Is Farmfest still worth it?

In the last couple days AG candidate Keith Ellison won over a lot of new supporters in southwest Minnesota this weekend, and I don’t think he ever set foot in Farmfest. Keith’s streak started out Tuesday evening at the annual DFL fundraiser at Ted Suss farm where he fired up the crowd with a speech on the tyranny of big ag that would have done Wellstone proud. He followed that up Wednesday at the SD22 fundraiser in Windom where as well as giving a damn good speech, he took the time to sit down and listen to the problems local farmers were having.

Meanwhile about the only thing of interest around Farmfest was the gov debate, Farmer’s Union “hangout”, and the threshing exhibition at the museum next door. Leaving Farmfest came the final disappointment- The Walz signs on my motorcycle and sidecar rig had been stolen. The fact that this happened within view of a staffed gate and it looked like the cable ties holding the signs on were cut and not broken suggests it was the Farm Bureau’s via Farmfest’s dirty work. I’ll fess up to doing a bit of “bandit” advertising by parking the rig in a high traffic spot, but there were bigger vehicles with bigger GOP candidate’s signs in the same lot that went untouched. With Farmfest being close to the primary and a couple months removed from the November elections it’s becoming more of an inter party debate event than between parties. That suggests the DFL might want to forgo the considerable expense of Farmfest and hold the candidate forums at the frequent DFL fundraisers in rural Minnesota… We could have a congressional forum in each district and with 6 statewide races a half dozen more DFL fundraisers could host forums!

So DFL, it’s time to give serious thought to leaving Farmfest behind…