Having received neither formal notice of my purging nor “political rehabilitation”, I went ahead and cranked out my (i)regular report:
CD7 Outreach Officers report for mid august 2018:
Not sure if I’m allowed to return from exile and again perform my duties as Outreach Officer, but nobody’s told me I can’t and it needs to get done. The primary is over, the state DFL party made the mistake of demanding support of some great endorsed candidates who didn’t have a chance, and the rifts thus created will not soon disappear. Speaking for myself being exiled by the party has reduced my trust in the state DFL leadership and discouraged me from ever again seeking party office- Why become a party officer only to be bullied and exiled merely because you preferred a different DFL candidate that the party insiders had endorsed?
Back to business… With both party’s having contested primary races the primary was a good read on the mood of the voters. Statewide about twice as many citizens voted for DFL candidates than voted for GOPers. The governor’s race was the most competitive in both parties and thus probably the best metric, and in CD7 the GOP governor candidates got only 3% more votes than our DFL candidates did- Not bad considering this is supposedly an R+12 district and there was a contested primary for the congressional endorsement on the GOP side to drive their turnout. They don’t break down the results by legislative district unless their was a contested primary there, so we don’t have much returns by district but they do break the results down by county and they look good for us- We beat the republican vote in Beltrami County by 20%, by an even bigger margin in Clay County, just about tied in Kandiyohi County, and narrowly lost Douglas and Lyon county by single digit margins. We also got more total votes than the GOP in the governors race in Kittson, Polk, Red Lake, Norman, Mahnomen, Traverse, Grant, Big Stone, Stevens, Pope, Swift, Lac Que Parle, Chippewa, and Yellow Medicine counties! This is great news for several of our down ballot state house candidates, pointing to several districts that we have the potential to win. Going back to the statewide races it takes about a million votes to win statewide, and with our high primary turnout we are already over halfway there.
In other matters our State Central Committee refused to join in the GOP’s virtual lynching of Keith Ellison and formally endorsed him for Attorney General. The work of the CHAT committee to deal with intra party harassment, etc. was expedited and they were empowered to begin inquisitions, purges, or whatever formal term they’re more likely to call them. Having witnessed the Outreach and Inclusion Committee attempt this function in the past I’m worried- The one case we heard seemed more an attempt to remove an officer to shift control of a local party unit to an outside group than to remedy the admitted act of insensitivity. I thus fear the CHAT process if not carefully controlled will be used to remove and silence we more mainstream DFLers from greater Minnesota.
And finally, just in case the DFL leadership does silence my voice in party forums, I’ve started a new blog at http://www.sassy.democrat . I’ll be crossposting these reports there as well as other news and my two bit opinions there with a focus on rural small “d” democratic politics.
Respectfully submitted, Dyna Sluyter
Sassy Democrat 