We Minnesota DFLers* love Senator Lindsey Port. She is the amazing senator representing Minnesota Senate District 55, which by coincidence is where I was for most of the day today being judgmental at high school students.** That is a tough district for a DFLer to represent, but she is so well respected by the people of Savage and Burnsville (Go Lakers!) that she wins handily.

So today, I heard DFL Party Chair Ken Martin giving the You Betha award to “all of the DFL women in the Senate who maintained composure while the extremist white men in the Republican party explained to them how abortion works, for 11 hours, except of course Lindsey Port.” Or words to that effect. (Listen to the original here.)

Why was Senator Port exempted from the Straight Face award? Have a look.

Click to see face palm:

Sorry, Lindsey, maybe next time! Until then, however, keep up the good work.

*DFL = Democratic Party

**Judging a speech contest

Pandemic Covid has killed over 13,000 Minnesotans, over a million Americans, and over 6 million people worldwide

2024 Election, ,

President Biden’s Democratic administration and Democratic governors got hundreds of millions of shots in arms, and distributed effective therapeutics, to fight Covid-19.

Covid + MAGA Politics Kill
The MAGA Republican president and MAGA governors did everything they could to ensure that more citizens died or were terribly sickened by Covid-19. This ultimately killed a higher percentage of those exposed in red states than in blue states. Their rhetoric also reinforced and expanded anti-science and anti-vaccine sentiment in our country, so more children will be sickened by other preventable diseases as well. The party that accused Democrats of having death panels are themselves indubitably a death panel party.

All Minnesota Republicans Have Extremist Anti-Women Positions

2022 Election, Politics, , ,

GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
“Mortensen [invited] Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to his home for a Thanksgiving weekend party last year during the pandemic, in defiance of public health orders at the time that discouraged … gathering to limit the spread of COVID-19.” -Minnesota Reformer
As far as I can tell.

Want me to go over them one at a time? OK, fine.

Let’s start with The Mort.

Republican Minnesota House representative Erik “The Mort” Mortensen (Shakopee area, southeast of the Twin Cities)* wants all civil and legal rights granted to a fertilized human egg. Mortensen only barely won his most recent race, and is running for re-election against Brad Tabke, DFL endorsed**. Marijuana candidate Ryan Martin is also running in this race, and is likely to spoil the election for the DFL as he did last time, allowing a rabid anti-abortion member back into the house (and forestalling the legalization of Marijuana***).

Mortensen has staked out his position on abortion very clearly in legislation he has introduced: He intends to control women’s reproductive choice by using a draconian law, and will do so if the Extremist Republicans running in the North Star state take over the government.

GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
Mortensen recently got into trouble for doxx’ing a fellow legislator in the Minnesota house. A DFL woman, of course. He has no sense of boundary or respect.
If you want to protect reproductive rights in Minnesota, consider helping out Brad Tabke in this key race. If you want to see Marijuana legalized in Minnesota, do not support the legalize marijuana candidate, that won’t do it.

There are Republicans who will tell you that Mortensen is not so much one of theirs. He has, in fact, been in big trouble with the Minnesota Republican caucus (in the house), but not because of his extreme policy views. Rather, he has complained openly to and about the Republican leadership, and how they handle the process of making sausage, er, laws, from bills. Mortensen, in effect, knows nothing about how the legislative process works, so when he sees something he does not understand, he thinks about it carefully and learns, becomming a better person. Only kidding. What he actually does is to go off the handle and complain. He is not smart enough to figure out what to actually get mad at vs. what to learn from.

The problem with the MN GOP washing their hands of Mort is that Mort is right on board policy wise, and is a leader in the anti-choice movement within the Party of Strong Dislike****. The abiding truth is that the Republican Party has a single position on each issue, and it is easily discerned: Whatever makes liberals cry. In this case, as they see it, taking away the rights from each and every woman and giving those rights to a cell.

GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
Mortensen drew an HR complaint on his first day on the House Floor when he spoke inappropriately to two DFL women, one of which happened to be Speaker. What an offensive dummy.
*Fort those outside of Minnesota, that’s Erik with a “K,” which goes along with Mortensen with an “en,” and the town is not “Shake -0- pea” (like when you make a veggie smoothie with legumes) but rather “Shock -a- pee” (like when you are shocked about something and have to pee). We also pronounce the K in Knute and Knife. Well, one of those anyway.

** DFL is Minnesotan for “Democratic Party.”

*** Yes, there appear to have been times when a Republican faked being a legalize Marijuana candidate in order to help another Republican win, though I’m not saying this is the case here. But it is. This particular candidate, Ryan Martin, is known to be a Republican and has ties to a known spoiler of this nature who ran for Congress in Minnesota’s second Congressional district.

****(Minnesotan for “hate.”)

Sources:
New House Republican caucus gives Shakopee lawmaker the boot

Shakopee GOP lawmaker doxxes DFL colleague in Facebook post, could face ethics complaint

Freshman Shakopee lawmaker jokes about getting HR complaint on first day

Emergence of ‘Mort’ draws scrutiny of race where pot candidate pulled votes

Election matters

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Measuring the feeble heartbeat of the electorate

From a current NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, regarding likely voters:

(Source)

It looks to me that more mobilization is needed. Groups you would think have the highest stakes in this year’s election have low numbers.

Related to potential Kavanaugh effects, from the same poll:

Women are smarter than men, people with college degrees are smarter than those without, younger is smarter than older. Oddly, Independents dislike Kavanaugh to a greater degree than one would expect given the previously graph. (I’m suspicious of the category “Independent,” however.)

Regarding who should control congress, this:

The Republican Party is the party of whites, men, and to some degree older folks, while the Democratic Party is the party of people of color, women, younger folks, and the better educated.

Most critical may be the fact that 50% of likely voters prefer Democrats nation wide, while only 41% of likely voters prefer Republicans.

This will not, however, translate into more Republican members of congress. Local tradition, local campaigning, election rigging, and gerrymandering, determine who wins a given Congressional seat. Sadly. As I’ve suggested before, it is highly unlikely that a Democratic leaning American electorate will actually elect a Democratic majority Congress, in either house.

Expect Mud

This happened. I was sitting on the couch watching a football game (go Vikings!) and a political ad for our local Democratic candidate for Congress, Dean Phillips, came on. It was a positive, informative, up beat ad. Nice. Then, a political ad for the Republican incumbent, the Trump Lapdog Erik Paulsen, came up. It was negative, disgusting, and full of lies.

So the person watching the game with me, asked about why that ad was so horrible and why do the Democrats have such different ads. I said, “The Democrats used to use negative ads too, both parties did. ”

“Why?”

“Because experts told all the campaigns that they worked, and they did seem to work, so everybody did them. But this year, Democrats, at least here, decided to do no negative ads. So you see Republican negative ads, no Democratic negative ads.”

“I think,” he said, “If you have negative ads, some people learn to hate the other candidate so you win, but more people hate the whole idea and just stay home and don’t vote, and that matters more.”‘

“Hmm,” I replied. “Pretty smart for an eight year old, since that is exactly how we lost this race two years ago!”

Here’s the thing. Right now, Republicans are going to double down on negative ads, and they are going to work. Or, just ads that lie. For example, Representative Sarah Anderson, of the Minnesota house, is famous for a) reducing funding for education and b) opposing heath care reform. Her opponent, Ginny Klevorn, is famous for a) being very pro education and also, knowing a lot about how the school systems in her district are run, and b) wanting to link the health care plans state legislators have to the average cost and availability of health plans for all the citizens of the state, so they know exactly what everyone is experiencing (currently, Sarah Anderson and her Republican buddies in the MN Legislature have really great heath care plans!)

The people who live in this district have made it clear that they want more attention paid to, and more money spent on, education, and they want health care reform. So, naturally, anti-education and anti-health care reform Republican Sarah Anderson has put out lies in all her lit and other ads, painting herself as the savior of the education system and the savior of health care. Erik Paulsen is putting out negative, lie-filled, hate ads against Dean Phillips, in the US Congressional race here. The Republican dweeb running for Governor, Jeff Johnson, has been putting out hateful, dishonest ads, in his effort to catch up with Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Time Walz. And so on.

That’s all expected. What concerns me right now is the fact, just reported by the New York Times, that while Democrats have been out raising Republicans in recent weeks, Republicans have way more money to spend on elections, starting now.

Republicans entered the final month of the campaign with more money in the bank than the Democrats, providing them with vital ammunition as they wage a furious effort to hold on to control of Congress.

The most recent round of campaign finance disclosures, filed Saturday, showed that Republican national party committees, candidates in key House and Senate races and their top unlimited-money outside groups, or “super PACs,” had $337 million on hand as of Sept. 30. Their Democratic counterparts had $285 million in the bank on the same date.

What I don’t know is if this is simply more false balance reporting by the New York Times, or good analysis. Democratic superpacs have raised piles of money, a few million more than Republicans, and the superpacs represent more than half of the total campaign budget. But, it could be that Republicans are going to play their usual trick, swamping media markets where they are about to lose with lies, negative campaigning, and fear, and so in the end pull out and win. I would like to hope, but I dare not think, the post 2016 American electorate is not quite so easily manipulated.

Here’s the data from that report:

Send money to a Democrat!

Congratulations to Rebecca Otto, Willard Munger Winner!

Environment,

Willard Munger served in the Minnesota House of Representatives for a total of 42 years and seven months, which is a record. He died while still in office, and beat another record as the oldest legislator in the state’s history. He was born and raised, and served in, the Fergus Falls area, which is in the northeastern part of the state.

Munger was a very significant environmentalist, and was responsible for a number of key legislative acts to protect Minnesota’s natural heritage. So, eventually, they named a trail after him, the longest segment of which runs from near Hinckley to near Duluth, about 63 miles, and as such is the fifth longest paved trail in the United States. (The trail follows the old railroad line, which I believe is the same line that passed through the Great Hinkley Fire of 1894, in which 418 people died.

They also named an award after Munger, the “Willard Munger Award for Distinguished Environmental Partnership.”

Rebecca Otto, my friend, is currently the Minnesota State Auditor. If you are in the State Auditor business, you will know that she has served in various auditor professional societies, and is recognized, nation-wide, as one of the best Auditors ever. When the US State Department is trying to help the novice government officials in newly minted democracies to find their way out of a history of dictatorship, corruption, etc., they send them to Minnesota to learn from Rebecca.

More recently, Rebecca ran for the DFL (Democratic) Party endorsement for Governor of Minnesota, and I helped where I could with her campaign. Sadly, she lost the endorsement. But it is notable that the outcome of that gubernatorial endorsement, along side a very odd Attorney General endorsement, led to one of the more chaotic phases of Minnesota politics. But I digress.

Here’s the point: Rebecca has always been the best pro-science and pro-environment candidate ever. Serving her local school district, the state legislature, the state as auditor, and as a civic leader, Rebecca has developed and promoted pro-environment policies that are so good, they will be part of statewide policy after the next election, even though she herself will not be.

And so,

For her life-long dedication to protecting and improving Minnesota’s environment and natural resources, State Auditor Rebecca Otto will receive the Willard Munger Award for Distinguished Environmental Partnership at the DFL Founders Day Dinner. The sold-out event takes place Saturday, Oct. 20 at the St. Paul RiverCentre. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti is the keynote speaker.

See you at the dinner, Rebecca!

(By the way, if the name Otto is familiar to you, it could be because you know of Shawn Otto, author of The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It.)

The Crazy, Zany, Minnesota Primary!

Politics, , , , , , , , ,

It suddenly occurred to me that one of the more interesting political shows happening in the country right now is largely unreported nationally, and that many of my friends and readers who are not living in the North Star State are missing it. I’m talking about the Minnesota Primary.

Interesting, I say, but not necessarily consequential. Yes, how red or blue the state ends up being is partly determined by the upcoming Primary (next Tuesday), but in the end, Republicans will put up Republicans, Democrats will put up Democrats, and then those two groups will fight it out. But, despite that inevitability, there are a number of races that will be on the tips of the pundit’s tongues next week, and on election day in November. Also, there are some interesting recent developents, one of which has not hit the national press yet, but will any second now.

The big race is for governor. As you know, I supported Rebecca Otto, but she did not win the endorsement at the state convention, and having promised to abide by the endorsement, she left the race. Erin Murphy was endorsed. Also seeking the endorsement was Congressman Tim Walz, who never promised to abide by the endorsement, and who remains in the race.

In order to understand how this gets interesting, we need to have a flashback and go way back in time, to just over a year ago today. That is when Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson unofficially said she might run for governor.

For reasons that I never understood, and now see as being very iffy, most Democrats in Minnesota, at that time, thought very highly of Swanson, and saw her as very very electable, to any office. She seemed to have a very effective campaign strategy, though even until recently I’d never identified a person who could explain her strategy to me. Anyway, since Swanson was suggesting she might run for governor, several individuals declared their tentative candidacy for Attorney General. They all said, if Swanson runs for Governor, they’ll stay in that race, but if Swanson doesn’t run for Governor, they’d give sway and drop out. I remember talking as some length with one of those candidates last August, urging her to stay in the race no matter what. She would not hear of it. Nobody would ever consider running against Swanson.

I never liked that Lori Swanson did that. It made the whole gubernatorial thing harder. Also, she was, in effect cheating. When my candidate, Otto, did some brilliant thing or another as part of her job, it could not be publicized because that would be unethical use of the office for campaigning. But even a lackadaisical attack on Trump by Attorney General Swanson became a “look at me, I’m great” campaign issue, since she was not officially running.

Eventually, very very late in the process. Swanson indicated that she was not running for governor. At about the same time, a young lawyer named Matt Pelikan decided he wasn’t going to screw around like all the others. He simply ran against Swanson.

At the time, I was working endorsing conventions, so I was at the state senate level conventions for the DFL on several different occasions. This meant that I got to see every candidate running for state level office give their stump speech several times. I remember when I saw Pelikan the first time. He said all these things that were impossible, indicating that our Democratic Attorney General was a friend of the NRA (not just a little, but a lot), had a weak position on Trump’s travel ban, and all sorts of other things. I figured this guy Pelikan was nuts, because none of those things could be true.

Right?

I’m the kind of person that others sometimes come to for advice on voting. They are not following the issues or candidates too closely, and they know that I am, and I can give them some helpful advice. Well, there are other people who are the kind that I go to for advice on candidates and issues. The deep gurus. At the time that I was seeing Pelikan’s stump speech every few days, I contacted some of these trusted confidants. They all assured me that Swanson was fine, go ahead and support her, bla bla bla.

Well, I still love and respect those individuals, but in doing my own research, I found out they were all wrong. The great ability of Lori Swanson seems to have been to convince people she was a strong progressive Democrat doing an excellent job, when really, she was a centrist at best, and it was not at all clear that she was doing a great job.

So, when I went, as a delegate elected by my Senate District, to the State Convention in Rochester, I had decided I’d vote for Pelikan. I really liked him.

Here is what was supposed to happen:

1) Pelikan gets up and makes an impassioned speak about his values and his value as a candidate. As part of his time, his husband makes a short but rousing endorsement. There is a short film favorable to him.

2) Swanson has a series of surrogates speak for her first, including some well known major democrats, cute young kids, and a variety of people with various traits that show how great Swanson is. All inclusive and stuff. This is followed by Swanson giving her great speech.

3) We vote, and the vote is something like 90% Swanson 10% Pelikan, if Pelikan is lucky. (A candidate needs 60% to be endorsed, and there can be several votes in a row to get there.

What really happened:

Item 1 from above. Not everyone agrees with me, oddly, but I felt that Pelikan’s speech was one of the best at the convention. Others do share that view. Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a couple of others, and Pelikan were all in the same echelon.

2) Swanson’s “normal people” surrogates, unpracticed and inexperienced most of them, each took too long to get through their spiel. The very famous former AG and Gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch, one of the surrogates, wandered and babbled. Time was called. There was no nice movie, no speech from Swanson. Everyone is sitting there, like, what?

3) We vote, and it is something like 52% Swanson, 48% Pelikan. The crowd goes wild. It is pretty clear that Pelikan has momentum. The chances are very high that he’ll pass Swanson on the next vote.

Just as we are starting to vote in the next round, Swanson drops out.

And that is when everything went crazy.

It took minutes for about a dozen people in very high places to put two and two together and realize that the AG slot was open. Swanson was not, people guessed, and later, got confirmed, going to stay in that race and run in the primary. She was going to swoop in out of nowhere and run in the primary for governor!

Some of the people who had previously fake-ran for AG when Swanson was toying with a gubernatorial run realized this was their chance, and some who had not as well. What unfolded unfolded fast over a few days.

Congressman Keith Ellison, up for re-election in Minnesota’s fifth district and DFL endorsed, quit his race for that seat in Congress and declared he would run for AG. That left open the fifth district. A whole bunch of people jumped into that race. Swanson added soon to be ex Congressman Nolan of Minnesota’s eight district to her ticket. Some of the people now running for AG left open seats they had been holding.

Meanwhile, Senator Al Franken had resigned from the Senate and was replaced with the appointed Tina Smith. Senator Smith is running for election to her seat in a special election this year (on normal election day). She is being challenged by former Republican Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota (and by the way a former teacher of Matt Pelikan), and a former ethics lawyer in the Bush White House. At the convention, Painter did very well despite having only barely campaigned and only entering the race a few weeks earlier. Smith and Painter will, like the rest of them, face off in next Tuesday’s primary.

So now we have a very confusing primary.

Governor:

Erin Murphy (DFL Endorsed)
Time Walz
Lori Swanson

The current and important news about this race:

1) Polls show the endorsed Murphy ticket to be significantly behind. I do not expect her to win the primary. Swanson and Walz were both doing about as well as each other until about 48 hours ago.

2) Breaking news from yesterday or the day before. The accusation is being credibly made that Swanson, while in the AG office, never actually hired staff for any of her campaigns (and this is said to continue for the current race for governor) and instead, used her government staff to do that. If that turns out to be real and is disseminated widely enough before Tuesday, it could kill her chances. I don’t know how bad this can get. I think most Democrats voting in the DFL primary who know about this, who were inclined to vote for Swanson, might beg off now. People might think, if the accusations are true, isn’t that illegal? Won’t that make the chance of her actually being governor be roughly zero?

I’m not tracking the Republican contests here, but I’ll note that for governor, Tim “We’ve Had Pawlenty of Tim” Pawlenty is trying to make a comeback. The big fight between Pawlenty and his main opponent Jeff Johnson is how much like Trump they each are. But I’m not sure if they are trying to be more like Trump or less like Trump. I imagine neither of them is sure of that either.

Attorney General

DFL Endorsed Matt Pelikan
Debra Hilstrom
Keith Ellison
Mike Rothman
Tom Foley

I think Ellison and his supporters believe that between name recognition and reputation, he might easily win this primary. The problem is, Minnesota is highly bifurcated. Most Minnesotans are either pretty liberal or full on yahoo right wing. The liberals would enjoy Ellison for several reasons, including the fact that he is a person of color and a Muslim. We would like to be the first state with a black Muslim AG. But, the yahoos won’t have anything to do with him and have always hated him.

In the primary, this means, how many Democrats will think, “I like him and all, but he can’t win in rural areas where the yahoos live, so no…”

Meanwhile Pelikan has been campaigning steadily and effectively. If the endorsing convention is anything to go by, he may do very well.

Hilstrom is locally liked a great deal, but I would guess she is mostly locally known. Nobody knows who the other two are.

I really have no idea what will happen, but I think there is a non zero chance of Pelikan pulling this off. I will be voting for him, of course.

There are actually a whole bunch of people running in the special election for Senate.

Tina Smith is the DFL endorsed incumbent. She is liked by many according to many, and I know many who support her. But she damaged herself enormously when she came out with some highly questionable environmental legislation, which turned many against her. Richard Painter is the opposite. People are suspicious of him because he is a former Republican. But, his position on those environmental issues is strongly favored by those who are unhappy with Smith’s decisions. Remember, this is a primary, so it is a good guess that faithful DFLers will vote in numbers for the endorsed candidate. I predict Painter will do much better than most expect. I have no idea who will win.

Down in Congressional District 5, now an open seat with Ellison leaving to run for AG, there are five candidates running in the primary. Ilhan Omar is the DFL endorsed candidate (endorsed in a hastily convened endorsing convention). If she is ultimately seated, she will be a black (native African) Muslim female replacing a mere male black (native born) Muslim. So that’s a sort of upgrade. Also, she is very well liked, so I strongly suspect she’ll win the primary. Whichever Democrat wins the primary will win the seat in November.

The other candidates, though, include some very popular individuals. Margaret Anderson Kelliher is a mainstream liberal DFLer, endorsed last time there was an open seat for Governor (but she lost the primary to now-Governor Dayton). Also running is Patricia Torres Ray who is locally popular. And two other guys, including a Francis Drake, but not the guy with the boat.

So, Omar will very likely win that, but it will be interesting to see how others fair.

Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District is the big cry baby of districts. This is the mining region, as well as a major tourism region. It is where the wolves live. One percent of the state’s economy is in mining, but most of the politicians pretend that the mining interests, both the businesses and the mining jobs, should drive politics state wide. Unions agree. If you are a Democrat and you point out that anything from Indian Gaming to tourism to building clean energy facilities is way bigger than mining and always will be, you will be vilified. I assume that this love of a small and mostly dead industry comes from well heeled supporters who are not only from outside Minnesota, but outside the US entirely. The mining business is large, and it is dangerous. I fully expect to be pressured to delete the very paragraph you are reading.

Anyway, because of things like mining, pipelines, hippie punching, and some very duplicitous actors in the DFL, the eight district could not endorse a candidate this year. So they’ve got five people running. If you want to know, I support Michelle Lee, but I think Kirsten Kennedy has some real future potential and she truly appreciates clean energy. Jason Metsa is the mining guy. A couple of others are running too, don’t know anything about them.

For more detail, more uniform coverage, info on the Republicans and on race I’m ignoring, check out this overview at MinnPost.

Trump almost won in Minnesota, thanks to Democrats

Politics, , , , ,

In a year in which Democrats show up, like they did in 2012, Trump would have been trounced in Minnesota. Instead, he barely lost. It was a very very close call, just a couple of percentage points.

This graph says it all:

One thing this means is that the Democrats, in putting up candidates in Minnesota, are not trying to win back Republicans or Trump voters. They are simply trying to win back their own.

Many months ago I coined the term “snowflake” to refer to liberals, progressives, or Democrats, who felt that since their own personal point of view is not perfectly represented in the mind of each and every other liberal or progressive or Democrat, that they should therefore complain incessantly, stay home from the polls, and sit there in a funk hoping someone like Trump wins the election in order to show the rest of them how bad they are being.

Unfortunately, the snowflake moniker has been co-opted, without my permission, by others! But, here, I revise it for the special purpose of talking about this graph.

Roughly six percent of Minnesotans are snowflakes.

This year, dammit, show up.

Also, in the coming convention, if you are a DFL delegate, vote for Otto because you don’t need a medium size male with a lumberjack shirt and a booming voice to win in this state.

Rebecca Otto: by far the strongest and most progressive candidate for Minnesota Governor in 2018

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Here’s why: All the available data strongly indicates that Otto will beat all the other contenders across state in the upcoming Governor’s race.

Democrats have two major problems to face in 2018 and beyond. First, how do we win elections? Second, how do we remain true to our progressive and liberal roots?

For Democrats, 2018 is a must-win election, and Minnesotans have a lot at stake. Will the state remain the shining star of the North, or will it go the way of Wisconsin, and sink into a Republican dark age of union busting, environment polluting, professor bashing, service slashing, and economic activity destruction?

Of all the candidates running or suspected of running for Governor in 2018, Rebecca Otto is the only one who can most clearly win and at the same time preserve and advance core, human based, Democratic ideals, in my opinion.

The smart move for the DFL in 2018 is to turn to a candidate that has won several times statewide and has strong name recognition, positive feeling among the voters engendered by her commitment to widely held values, and a strong base of support. State Auditor Rebecca Otto is the only candidate with that resumé. Otto has racked up several historic victories, including the largest upset of an incumbent in 112 years, and is positioned to do it again in 2018. Her statewide electoral prowess far outstrips her nearest competitor, Tim Walz, who is largely unknown outside of his first district, and is untested statewide. Beyond that, Otto stands for strong for Democratic values, while Walz has shown himself to be a DINO-style Democrat. Walz enjoys a very high rating from the NRA, for example, and in February of 2013 was one of only six Democrats in Congress to vote to expand gun sales to the severely mentally ill, over the objections of senior generals including David Petraeus, Michael Hayden and Stanley McChrystal.

On the environment and climate change, Walz again voted with Republicans on anti-environmental bills progressives strongly opposed. He voted with Republicans in favor of building the Keystone XL pipeline. He introduced a bill, siding with Eric Paulsen, to expand offshore oil drilling. Walz refused to provide voters with positions on several other key issues covered by the 2016 Vote Smart Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests. Historically, candidates have failed to complete the test in part due to “fear of negative attack ads,” according to that group. In contrast, Rebecca Otto opposes unrestricted gun sales and supports common-sense, reasonable measures to prevent mass shootings by mentally ill individuals. Otto is also the acknowledged statewide leader on environmental issues, and cast multiple courageous votes against multinational corporate interests, in an effort to protect the environment even while being harshly attacked by industry advocates. Indeed, she and her husband live in a solar home they built with their own hands.

So why are some party elites pushing Walz over the far more progressive, experienced, and courageous, and environmental Rebecca Otto? Because they think we need a DINO to win, and appear to have lost touch with the party rank and file, just as they did in 2016. Walz is a talented but glad-handing politician, and older DFLers, the kind that promoted Hillary Clinton despite the rank and file’s strong preference for Bernie Sanders, find an old white traditional male politician to be a safer, steadier choice when the stakes of losing run high. But that is EXACTLY the kind of thinking that loses elections, because it disenfranchises party activists, it is reactionary instead of visionary, and it selects candidates from on high who are less able to capture the imagination of voters as something new and different. Considering that Democrats have never won the Governor’s seat two administrations in a row, that lack of contrast and imagination is a major concern in contemplating a Walz candidacy.

In their fear, the party elders who have endorsed Walz are willing to overlook Walz’s anti-progressive, anti-environmental voting history, thinking a DINO is what voters want. But they’re wrong. Hillary Clinton was anointed by the same party elites, and she underperformed Barack Obama in Minnesota by 180,000 votes. Hillary Clinton had many good qualities, but last cycle, Minnesotans showed they were ready to embrace bold, progressive leadership, the kind of leadership that they believe, based on track record, won’t sell them out on key issues when the going gets tough. They want a candidate who runs outside strict party affiliation, who thinks independently, and who takes stands for ordinary people instead of the wealthy elite or big corporations even if it means the corporations will mount attacks. They want the kind of principled, fearless leadership shown by Bernie Sanders and Rebecca Otto, not the calculating, fearful, history of Tim Walz.

But what about Trump? Didn’t Greater Minnesota go heavily for Trump? Didn’t the Minnesota Senate go Republican and the House go even more Republican? Considering all this, don’t we need a more conservative and calculating Democrat from Greater Minnesota to bridge the so-called “urban-rural divide”? That’s what some party elites argued when pushing Tim Walz. But Rebecca Otto is the only candidate who resides at the intersections of urban, suburban, exurban, and rural, on a small farm outside the Twin Cities. This means everyone can claim her as theirs.

But more importantly, the “urban-rural divide” appears to be a Republican myth that Democrats should not buy into. The evidence shows that Donald Trump received almost the identical number of votes in Minnesota as Mitt Romney did in 2012, so the notion that Donald Trump surged in Minnesota is false. Rather, Hillary Clinton underperformed Barack Obama’s 2012 Minnesota numbers by nearly 180,000 votes. The congressional districts that went the most heavily for Donald Trump in the general election (7, 6, 8, and 1) also largely went the most heavily for Bernie Sanders in the primary.

Clinton’s underperformance meant that 180,000 Democrats stayed home not just from her race, but from all races. That meant there were fewer Democrats out voting while Republicans were out in their usual numbers, so despite the DFL spending record dollars, Democrats lost every close race. Some portion of this has to be laid at the feet of party elites who, for all her advantages, interfered in the process by backing Clinton too early and loudly, lining the machine up behind her as “the front runner” and disenfranchising Sanders voters who, the above numbers show, stayed home. Some of these same elites are making the same costly mistake in 2018 by backing Walz.

The results of the 2016 election can more accurately be interpreted as an anti-establishment vote and not reflective of an urban-rural divide — and that is a reading which favors Rebecca Otto as the DFL candidate for governor.

Unlike Walz, Otto has always run largely without the support of the party kingmakers and big money players, focusing her energies on rank-and-file grassroots activists, in the style of Bernie Sanders and Paul Wellstone. In so doing, she has always outperformed the DFL candidate for Governor, racking up historic victories in election after election. This approach also led her to an historic victory in the 2014 primary, when a self-financed candidate outspent her 4 to 1, and she beat him 81%–19%.

Rebecca Otto does very well on the Iron Range, and understanding why that is so leads to a full appreciation of her standing with Minnesota voters. Otto voted to protect the BWCA and Lake Superior watersheds from copper-nickel mining until we get better financial assurances from multinational mining companies. Many assumed this would hurt her on the Range and cost her the election as governor, but the facts show just the opposite. Indeed, the “done on the range” argument is from the Republican, not Democratic, playbook.

Otto vastly outperformed both Governor Mark Dayton and Congressman Rick Nolan in every county on the Iron Range and across the entire 8th Congressional District in 2014, improving her margins after her vote. To see if Otto’s brave and thoughtful stand on nonferrous mining cost her any votes, we can compare her margin of victory in the 2010 and 2014 races in the Iron Range counties. (Note: The margin of victory is recognized as the best way to compare across counties, etc., because of differences in ballots across different precincts or elections. These data are from the Secretary of State’s office.)

Otto grew her margin in every Iron Range county in 2014 by an impressive average gain of 9.51 points, for a 72% bigger margin across the Iron Range as a whole. Remember, this happened after the controversy on the range, in which Rebecca Otto took what many thought would be the less popular stand, knowing it was the right thing to do. This happened after Otto explained her position and helped people see, through an examination of long term goals and shared values, that her position was the right one for the people of the state in general and the Iron Range in particular. This is a reality that her Republican (and other) detractors on the range do not like to hear about and tend to react rather poorly to, in my experience.

The most important thing DFLers need to realize is that Rebecca Otto was the only Democrat to actually vote for Democratic values on this issue, while others were afraid to. Otto can rightly borrow Paul Wellstone’s phrase, “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” when others cannot. If Democrats don’t stop compromising on their key values they will continue to lose like they did in 2016 because there will be no reason for DFLers to vote for them. I believe voters are well aware of this, this and appreciate Rebecca Otto for it.

Was it a fluke? Maybe Otto just had an easier race in 2014. Let’s look at Governor Dayton’s Iron Range performance and see if there is any difference.

Here again, Otto’s 2014 margin of victory on the Iron Range was 1.54 points higher than Gov. Mark Dayton’s and 4.41% higher than Dayton’s across the 8th CD as a whole. While Otto performed better in every county in 2014 than in 2010, Dayton lost points in 5 of 7 Iron Range counties and across the 8th CD as a whole.

When comparing Otto’s margin to Nolan’s margin, Otto’s outperformance becomes even more striking. Here, Otto completely trounced Nolan’s performance in his own congressional district, to a truly stunning degree.

Otto outperformed Nolan by 12.15 points on the very Iron Range that was supposed to cost her re-election. And Otto’s margins were even better on the Iron Range than they were in the 8th CD as a whole, where she outperformed the Congressman’s margin by a stunning 10 points. Otto’s strong popularity is why Nolan asked her to headline or speak at events. Often, she was the only statewide elected official or party officer there for him at these events.

The evidence is absolutely clear and abundant that Rebecca Otto’s courageous stand on nonferrous mining earned her votes on the Iron Range. Suggestions to the contrary are not backed up by the facts.

What about Otto’s appeal in urban and suburban areas? The candidate with the best chance of winning the Governor’s race can appeal to voters in both Greater Minnesota, and in urban and suburban areas. So, let’s look at Otto’s performance in the state’s most liberal, urban, and populous area, Congressional District 5, home of Minneapolis. We’ll use its high-profile Congressman Keith Ellison as our benchmark.

Rebecca Otto and Keith Ellison both began their terms in 2003 as State Representatives. In 2006 when Otto was elected State Auditor, Ellison won the DFL endorsement for a rare open seat in Congress, making him the shoe-in in the general election because of the CD5 DFL index.

The following compares Rebecca Otto’s CD5 performance to the Ellison benchmark in each house district in the congressional district:
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It turns out that Rebecca Otto is also an exceptionally strong performer in urban/suburban areas, outperforming Congressman Ellison’s margins in 14 of 20 house districts, and across the 5th CD as a whole. Note that Ellison’s performance in his own district is stellar, so Otto’s comparable but better performance is stellar-plus.

Rebecca’s urban and suburban support is not limited to CD5. In CD4, Rebecca outperformed the benchmark Congresswoman McCollum’s margin in 13 of 21 House districts in, and across the congressional district as a whole.
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Because of her strong performance and experience in urban, suburban, exurban and rural areas, Rebecca Otto outperformed the margins of every gubernatorial candidate she has been on the ballot with — Tim Pawlenty, Mike Hatch, and Mark Dayton — in 2006, 2010, and 2014.

Rebecca Otto also unseated an incumbent, and she did it by the largest margin in 112 years, in a race for a seat that had been occupied by Republicans for 134 of its 149 years. This was an enormous and historic upset — on a level that Walz can only dream of.

Otto then made history a second time when she won a tough re-election against the same opponent while being heavily targeted by the Republican Party, and without help from the DFL Party, becoming the only Democrat to be re-elected to the Auditor’s post in Minnesota history. Otto is now in her third term, and made it a third time with her absolutely crushing defeat of Matt Entenza in the 2014 DFL primary.

There is only one candidate with both the electoral experience and the track record of standing up for what’s right without fear or favor, and it is Rebecca Otto. Rebecca is authentic, warm, humble, yet tough, willing to fight for what is right, and these aspects of her character are already widely known. She is widely recognized by State Auditors around the country, winning every major award and serving as president of the national organization of State Auditors. She has Republican support as well as Democratic. In fact, it was former Governor and State Auditor Arne Carlson who first asked her to run for State Auditor. She has strong executive experience at the state level, and she knows how to manage the legislature. On all these measures, Governor Otto would be one of the most qualified new governors on her first day in the State House.

This is a year in which voters are looking for a truly progressive candidate, and it is right that they do so. Voters want a candidate who actually contrasts with Republicans instead of voting like one of them, a candidate who has powerful statewide executive and electoral experience and yet has demonstrated that she won’t sell out progressive values. Rebecca Otto is exactly that candidate.

In a year when so much is at stake, it is time to give voters a strong contrasting choice instead of a Democrat In Name Only practicing familiar old-style politics. It is a year when Minnesota is finally ready to elect a populist female governor, and we have such a candidate with the state executive and electoral experience to make that a reality. With only stunning and historic victories behind her, Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto is in ready to make history yet again.

UPDATE:

Tina Liebling Endorses Rebecca Otto for Governor

Liebling calls Otto “bold and progressive,” says she “can go toe to toe” with any Republican>

In the first endorsement of a DFL gubernatorial candidate by a former candidate for the office, State Representative Tina Liebling (DFL-26A) today endorsed State Auditor Rebecca Otto for Governor of Minnesota.

“For too many Minnesotans, opportunity seems out of reach. They know that the economy is rigged against them, and they are looking for a leader who will stand up to the special interests and fight for them,” Liebling said in making the endorsement. “Rebecca Otto is that leader. She has a bold, clear, progressive vision for Minnesota with ordinary people at its center.”

Liebling also said she believes Otto is the strongest candidate electorally. “She can go toe to toe with any candidate the Republicans put forward and will give Minnesotans a real choice in November,” said Liebling. “Campaigns can’t be won without money, but money will not win the campaign. For that we need a candidate who is both progressive and bold. I believe that Rebecca Otto is both, and I am pleased to endorse her candidacy for Governor of Minnesota.

“I have always had great respect for Tina as a smart, progressive leader who is not afraid to tackle issues of great importance,” said Otto. “I am very honored to have her support. Having Tina on our team will be critical to securing the DFL endorsement at the State Convention in June.”

Otto said she appreciated Liebling’s policy expertise on issues she has heard about repeatedly in listening sessions and on the campaign trail. “Representative Liebling has important health care expertise and has worked for years to move Minnesota to a Single Payer health care system,” Otto said. “She will be a great partner in moving Minnesota to a more efficient, cost-effective health care system that is no longer tied to your job – a system where everyone receives high quality health care, where we remove administrative burdens for our doctors and medical professionals and allow them to focus back on our health.”

Otto also acknowledged Representative Liebling’s work and advocacy around the legalization of marijuana. Last session, Liebling introduced a bill that would legalize and regulate personal use of marijuana.

“I respect Tina for leading this important discussion. We need to move away from the failed criminal justice approach to drug use and focus on a public health approach,” said Otto. “Prohibition of cannabis does a lot of harm to our state and disproportionately impacts people of color. As governor I would support decriminalizing marijuana and expunging criminal records for those convicted of non-violent marijuana-related offenses. We need to have a thoughtful, open, evidence-based conversation as a state about how to reduce the harm of addiction while respecting the autonomy of Minnesotans.”

Rebecca Otto was first elected Minnesota’s State Auditor in 2006, unseating a high-profile Republican incumbent by the largest margin in 112 years for a seat that had been Republican for 90 percent of state history. She is the first woman Democrat to be elected State Auditor, and the only Democrat to be re-elected to the office. Prior to that she served as a State Representative from the St. Croix Valley area, and before that as a School Board Member in the Forest Lake Area school district.

Why I Will Vote For Rebecca Otto, and Not Matt Entenza

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How do you say “Surprise” in Norwegian? The word is “Entenza.” I am not making that up.*

DFL activists and party leaders were both surprised and annoyed when perennial candidate Matt Entenza filed at the very last moment to run for Minnesota State Auditor against sitting Auditor Rebecca Otto in this year’s primary. He claimed he would fight corporate giveaways at the local level and scrutinize spending on education, addressing the state’s achievement gap. Also, he would be nice to out-state local governments and not favor the Metro, because he was born out-state. Entenza has a habit of running, flush with vast family resources, in DFL primaries and against the party endorsement process, and DFLers have a habit of not responding well. Nearly six million dollars of mainly family money got Entenza third place in a three way race for governor in the 2010 DFL primary.

DFL primary voters have to ask themselves three questions on August 12th. First, is Entenza bringing something to the auditor’s office that is valuable? Second, do we need to replace Otto; is she doing a poor job in her position? Third, is Entenza auditor material?

Entenza wishes to improve education in Minnesota. This is not actually the Auditor’s job. Also, Auditor Rebecca Otto has an advanced degree in education and a science B.A. and served as a teacher for five years. Otto chaired a successful $55 million levy campaign in a conservative district, and served on the Forest Lake School Board before serving in the State Legislature. She is not only pro education but a highly qualified contributor to that discussion. Entenza wants to make the Auditor more friendly to out-state Minnesota. Otto, however, has a reputation for fair dealing and respectful interaction with all of the municipalities with which she works state wide. Many, from folks on the street with whom I’ve spoken to the Governor, have questioned Entenza’s motive in running for Auditor in the way he has chosen, and a frequent conclusion often said with a wink and a nod is this: He wants to be governor, and sees the Auditor position as a stepping stone to that. The stepping stone hypothesis certainly explains his candidacy better than any of the things he’s said about why he is running.

His claim to address government handouts must be a reference to the system of Tax Increment Financing. But TIF is not a government handout. It is a development tool that has positively affected the lives of many Minnesotans. More importantly, TIF, as well as education reform, are policy matters for the legislature and Governor. It seems that Entenza wants to have the job as Auditor so he can be that … the legislature and the Governor. But that is not actually how it works, and it makes me wonder if he really understands what the State Auditor does.

We should not be replacing Rebecca Otto. When she came on board, the Auditor’s office had been used as a political tool by the GOP and State-Local Government relations were poor. Otto has been studiously non-partisan and professional in her role, and this has been recognized at a national level. She has the National Excellence in Accountability Award, was elected President of the national State Auditors Association, and was named one of the 15 most influential auditors of all auditors at all levels of government across the entire country (and that is a lot of auditors). She is also the first DFL woman in this position and only one of 7 elected female state auditors in the country. We should be proud of that, not trying to undo it. DFLers know that when they have a top person in a position like this, who chooses to run for re-election, you don’t damage their position by staging an attempt at turnover. That’s not only bad party politics but it is also a negative contribution to governance. Entenza running against a woman who is arguably the top in her field is very difficult to account for.

Aside from the questions already raised about Entenza’s qualifications for the job, one also wonders if a person with a track record of seemingly inappropriate, or at least less than competent, fiscal behavior is the right person to take on the role of making sure everyone else behaves appropriately.

Entenza has been admonished, even fined, a number of times for campaign finance problems. “Neighbors for Matt Entenza Committee accepted excessive contributions from special sources resulting in an inadvertent violation of Minn. Stat. 10A. 27, subd. 11, in calendar year 2002” – Auditors are supposed to identify and address things like that, not do them. Money from lobbyists was inappropriately taken in 2005 as well. A prohibited contribution was also addressed by the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board in 2009. I’m not sure how serious these three transgressions are, and I imagine things like this happen in campaigns now and then despite people’s best intentions, but he’s running for State Auditor. He should not have such a record of being, essentially, in need of audit!

A fourth complaint dealt with by the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board related to Attorney General candidate Entenza’s hiring of an investigator to dig up dirt on the DFL-endorsed candidate for governor, Mike Hatch. Perhaps he already had his eye on the Governor’s office and was willing to step beyond the usual boundaries en route. That problem went away when the funding of this apparent opposition research was properly accounted for, though the ensuing scandal seems to have forced Entenza to withdraw from the race. Properly accounted for after the fact. Auditor. I think you get the point.

Entenza’s use of negative campaigning is not restricted to that event in 2006. He is doing this now. Rebecca Otto is an intelligent, thoughtful, progressive Democrat. Many years ago, prior to the co-opting of questions about election fraud were picked up by the GOP and used as a blunt object across the country in a state-by-state attempt to limit the franchise of progressive voters, the Minnesota Legislature addressed voting regulations. Not much came of that, and the only thing that was really being discussed was shoring up the power of election judges when they had questions about voters. As I understand it, Entenza and Otto shared the same position on proposed legislation, and this legislation was entirely different from the more recent Voter ID Amendment shoved into the election cycle two years ago by our largely dysfunctional Republican leadership. Entenza is now claiming that Rebecca Otto is, or was, or would be, or could be, supportive of a Voter ID bill or amendment, yet this is not even close to the truth. It is a dirty trick. A similar claim is being made about Otto and same sex marriage. In truth, Rebecca Otto campaigned vigorously on both issues when they emerged in 2012.

One might think that both of these ploys are weak and that DFL voters will see right though them, but that is not necessarily the case. A few days ago a young, newly minted DFL activist, a political science major at the University of Minnesota, asked me what campaigns would be good to work for to gain experience and to start to make connections. I suggested three different campaigns and specified the potential benefits of volunteering for each of them. One of the campaigns I suggested was Rebecca Otto for Auditor. Later that day she contacted me with a question. She had heard the Entenza campaign apparent fabrications of Otto’s position on Voter ID and was concerned. She had spent quite a few hours interning for campaigns against both the Marriage Amendment and the Voter ID Amendment – her first real experience in political activism. Entenza’s inappropriate and inaccurate characterization of his opponent, a fellow DFLer, tainted, as it was seemingly meant to, the reputation of one of our best elected officials. I found this disgraceful. This is, in fact, the reason I decided to write this commentary.

I agree with many of Entenza’s policy positions, and I wish he was in elected office somewhere in Minnesota. But I also wish he was not running in this primary because I think Rebecca Otto is an outstanding auditor and we don’t need this fighting inside the party. In particular, I don’t appreciate the implications that Otto is not doing her job well, which includes a certain amount of apparent fear-mongering on issues like social security, and I don’t like the use of the auditor’s position as a platform for implementing policies, even if those are good policies.

I’d like to give Matt Entenza some advice, spoken originally by a DFL progressive about his own campaign for office, on the day he withdrew knowing his candidacy could hurt the party and the state. He said, “Fighting for important issues is one thing. Fighting in politics is quite another. While I’m confident that I could win the race … staying in the race could hurt the Democratic Party and the progressive issues I care about so deeply.”

Take your own advice, Matt.

*Actually, I am making that up. Matt Entenza’s Wikipedia page claims this to be so, but Google Translate begs to differ. I don’t speak Norwegian. But it may be the case that Matt’s Wiki page needs … auditing.