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:

.@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/SU4rzbOnOu

— Brook Weber (@Brook_Weber) January 28, 2023

@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/pmydpNjWrr

— Pro-Choice MN (@ProChoiceMN) January 28, 2023

.@Lindsey_Port is all of us right now #mnleg pic.twitter.com/09J81gUYzS

— Marissa Luna (@rissluna) January 27, 2023

I don’t know what this Senator is saying… but her face gives me some clues… pic.twitter.com/GUKIjsdg36

— Sven Sundgaard (@svensundgaard) January 28, 2023

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

*DFL = Democratic Party

**Judging a speech contest

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.

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.

** 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

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!

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.)

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.

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.

Every four years in Minnesota, we elected a new gubernor. We’re doing that right now.

This is an especially important race, for four reasons.

1) We have to have Democratic rule in Minnesota for the next eight years in order to ensure rapid change towards fossil-fuel-free energy systems, rapid change to universal single payer health care, and other issues.

2) We currently have a Republican legislature (both houses) and a Democratic Governor, who has been doing as good a job as possible to keep the Republicans from totally ruining everything. But, while Governor Dayton can stop the Republicans most of the time, he can’t make them move forward in the above mentioned directions.

3) Our state legislature is VERY likely to go totally blue in November. The Senate is so close, it could happen by simple political Brownian Motion all by itself. The house is less close but we will prevail there.

4) However, never before in the history of this state, owing to the self destructive voting habits of Minnesotans, has a DFL candidate (DFL=Democratic) taken the Governorship in an open race following a DFL incumbant. Dayton is retiring this year, it is an open seat, and if the DFL candidate wins, that will be the first time for that happening ever.

Even though history says no, history, especially this kind of history, history of patterns in electoral politics, is often wrong. For years the tallest candidate won the presidency. Until that stopped happening. That sort of thing. (By the way, if Clinton had beaten Trump, that would also have been highly unusual, as the same pattern pertains nationally.)

There is one candidate, Rebecca Otto, who has the best chance of winning sate wide in this politically bifurcated state. I know this because I’ve carefully analyzed the data. See: Rebecca Otto: by far the strongest and most progressive candidate for Minnesota Governor in 2018. To quote myself,

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

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 [a highly risky vote in favor of the environment and against a big mining company that wants to mine there] …

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.

…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…

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….

And so on.

Otto is the environmental candidate. Her main competitor in this race, Congressman Tim Walz, has a very mixed environmental voting record. Meanwhile, the state’s Democratic Party (DFL) Environmental Caucus endorsed Otto. Famous climate change scientist Michael Mann endorsed Otto. Much of this has to do with Otto’s clean energy plan, which is probably the most advanced and clearly worked out state level energy transition plan out there. (There is no federal plan.)

For these policy reasons, as well as others (too many to mention here) I have been supporting Rebecca Otto for some time now. I also know her as a person, and trust me, she will make the best governor.

Guns and gun violence

The other main candidate in this race for party endorsement, Tim Walz, has been an NRA funded pro-gun representative in Congress for 12 years. He consistently supported NRA backed legislation, and has constantly taken NRA donations, and donations from other groups. I’ve carefully documented Walz’s waltz with the gun lobby, and the fact that regardless of what was happening in our schools and with other mass shootings (hundreds dead over Walz’s time in Congress).

But then he got Vinicked. Parkland happened. Suddenly, it was better to be anti gun as a person running for governor across the state. Suddenly Tim Walz favored policies he had worked 12 years to oppose. I regard this as nothing other than a craven attempt to garner votes he does not deserve.

During the 4,700 days (12 years and 10 months) since the Red Lake Massacre, which occurred just as Tim Walz was starting his political carer, over 500 people have been killed and over 1,300 wounded in mass killings. During the same period, over 300,000 Americans have died of gunshot wounds, mostly from suicide, with criminal homicide next in line as a cause. A large number of those suicides and plenty of the homicides (which are often domestic abuse related) were made possible or made deadly because of the prevelance of more than 300 million guns in America and the dearth of regulations requiring guns to be safer, better secured, and accounted for….

When the news of Parkland shocked this nation, hundreds, possibly thousands, of activist Minnesotans with the DFL (Democratic Party), Indivisible, and other groups, raised their voices against the politicians in Washington who supported guns. Then, over the subsequent few days, those same concerned activist started to realize that their own guy, Tim Walz, was one of the people that had caused this problem, as a full-on NRA and gun lobby supporter.

It was only then, as Walz started to see his position in the top tier of candidates for Governor of Minnesota slip away, that he turned on his NRA keepers….

One could congratulate Congressman Walz for changing his stance on an issue in deference to his constituents. But in my view, a dozen years of strict adherence to a particular position that is so closely associated with danger to our society is not something a politician is allowed to suddenly walk away from.

And now, I’ve just learned this, from Rebecca Otto:

I’m pleased to announce that I have received the Gun Sense Candidate distinction from Moms Demand Action.

Our kids are counting on us to be the grownups in this discussion-and when they’re practicing active shooter lockdown drills in kindergarten we have to stop and ask ourselves what we are doing to them.

It’s time for some evidence-based, commonsense public safety measures to reduce gun violence. That is why I have been pushing to resume studying it as a public health issue for years. We need evidence to pass appropriate legislation, and for that legislation to withstand a court challenge by the NRA. It’s also why I support a ban on assault-style weapons, bump stocks and high-capacity magazine clips, as well as universal background checks.

For too long, politicians have paid lip service to ending gun violence while taking NRA money and eagerly cosponsoring and voting for NRA bills. My opponent Tim Walz did that for over a decade before recently changing his stance when it became expedient. By working together, I’m confident that we can move past the big money politics of the gun lobby and arrive at a solution that serves the common good, but it takes someone who will lead. That’s what we do best in Minnesota – we lead.

In her press release, Rebecca asks people to consider finding the nearest March for our Lives March here.

I will ask you to CLICK HERE and give Rebecca $17. The most widely used “Glock” is the Glock 17. Send a message.

At the caucus, we will do the following:

1) Vote our preference, within the party, for gubernatorial candidate. This is a “preference poll” of attending caucus members, and has no force or meaning other than perhaps to give a hint to the lowest level candidates that maybe they should step aside. By tradition, the gubernatorial candidates in Minnesota are selected in a primary held in the summer.

One interesting features of this practice is that the people who vote at the caucus may be very different than those who vote in the primary. Caucus goers are typically more serious activists, and primary goers are people who are not up at the lake. So, I expect the two sets to be similar in the city and in the lake districts, different in the suburbs, for example.

2) We will introduce resolutions. These resolutions will then be complied, culled, and cleaned up, by a committee and introduced at the Senate District Conventions (or County Conventions, as appropriate) later in the year, to be voted on. Eventually, some subset of the resolutions that are introduced will become part of the State party platform, then possibly the national platform.

3) We will elect among ourselves delegates to go on to the various state conventions, including the Senate District Convention, where we will consider candidates for state Senate and House, and the aforementioned resolutions, and the Congressional District Convention, where we will consider candidates for the US house, and other matters. Eventually there will be a State Party Convention for each party.

If someone wants to get involved in all of this, the best way to proceed is to attend the precinct caucus. If you are Minnesotan, find out what precinct you are in. Also, find out what building your caucus is in. Also, find out what room in that building your caucus is in, because you a) will need to know that and b) the method of finding out once you get to the caucus building is governed by Murphy’s Law. So, walk into the building with your precinct number room number written on your hand.

Then, try to be a delegate. It is not hard. The number of delegates allowed form each precinct at this level is large, often larger than the number who attend. Certainly, the number of delegates plus alternates is almost always larger. So you can be a delegate or an alternate.

However, first check your calendar. If you are absolutely planning to be out of town for the Senate District Convention, there is no reason to be a delegate because you won’t be here.

Also, if in your caucus fewer than the allowed number of people want to be a delegate, but some want to be alternates, let the alternates know that it doesn’t really work that way. If a precinct can have 20 delegates, and 10 people want to be delegates and 5 people agree to be alternates, and then those 15 people walk into the Senate District Convention, then sis-bam-boom, the alternates are instantly upgraded to delegate status.

The remainder of this post is just for Democrats. If you are a Republican and want to know more, I can’t help you.

People who want to caucus in Minnesota can find out what their precinct is HERE.

Click HERE to learn a bit more about the caucus process.

The DFL Environmental Caucus today announced its endorsement of State Auditor Rebecca Otto for Governor.

“Rebecca Otto is a powerful voice for the environment and for a better Minnesota economy,” said caucus chair Veda Kanitz. “We wholeheartedly endorse her candidacy for Governor of Minnesota.”

Kanitz highlighted Otto’s position on climate change as one important factor in the caucus decision. “Otto’s visionary Minnesota Powered Plan provides a clear pathway to address climate change, create good-paying jobs in communities across the state, and make Minnesota a leader in clean energy technologies,” Kanitz said. “It is an agenda for a new kind of prosperity, one where the economy and the environment work together.” Kanitz also noted the candidate’s broad appeal among caucus members: “One candidate, Rebecca Otto, rose to the top in our assessment. Candidate Otto distinguished herself with an in-depth understanding of the complex environmental threats Minnesota faces and what we must do to address them. Her long-standing commitment to living her environmental values gave added substance to her words, as did the fact that she put forward a concrete agenda.”

Otto expressed her appreciation to the caucus for its endorsement: “The impact of climate change is hitting far sooner and much closer to home than many of us ever imagined and we have a moral obligation to act quickly and decisively to protect our children. I look forward to working with the DFL environmental caucus and all Minnesotans to take on these major challenges in a way that benefits everyone should I have the privilege of serving as our next Governor.”

The Environmental Caucus endorsement process involved several steps, including the evaluation of candidate positions on transportation, social justice, climate change, clean water, agriculture, mining, and citizen engagement; and a review of voting records and websites. Candidates Rebecca Otto, Tim Walz, Chris Coleman, Paul Thissen, Erin Murphy, and Tina Liebling were considered.

Rebecca Otto’s site is here. Go make a donation for this climate hawk!