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.)

Rebecca had run to seek the endorsement from the Minnesota DFL (that’s what we call Democrats in Minnesota). The state convention, at which endorsements are determined by a large collection of dedicated delegates and alternates, was held in Rochester. (Note: candidates can still run in the August primary, but it is often considered bad form to ignore the endorsement process.) I was there as a delegate. I’d never been to a state convention before, though I’ve been to plenty of state Senate District and Congressional District ones. The state convention was similar but ten times bigger, twice as loud, three times as long, and doubly exhausting.

Rebecca lost the endorsement process with a gut-punching and unexpected low number of votes on the first ballot, followed by a long period of chaos, followed by the exuberant endorsement of candidate Erin Murphy. Congratulations to Erin, who has doubled down on this process with her choice of picking a second Erin, Erin Maye Quade, as her running mate. That was a stunningly excellent choice.

But back to the Otto campaign. I was truly expecting the numbers to be different in this endorsement process. I was not personally privy to the detailed data on this campaign, but I had seen the top-line analyses. I expected Murphy, not Otto, to be in distant third. Clearly the numbers were wrong!

I don’t fault the people in the Otto campaign for getting that wrong. Well, yes, they did get it wrong, but this is not uncommon. I myself have had the job of counting delegates. I’ve gotten it at least as wrong. I know others who have as well. Campaigns often, perhaps to some extent, in most races, end up with incorrect delegate counts. (I note that as far as I know, the Murphy campaign had the numbers close to correct.) I have some ideas as to how this happens, and it might be helpful to work out some theory on this. But that is for later. For now, there is this one element of getting surprised by a low delegate count on the first ballot that I’d prefer to dwell on for just one moment:

It feels really, really, bad.

I don’t feel it is my place to relate how things were in the war room after the end of the process. That is private. But I was struck by one thing I’ll leak out. The people in the room, all of whom I have great love and respect for, exhibited the full range of expected emotional states from quietly stunned to liquefied-in-place, except for Rebecca Otto herself. Rebecca was the strength in the room. That was not unexpected, but I think it is something that should be said. I know she felt just as bad. I know her just enough to have sensed that. But she was not the quivering bowl of jelly I would have been.

I helped Rebecca in her campaign for two reasons. One is simply that she and her husband, Shawn, are my friends. But I’ve had a lot of friends run for office for whom I offered only perfunctory help. In the case of Rebecca Otto, there was another reason. I knew that Rebecca was blindingly smart, and a deeply good and honest person, and ever thoughtful. I know that for each area of policy, Rebecca would assemble her best assets and then ask them to assemble their best assets. These teams would then develop details and try ideas, in order to ultimately advance well developed proposals that could be brought to fruition in the State House to change the fundamental nature of economy, society, and culture in Minnesota, all in good ways. I was at the tail end of at least one of those assemblies, and contributed a bit to the policy development. There was a fact Rebecca often repeated in her stump speeches that I had worked on. I was proud to hear it mentioned again and again.

The other candidates are great people, great democrats, any one would be great as a governor, but I was supporting Rebecca Otto because I knew her approach and her results would be uniquely and powerfully transforming. People around the country were going to look at Minnesota, and go, “Wow, what the heck was that??? Why can’t we do that? Who did that? Let’s do that!” And the answer would be Rebecca Otto and the team she leads.

In the end, we are all Democrats. Just as importantly, those other guys? They are all Republicans. So, we have work to do. I like Erin Murphy. I will support her and her campaign, as the endorsed candidate. I’ll support all the endorsed candidates. I’ve been working on the campaign of our local Minnesota House, where my friend Ginny Klevorn hopes to unseat Representative Sarah Anderson, who is is a less religious but just as tea-happy mini-me version of Michel Bachmann, and leader of the evil Republican redistricting ploy in our state.

But I’ll be standing by for future versions of a Rebecca Otto campaign, should that happen, and I hope it does, somehow, sometime, somewhere.

A few notes about the other events at the convention.

The first one is a major piece of news that is still unfolding even as I write this.

Lori Swanson is the Minnesota Attorney General. Swanson has been the perennial heir apparent for that job forever. What I mean by that: everybody always assumed she’d be endorsed, then win. She has a great reputation and everybody likes her, etc. etc.

But this year, Matt Pelikan ran against Swanson for AG. Everybody seemed to like Matt, but everybody also said this about that race: we need Lori, she’s been great, Matt is great, but he has no experience, maybe he can run for something else someday.

Meanwhile, Swanson made a nuisance of herself at the very beginning of the pre-election season, last summer, telling everyone she might or might not run for Governor. This moved several good people into the position of running for the AG seat, but promising to pull out if Lori gives the governor’s race a pass. She pulled that trick (do I sound annoyed? sorry!) for way too long, using the fact that she was a state AG but also, not really an actual candidate, to exploit her moves along with other state AGs against Trump for positive Democratic Party cred.

At the convention, two things happened, then the boat tipped over.

First, Matt Pelikan, who is one very impressive young man, gave a speech that in my view was in the top three given at the convention, maybe the best one. He had the crowd on their feet. He also landed about eight good punches on the Swanson campaign, including noting Swanson’s NRA endorsement over the years, and her stand on various other issues that have become highly questionable even though everybody loves Lori and assumes she’s the automatic candidate.

Then, the Swanson campaign totally messed up their own presentation. Each campaign gets a certain number of minutes, then they have to get off the stage. Most campaigns have a short video, a person or two talk in favor of the candidate, then the candidate gives a rousing speech. Swanson had a mediocre video. Then, some dozen or so people lined up to each speak on her behalf. They were mostly unpracticed and poor speakers (including at least one who is an experienced politician who simply had not woken up that morning, it seemed). Each one spoke for 3-5 minutes. But they were supposed to speak for one minute! SO, half way through that awkward and embarrassing event, the whole lot of them got thrown off the stage, and Swanson never got to speak.

When the delegates voted, Pelekan had denied Swanson the endorsement. A very large number of delegates had probably figured, “OK, Lori is the obvious candidate, but Imma cast this one vote for Pelikan because he is so impressive.” The outcome of that vote was so astonishing, they had to bring in a special sweeper device to remove everyone’s jaws from the floor.

Before the second vote, Swanson dropped out. Ear shattering collective gasp.

My first thought? She’ll run in the primary for the AG slot!

My second thought, seconds later? No, wait! She’s running for governor!

And, low and behold, seconds ago as I write this, the news has leaked out: Swanson is running for Governor with Congressman Nolan as her Lt Gov.

In a less dramatic and less complicated event, former Republican and Bush ethics lawyer Richard Painter ran against Senator Tina Smith for the endorsement. Smith got the endorsement, but Painter got a surprisingly large number of votes.

And, finally, another sad thing. I’ve always supported Jon Tolefson in his political career, and I wanted him to be endorsed for auditor. He had a lot of support, including the endorsement of the Environmental Caucus. In something of a surprise, Julie Blaha took the majority of votes on the first round, and Jon stepped away, allowing Julie to be endorsed by acclamation. That was sad for me, but more sad for Jon’s Mother, who was sitting with me in my unit delegation at the event.

That’s all I have for now, but later, there are some people I want to thank. First, some dust has to settle and and I have to go through some photos and videos I may post.

OK, everybody, get to work!

ADDED: Keith Ellison, US Congressmember and Democratic Party co-head, considering running for Minnesota AG? This makes no sense! The world is spinning in the wrong direction!

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.

A state bank that is not chewed up by Wall Street goons has the potential to help a lot of people and advance important progressive ideals. Therefore, you can expect Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, and of course, bankers, to vigorously oppose it.

But Minnesota may well get a state bank.

Minnesota Auditor and Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto (DFL) has just proposed a state bank as part of her overall economic plan (the Local Economies Plan) for Minnesota.

The idea is to address high student debt, and limited access to capital for small businesses including farms, and to address social (often racial or, really, just plain racist) disparities in access to cash within the state. The plan is outlined here.

I caught up with Rebecca this morning and asked her to tell me a bit more about the project. For one, I wanted to know why, with all the banks around that seem to serve a wide range of purposes, we needed this new kind of bank. “Right now the scales have tipped away from the people and toward big industry,” she told me. “Because we live in a time of the politics of greed and citizens united, we’ve got to aggressively figure out how to provide for equality of opportunity and focus back on strong local economies and the common good, and we must pursue every option available.”

We live in an increasingly miserly culture, I told her. I see every single policy proposed, some policy that might keep baby kittens from being tortured, and people insist on knowing the economic benefit before the moral or ethical benefit. How does this plan address the most parsimonious sensibilities?

“Consider farming,” she said. “When the economy turns down, the farmers that are most diverse tend to survive. That’s been well-established and I have seen it as a member of the Rural Finance Authority board. It’s just like when Shawn and I were in business, we knew that we needed a diverse customer base. If we let any one customer become too big a share of our sales, we became vulnerable. Diversity in the local economy makes us stronger and that means more small businesses. That way when one of them decides to close up shop you don’t lose half the economic base of the town.” And one of the main purposes of the bank is to address this problem.

During the conversation we got a bit off track to talk about her overall economic plan. Regarding a $15 minimum wage, Auditor Otto noted that “People tell me, ‘$15, we could never afford that,’ and I ask them: are you telling me that we can’t afford to pay people enough to survive? Because the alternative is to have people starving or to put more and more money into government safety net programs instead of people making enough to support themselves, and we all pay for that in taxes,” she argued. “So this is a moral question as well as an economic one. Capitalism doesn’t work unless people have an education and have money in their pockets. The whole thing breaks down, so policies that improve the common good economically support capitalism too.”

The other day, I spoke with some of Otto’s lead campaign staffers, and I got the strong impression that Otto is currently even with, or slightly leading, the other main candidate in the DFL’s endorsement process, and has a very good chance of being the endorsed candidate for governor. Otto, a resident of rural Minnesota with strong ties to the cities, the educational communities, and business, enjoys more statewide support than any other candidate, and has a high probability of winning in November, even if there isn’t a “blue wave.” But there will likely be a blue wave as well. So, the chance that we get to see how a State Bank can work for the state is very high!

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

SAINT PAUL – 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.

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.

Otto is currently State Auditor, and is running in a fairly large field for Governor. Her main opponent is NRA funded Congressman Tim Walz, who has been fairly silent in recent days since the latest massacre of 17 children and school staff in Florida.

On the first day of the 2017-2018 legislative session, State Auditor and gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto urged the Minnesota legislature to take immediate action on gun safety — including banning assault-type rifles like the AR-15 and bump stocks as well as passing universal background checks to close the gun show or private sale loophole.

“Enough is enough. It is way past time for us to act on gun safety legislation,” said Otto. “States must lead the way on gun safety now as the U.S. Congress and Trump have shown they are paralyzed by NRA dollars.”

Otto cited two specific bills that she hopes the Minnesota legislature will pass this year for Governor Dayton to sign. SF 1261/HF 1669, which is sponsored by Sen. Ron Latz, requires universal background checks for all gun purchases made between private parties, and all firearm transactions to be recorded on a federal form, which would close the private sale loophole.

Otto also supports HF 2781, sponsored by Rep. John Considine, which would make bump stocks illegal by changing their classification to “trigger activators,” which are currently illegal in Minnesota.

In addition to this currently proposed legislation, Otto also supports taking the following actions to prevent incidents of gun violence: banning assault-type rifles like the AR-15 as well as high-capacity magazines, allowing law enforcement to use their discretion to prevent individuals with a history of domestic violence or other warning signs from obtaining firearms, extended waiting periods for gun purchases, and studying mass shootings and gun violence as a public health issue in order to develop the evidence necessary for gun safety laws to survive court challenges.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but I’ll outline a few.

1) All the Democrats have roughly similar approaches to most issues, and none of them are Republicans, but of all of the Democratic candidates, only Rebecca Otto has detailed and well thought out plans for voters to examine. At a recent forum, one of the candidates said, “I don’t need to have plans, plans never work anyway” right after Rebecca noted that she had a plan for something, and briefly outlined it. That was not a good thing to say for that candidate, because makes it look like only Otto has a clue. And perhaps that is the case.

2) Otto’s energy plan is one of the best, if not the best, energy plans in the country. It involves a Carbon price, and tax incentives for cleaning up energy use. The idea is to attain full electrification as soon as possible in as painless a way as possible for all citizens. The plan is detailed, and yes, of course plans will evolve and change, but the key aspects of the plan are very well worked out. We need to elect candidates who can and will directly address climate change, and Otto is the candidate to do this, according to the experts and in my opinion.

3) Otto is in favor of single payer universal health care.

4) Otto is the education candidate, as a former teacher, and a champion of her local school district. She also has a higher education plan that I like, though it isn’t exactly what I was thinking. (No one has adopted my plan yet, but it is really a national level plan and not a state level plan anyway).

5) Otto is strongest on the environment. One of the main competitive other candidates has voted and acted against the environment again and again. Only one other candidate is unabashedly against piplelines. One of our main issues in Minnesota is copper mining in an environmentally very sensitive area. All of the other candidates have adopted the position that the environmental impact assessment process is based on science, and since science is good, the process is good. Otto knows that this is not enough. I know as someone who worked for years in the environment impact assessment field that the process is not based on science, but rather, on appeasement. Otto recognizes this and she demands a higher level of assurance before proceeding with copper mining, if at all. Not only are the other candidates’ position on this weak, but for at least some, ill informed.

6) Rebecca has an uncanny ability to sit down with two people from two very different perspectives and find places where they share values, and eventually, come to an agreement and move forward on important things. I have no idea how she does that, I would just yell at the other person. Don’t vote for me for Governor, vote for Rebecca Otto!

7) I’ve carefully analyzed all the data and I can assure you that of all the candidates, Rebecca Otto has the best chance, and an excellent chance, of winning against any Republican. She has been elected at the state level multiple times, and we can compare her performance with other candidates using data provided by the Minnesota Secretary of State. Otto beats Governor Dayton across the state, and even wins in places he lost (see graphic below). She beats Congressman Ellison in his own district! She beats everybody almost everywhere. One of Rebecca’s main opponents for the DFL nomination, Tim Walz, is liked by many because as an out state Congressman, he should do well in rural areas. But it is Otto, not Walz, who wins in rural areas. In his own district, Congressman Walz lost in almost all of the truly rural precincts, and ultimately, he won his last campaign because of the Rochester and Mankato university and medical communities that strongly supported him over his Republican opponent.

Rebecca Otto has the best policies, and the best chance of winning. There’s more (see her site for info on her other policies) but that’s enough for Tuesday.

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!

Minnesota State Auditor Rebecca Otto is running for Governor in Minnesota, and moments ago she announced the details of her much anticipated “Healthy Minnesota Plan.”

Here’s the link for the details.

Obamacare was good, better than what was there before, but it came out of the gate as a compromise between the usual opposing forces in Washington. Many of you not in Minnesota may not know this, but one of the sticking points with Obamacare was how to make it NOT be a downgrade in certain areas for smart and compassionate states like Minnesota.

With Obamacare being actively destroyed in situ by the Trump administration, and actively hunted by Paul “Elmer the Fud” Ryan and his gang, we can’t expect this good program to become a great program any time soon. Minnesota must and will act in the interests of its own citizens, one way or another. Hopefully, this will be done by electing Otto and developing the Healthy Minnesota Plan.

Here are the bullet points, adapted from Rebecca Otto’s web site:

1: Covers every Minnesotan. Everyone will be covered regardless of preexisting conditions, employment status, age, or any other factor. You will be covered. Period.

2: Protects the relationship between you and your care provider. Minnesota has been so far ahead in innovation in part because we’ve tried to honor the patient-provider relationship without disruption from third-party payers – but we can do more.

3: Eliminates insurance premiums and deductibles. The Healthy Minnesota Plan funds health care fairly – half from redirected public dollars, and half from a package of fair and progressive taxes to be developed with bipartisan input, eliminating costly insurance premiums and deductibles, saving Minnesotans money overall.

4: Controls health care costs. The Healthy Minnesota Plan controls health care costs by attacking the cost drivers:

.

This is Universal, Single-Payer health insurance with clearly defined and effective cost savings and quality enhancing features. This is a good plan. Read all the details here.