538 just called it- After better than expected performance in four special U.S. House elections including picking up a seat from the republicans yesterday, Democrats may hold on to the house, senate, and some down ballot close elections too. This will not doubt be a disappointment for Democratic office holders preparing to again be the minority party they knew and loved… But I’m not complaining!
Now this new found electability will surely throw a monkey wrench into the campaign strategies of Democratic leaders who were looking forward to a comfortable election season defending safe seats like MN2 and IA3 instead of evicting republican incumbents from former democratic seats in the wilds of MN1, IA1 and 2, NE2, and maybe even NE1 too. With this good electoral news ad buys should be moving from the metro to rural markets and staffers relocated to these now competitive districts…
I see no such movement- I live less than 30 miles from again competitive MN1 but looking at Democratic candidate Ettinger’s campaign website it’s obvious that their campaign is pretty much ignoring the western 100+ miles of the district I live adjacent to. Same in Iowa, where IA1, dominated by the “Peoples Republic of Iowa City” has been all but surrendered to the republicans. But despite their best attempts otherwise, the Democrats may very well hang on to the House and a bunch of endangered Governorships and Legislatures too.
How the H…?
Despite the billions spent, politics is not the precision PR and ad campaigns we expect from Fortune 500 companies… It’s more like a very amateur baseball game between teams of heavy drinking outa shape middle aged guys who are related to the umpires. Through the innings as the player’s Blood Alcohol Content rises the runs get easier, go into extra innings in darkness and a bunted foul ball can become an inside the park home run.
While the Democratic Party bumbles it’s way to preservation of the status quo, the republicans are a literal hot mess of Neo-Nazi Confederate apologist global warming, election, and 20th century denying certifiably insane armed terrorists. When that truth is exposed the swing voters who really decide elections vote democratic, and we get “blue wave” elections. I don’t expect the Democrats will take advantage of that opportunity…
Newbie GOP Congress Critter Michelle Fischbach ain’t too popular- a recent Change Research poll for MinnPost gives her the lowest net favorables among Minnesota’s GOP Congress Members. The only net positives she gets are a mere +7% from trump voters and +8% from republicans. Among the independents that swing CD7 elections she’s -22, -16 with rural voters, and -15 with greater Minnesota voters, and her district is mostly rural and entirely within greater Minnesota. DNC and other Democrats with big dollars, why aren’t you all over this race?
The capital D Democrats and their big donor allies are MIA in MN7 because they’re lousy tacticians. The GOP campaigns smarter- a few cycles back when conventional wisdom gave Democrats damn near ownership of northeast Minnesota’s labor heavy CD8 the GOP noted rising dissatisfaction with the Democratic incumbent… So they threw a little money into that cheap media district and flipped it! We democrats flipped it back and the GOP flipped it back again, but with redistricting cutting labor’s influence and the Democratic candidate a mining cancelling environmentalist while much of that labor block are miners, the district will stay GOP until democrats pick a more suitable candidate.
While the Democrats pretty much invest only in safe districts that they’d probably win anyways, the GOP picks races like venture capitalists- They know they will lose far more often than they win, but when they do win the payoff is so huge it more than makes up for all the losses. In this years congressional races where each party will spend hundreds of millions, they can easily invest $100K in spare change into CD7 and give Democratic Farmer Labor candidate Jill Abahsain’s campaign critical mass.
It’s early am on February 14, 2023 and a cold wind blows through the capital grounds as the Guard warms up in their HUMVEEs and APCs. After days of lobbying and demonstrations the Guard with enough tear gas to sicken residents a mile away cleared the grounds and the legislature came back into session. The floor sessions in both chambers were short as what seemed like the wildest red state abortion restrictions, bans of transgender health care, restroom use, sports participation, gay adoption, wholesale repeal of the Human Rights Act, creation of a bunch of new felonies, restoration of capital punishment, and finally elimination of the Board of Medical Practice were all crammed into one omnibus bill from hell and quickly passed and signed by Governor Jensen.
What the hell…?
I came out a half century ago and I’ve been reviewing the queer history of that era, when Jack Baker was physically attacked at a Democratic Party event while a state grant funded “experimental” gender confirming health care for about 20 trans women at the U of M. Minnesota’s stealthy first pride march loudly snuck up Nicollet Avenue, a trans Minneapolis high school student was allowed to switch schools over the summer and transition, conservative United Way funded it’s first gay social service agencies, and my friend Terry was beaten to death in Loring Park. But progress was being made as Minneapolis then St.Paul adopted gay and then trans inclusive civil rights laws followed by Minnesota in 1993, same gender marriage was finally legalized, and we got pretty smug…
So comes the 2022 election season and given that most of us Minnesota gays had experienced legal equality for all our adult lives, we kinda assumed it was a given. We democrats happened to be pretty much the party in power when Russia started a war and stole our hard earned pay with inflation, and thus we democrats got the blame. By pride time all the warning signs were there- Congressional democrats behind 2% on the generic ballot, Governor Walz slipping in the polls, and fortunately Biden wasn’t on the ballot. Local Democratic Party units put most of their efforts behind their local legislative candidates even though 80% of the races weren’t competitive, our gay electeds campaigned for at least the 4th trans legislative candidate and the 1st that will actually be elected thanks to a deep blue district, and the party’s official Stonewall DFL caucus pretty much ignored Governor Walz because he wasn’t progressive enough for their litmus tests. Come Election Day a republican wave and democratic apathy result in democrats losing both the state and federal house and senate, while low democratic turnout and progressive’s apathy defeat Governor Walz and all the statewide democratic candidates. It gets worse- the Biden victory denying republican Secretary of State will certify Minnesota’s electoral votes for Trump in 2024, no matter who wins.
After half a century of fighting for our rights I should be able to retire instead of having to fight these battles again. And the bigots are getting worse, stealing trans children from their families much like the nazis stole and murdered children with disabilities following the sad example we set when we stole native children from their families. The republicans know they have one chance left to wholesale wipe out gay and women rights and they’ll move quickly, and we democrats with our smug apathy, discord, and just plain disorganization are going to let them.
Getting a full nights sleep is increasingly difficult for us democrats, and for good reasons. Just ran across an interview of one of the forgotten heroes of the GLBT(add letters to taste…) movement here in Minnesota, Margaret O’Hartigan. Despite being unable to afford law school Margaret successfully sued the state of Minnesota to pay for her gender affirming health care way back in the 70s, lobbied for trans inclusive civil rights laws back when the pure white G&L ignored the B and was happy to kick the T under the bus if it got them their full measure of white privilege back. After a stint as a legislative staffer Margaret moved to Washington and now Oregon and brought her activism with her and she’s largely responsible for the passing of trans inclusive laws out there as well as leading an inner city neighborhood organization. Margaret’s nearing 70 and sharp as ever, and she’s damn worried- The extremists who have taken over the former Republican Party are already trampling the rights of trans citizens and even children everywhere they can. Fortunately they can’t in Minnesota… Yet. Given that almost every Republican candidate who is replacing a retiring Republican incumbent is more radicalized and wants to take America back a century if not three, we can expect they’ll act quickly next year to make abortion a capital crime and send gays back to the closet if they can’t get to Canada.
Look at any decent polling site and the trend is clear, due to gerrymandering (some of it self inflicted by democrats clustering in big cities) republicans have at least a 2% advantage in controlling the U.S. House, and in the generic ballot we’re 2% down and dropping. A mere 2% shift of votes to the republicans averages out to the loss of 20 Democratic U.S. House seats, and we’ve got a mere 10 seat majority, and in the Senate we only have a majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tie breaking votes in our favor. Here in Minnesota our democratic Governor Walz has a shrinking to almost nonexistent lead in the polls and re-election of the rest of our statewide slate that trailed Walz in the last election is even less likely. The republicans already control the Minnesota Senate thanks largely to environmental extremists driving a couple sitting democratic senators from mining areas out of the party, and even a 2% shift of votes in the republican’s direction will probably wipe out twice our democratic 10 seat majority in the House. It gets worse… Here in western Minnesota’s R+19 7th Congressional District the Republican incumbent has a bare +8% net approval from republicans but whole hog herds will take flight before DCCC will chip in a dollar of the millions it would take to win this seat. Down ballot we’ve got a whole two competitive legislative seats, and they’re seats we’re defending as democratic incumbents are retiring. We’ve got a bunch more districts that democrats won as recently as 2018, but many of our candidates are scrambling to get their campaigns going and raise the $3000(House) or $6000(Senate) to qualify for state campaign funding, never mind the six figure campaign war chest needed to be competitive.
The iconic legend of the “runaway train” is real- Heavy trains are so efficient due to their low air and rolling resistance that they’ll pick up speed on a barely visible down hill, and if not slowed in time will reach speeds far beyond what the brakes are capable of stopping them from. That’s why you’ll see trains slow before a long downhill, to get the speed down to where electric resistance braking will control the train’s speed and the brakes can be kept fresh in case an emergency stop is needed. Thanks to a pandemic that refuses to leave and inflation we didn’t cause but the party in power gets blamed for, this is a wave election going the wrong way and the political equivalent of a long steep downhill track with tight curves and a junction at the bottom.
Now if our Democratic leaders up in the locomotive were “on the ball” our DC Democrats would have started fighting the inflation that’s impoverishing us months ago instead of trying to ignore it. Instead of ‘splaining, they’d expose the Republicans for the haters and traitors they are. Here in Minnesota we’d put everything behind our most winnable race, re-electing Governor Walz so he can veto Republican attempts to criminalize reproductive and trans health care. Instead I’m seeing multiple daily tweets of campaign events from the Republican candidate increasingly known as “Dr. Death” with barely a peep from the MIA Walz campaign. Maybe because while the Minnesota Republican Party is broke but has thousands of fired up MAGA volunteers, the Democrats have millions in the bank but can’t seem to grasp that their target young athletic campaign workers can find better than the $15 an hour with 15 hours of mandatory overtime temp campaign jobs they’re offering. And back here in the “caboose” of Lyon County in rural western Minnesota, they’ve cut our parade presence to the “prettiest” float which has $500 worth of custom graphics… I ain’t rich enough for that competition. While we democrats should be campaigning hard there’s little for us to do, and I suspect I should prepare for the inevitable and take an extended Canadian vacation, maybe shop for an affordable prairie Province small town home too?
Democrats: If you decide to get a campaign together call me, I’ll be on the road…
Once again, we democrats are, as the legendary sportscaster said, “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”- The republicans are a bankrupt dumpster fire on a runaway train that should fall off the political landscape on Election Day if not sooner, ‘cept we democrats can’t get organized enough to defeat them.
In my previous post I was about ready to find better uses for my trailer and summer, but some kindly democrats convinced me to hang in there and do a few more parades, offering a couple more candidate signs to decorate said trailer with. Still not enough, so I had to cancel tomorrows parade with few complaints heard ’cause most of our too few volunteers couldn’t make it anyway.
Then this morning I get the latest e-missive from one our Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party’s fine caucuses that they’re coming out here to politic at our rural pride celebration, despite the organizer’s request which we local democrats are honoring to keep partisan politics out. Now I’m a long member of this fine GLBT and any other letters you care to add caucus and used to do rural prides for them, and quit doing them partly because they usually didn’t coordinate with the local Democratic Party units and came off as the invading woke political missionaries from the metro there to civilize the rural folk.
So let me get this right, DFL… After e-mailing all four statewide campaigns requesting signs for a parade float I get no answer. But one of your caucuses has the funding and arrogance to come out here and hijack our pride event without even contacting our local Democratic Party unit? And they wonder why us rural democrats are disappearing…
Those of you that know me note that I have two passions in life- Politics of the small “d” democratic persuasion and anything with wheels and a motor. Picking between my passions, I’ve gone motorcycling all over the countryside in odd years and turned that same motorcycle with a sidecar into a rolling advertisement for our democratic candidates in election years. Heck, some election years I did a parade or three every weekend all summer and just plain advertising our candidates through Election Day in the fall!
Then came COVID, and while two years in we’ve seen some progress it’s still a deadly disease for old folks like me. I follow the science, which told me to avoid indoor meetings and mask up when that wasn’t possible. Got my four shots and happy to report that I’d still COVID free and intend to stay that way- Again the science says that someone in their 70s like me is as likely to get hospitalized or dead from COVID as an unvaccinated person in their 60s so while the young invulnerable can usually get away with going unmasked indoors if they’re vaccinated, it’s a whole different world of disease and death probabilities for us elders.
‘Twas no surprise that the republicans added COVID to their denials almost from the start, and they were quite willing to sacrifice their own to COVID to look “normal” as they scrunched together unvaccinated and unmasked. We democrats followed the wiser path, as we moved all our meetings online in 2020 and won back the presidency and the senate while doing it. Having handled the COVID crisis masterfully, the big “D” Democrats slept while inflation took off and infant formula and a bunch of other essentials became scarce. Then in 2022 deadly Delta COVID was replaced by “COVID Light” AKA the less lethal Omicron strains. That, vaccinations, and probably the need to look “normal” like the republicans who are moving up in the polls despite having way too many insurrectionist wackos in their ranks apparently persuaded those big “D” Democrats to meet maskless and in person. Thus the decree went out from my states Democratic Party that all conventions would be in person, though a few party units wisely stayed online but not mine here in rural western Minnesota.
When I turned 70 to make some space for the young folks I quit running for party office, though I volunteer if no one else does. When we had our county convention a couple months back COVID was at it’s nadir so I attended, went to the senate district convention masked, and as COVID rates rise I skipped last weekend’s congressional district convention. This weekend the party is stubbornly holding their state convention in Olmsted County where even the CDC’s more cheerful map shows a high rate of infections. And yes, I know the party is requiring vaccinations but a shot or two a year ago is just about worthless and the mandatory COVID testing on Friday or Saturday morning won’t catch COVID caught in the Petri dish around the convention that runs through Sunday. So while I’m a voteless delegate by questionable virtue of being a democratic elected official and a member of a statewide party committee that hasn’t met in months, I can’t take the risk of attending in person and there’s no online option available.
Meanwhile, general “gear heading” and even racing with proper safety precautions has now become safer that Democratic Party politics- Besides riding motorcycles pretty much within the speed limits while wearing full protective gear, I’m going to scratch a several decades itch and go sports car racing and rallying. No, not Daytona or the track we used to call Donnybrook- Low budget and low risk events like autocross and rallycross where you race your car against the clock on a parking lot or field sized course. And because motorcycling especially and auto sports too need the space of the great outdoors in favorable weather, they’re infinitely safer than day(s)long political party meetings inside cramped halls.
Been thinking about this for a couple years as winning in this rural area has become next to impossible for democrats, but I stayed involved in hopes we could support our statewide candidates who have a chance of winning. So I still did the parades with the rainbow sidecar but realized it wasn’t the ideal message for out here and a tractor would be better…
Problem was finding insurance for the thing, best option was a small business policy for a not insubstantial $500+ a year, which killed that plan. So thought I’d simply take my new blue van and hook it up to my utility trailer made up to be a float…
Low budget and boring, but that means nobody will object to it… Even the motorcycle phobes seem to at least accept minivans.
Now this story’s been in my head for weeks, but today I tried to post on my congressional district Democratic Party’s Facebook page a request for some candidate’s lawn signs to properly decorate the minivan and trailer… And that simple post remains unposted. A couple minutes later the admin posted their idea of float decorating, with text so small as to be unreadable from halfway across a wide street, and sourced from a non union vendor. I added up the cost if I blew up the size enough to be readable, damn near $500! I quite politely pointed that problem out and was suspended from the page.
That was the last straw.
So to the big “D” Democrats, you’re quite capable of losing rural elections without my assistance and I wish you good luck, you’ll probably need it. To my friends the small “d” democrats, I love you as much as ever and support you in our struggles. I’ll fulfill my obligations as a grassroots party official, but as my attempts to further support the party have been blocked I won’t be volunteering for much of any new projects. I tried…
There’s a fantasy meme out here that somehow if the white birth rate increased Red Owl, Rexall, and the Five and Dime would return to Main Street and every thing will be hunky dory like in the 1950s again. Most of the holders of this flawed fantasy rely on an Old McDonald’s Farm understanding of reproduction and assume a barnyard overrun with too many critters is a sure sign of prosperity.
Anyone with a basic understanding of animal agriculture will tell you it ain’t that simple- From gestation all the way to the supermarket shelves they need a steady and predictable supply and flow of livestock to keep the system working- Look at how just some shifts from food service to supermarket consumption resulted in empty shelves during the pandemic! A drop in the reproduction rate wastes capacity and leads to food shortages and runaway prices. Worse yet, a significant increase in the reproductive rate will produce more livestock than the grazing land, feedlots, barns, feed supply, packing houses, and transportation can handle. As we saw during the pandemic, that leads to flocks and herds having to be killed en mass lest they suffer starvation and their carcassess feed another pandemic. That’s why livestock reproduction is much more tightly controlled than our own.
Make the stupid mistake of radically forcing human reproduction increases has even more tragic consequences because while livestock’s life cycle ranges from a few months to a couple years, it take about two decades to conceive, birth, and raise a human to the point where they become productive. And while livestock may tolerate cold pastures, confined barns, and a rough ride to their death… We humans are a lot fussier.
About 20% of pregnancies end in abortion, so banning them will give us about 25% more babies every year, so with childcare already in short supply even more parents will leave the workforce… And we’re chronicly short of workers too! While those newborn’s cribs will fit just about anywhere, they quickly outgrow them and we’ve had a shortage of two and more bedroom housing for years and it’s getting worse. After five years these poor government mandated children will start school, and the small town school of the republican’s dreams has long ago collapsed, been repurposed, or just plain torn down. My school district finally consolidated three schools with three kitchens, three gyms, three heating plants, etc. down to one with a huge increase in efficiency… And now the republicans already want us taxpayers to expand it to accommodate the children of their forced pregnancy fantasies!
It gets worse- We replaced the failing water system in my town but the huge rural water systems that supply us have no more capacity and funding for increased capacity is taking decades. Funding that system was a stretch and a sewer system would be even harder to justify, so we’ve got septic systems. The common standard for those is at most 8 for every 40 acres, our town is about 40 acres and with 16 systems we’re exceeding that and a sewer system would cost millions given that we’d have to run over a mile of pipe to a safe discharge point- Yup, adding just a few kids in my town could cost us millions. The story is the same across rural America- A half century ago thanks to population loss and overbuilding we had excess capacity in our schools, clinics, and Main Streets, but not now. And I haven’t even figured in yet the effects of the party of forced reproduction’s next goal of banning birth control and the loss of women parents and workers who will die from easily treatable birth complications that the republicans will ban.
The republicans are free to enjoy their 1950s fantasies of runaway reproduction… But they have no right to force us to live in their fantasies of forced reproduction that even the dumbest livestock farmer wouldn’t try!
By the early 60s McNamara and his early data analyst “Whiz Kids” had turned Ford into an efficient producer of boring cars such as the Falcon above before he went on to play CEO of the Vietnam War and do penance running the World Bank. In similar manner the data geeks and consultants ruining our Democratic Party have insured that damn near none of our billions of dollars in donations gets “wasted” on rural campaigns because that’s what their interpretation of the data tells them. When all you’ve got to offer is the political equivalent of a Falcon, it’s no surprise that rural voters are hanging on to their decades old pickups and voting republican.
Lee Iacocca followed a grittier path to running Ford and used simple research to conclude that a market existed for the Mustang, he even let competitor GM fund his research with their marketing mistakes. While a technical revolution the Corvair looked as boring and safe as the Falcon and was rewarded by slow sales. But when GM added the Monza model with bucket seats and a turbocharged engine sales perked up as the Corvair’s image changed from “economy” to “sporty”. Iacocca’s “market research” was that success of sporty Corvairs, the 1960 census that showed millions of baby boomers turning drivers license age, and the low unemployment rate that showed they had the money to buy new cars… But not a Falcon! So Ford gave the Falcon a 2 door coupe roofline and ragtop too along with a small V8 and sales perked up a la Corvair Monza and Spyder. That was all the research Iacocca and his co-conspirators at Ford needed to create and convince Ford to build the Mustang… And despite the usual research data that said it would be a flop, the Mustang was a runaway sold out success. A decade later Iacocca figured out a lot of those boomers had a couple kids now and needed the minivan… Ford killed it but Iacocca took the concept with him to Chrysler and saved the company. And while the original Bronco was a sales flop, the current sold out Bronco’s market research was based mostly on hunches and it’s development fed by passion more than $$$.
So throw out the indexes and polling and like Iacocca look at the hints and go with our hunches of how democrats can win in rural districts again. Small towns and family farms out here are hanging on by threads, and what are we offering rural voters? A 2022 Falcon. When all you have to offer is a bland sedan, the republicans will easily sell more rusty old pickups that at least make entertaining noises, smoke, and will haul a ton across a muddy field even if they need a gallon of gas for every section they cross. The hints are clear- The democratic senator with the flat top haircut from Montana proves that a democrat who advocates solutions for rural voters needs can win while the Democratic leadership who got us into this mess loses by trying to sell electric cars in places where electricity isn’t taken for granted.
It took millions for Ford to bring the Mustang to market in the face of market research that predicted failure, but had Ford not taken that risk they’d at best now be the Ford division of Toyota or VW. Capital “D” Democrats, we need you to risk some of your billions on hints that become hunches that the right rural democrats can win and some of them will!
OK, were 2+ years into the pandemic that’s killed a million or so Americans and the republican response has devolved into welcoming the carnage as some sort of dystopian survival of the fittest… A strange position for a party that doesn’t believe in evolution, but they’ve been in a lot of strange positions lately. Stupidly unmasked and unvaxxed, they’ve literally been losing their own as well as elections, the best Minnesota example being a republican legislator from St.Cloud who lost both his election and his life to COVID after an election night “victory” party.
Meanwhile we democrats have been model citizens, masking en mass and vaxxed to the max. Until the last couple months, when word must have come down from the DNC or somewhere that masks weren’t polling well and every democrat had best start looking “normal” again. Suddenly we saw democrats full faces again jammed into the same superspreader chambers, and as expected we now have a whole cohort of democratic electeds all the way up to VP with COVID diagnosis. At the same time the democratic talking points have shifted to “living with COVID” and the CDC is contributing for public consumption a county map of COVID spread with suspiciously too much green, and at the same time supplying health care with a map that’s getting increasingly yellow, orange, and red. Ever following the company line, our Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor party has declared that all conventions will be in person, though a few of the smarter local party units honored the higher law of the ADA and held online and hybrid conventions to protect their health and safety. This convention season will culminate in a “made for TV” state convention coronation of the all incumbent statewide candidates, with mandatory COVID tests hopefully giving the delegates attending enough confidence to bare their smiles for the evening news.
This strategy is insanely stupid- When the republicans are accusing you of “shutting down” to slow a pandemic, the worst defense is to back off on the already gravely reduced public health restrictions and try to act innocent! If you poll the whole of the issue instead of using the republican’s “shutdown” language the majority of the voters support vaccines, indoor masks, and any other effective strategy. The strongest support is among the prized elder voters, who have already voted with their arms to be the most vaccinated of any age cohort. Unfortunately from the DNC on down our Democratic Party leadership lacks the courage to take the COVID stopping steps that a majority of the voters support.
Worse yet, the Democrat’s new found COVID denial is driving away the backbone of our party, us volunteers. I’ve yet to catch COVID because I’ve followed the science, N95’d and vaxxed to the max, and isolated for up to a month during periods of high transmission. The data, and I consume plenty of data, says that another wave is beginning of a new Omicron mutant that while looking deceivingly mild spreads faster than any previous COVID. The mild symptoms are deceiving, “Long COVID” is as much a threat as ever because it’s frequency in COVID survivors doesn’t correlate with serious symptoms, and recent studies tell us that even the “mild” Omicron mutant can cause long COVID.
In the last few weeks I’ve attended a few DFL events with from near half to not even a tenth of the participants masked as the case counts rose again. I was elected a state convention alternate but gave up that seat when the State DFL took 2 of our county’s seats away, no big deal because I’ve got 2 other ways to get floor access at the state convention anyway. But I’m less than motivated to attend a DFL state convention that could turn in to a superspreader event, and how much will the required COVID test cost me? Bottom line I’m no good to DFL as a volunteer if I’m sick with long COVID, and if I have to I’ll sit out this election season which doesn’t look too promising anyway so I can survive to fight the good fight in future elections.
At high noon today Minnesota’s political geeks sat cross eyed before banks of computer screens, pounding on mice and keyboards in anticipation of the new congressional and legislative district maps. We then proceeded to waste a perfectly lovely warm February afternoon digesting and discussing the resulting minor changes in political geography.
Did anything really change?
On a macro level the lines wiggled a bit mostly to allow for growing urban population vs. rural flight from those republican strongholds. Thus all but my home Congressional District 7 (CD7), became a percent or so more democratic but not enough to change the results of the last election, and R+ double digit CD7 is a lost cause or long term project depending on who you ask anyways.
But the democracy is in the details, most notably Minnesota’s 3 most populous Tribal Nations being united and moved into CD8 and Senate District (SD) 2. CD8 still leans republican and the Duluth “environmentalists” who dominate the district will no doubt tick off the miners and keep it republican, but the new SD2 is now competitive along with House District (HD) 2A and 2B within the SD. On the other end of the state another minority opportunity district was borne, HD15B which takes in the immigrant heavy stretch along Minnesota Highway 60 from Worthington to St.James. While the counties of this district lean republican, the cities like Worthington have voted democratic in some of the last few elections. and while we have no declared candidate, the republicans have no incumbent. I’ve been advocating for this minority opportunity district for months and for the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) party to do some serious organizing there for years, and sadly true to form they’ll probably blow this opportunity again.
A few other long shot opportunities in CD7 have been enhanced by redistricting- In the old Farmer-Labor stronghold triangle running from Breckinridge to almost St.Cloud, southwest to around Marshall, and back north along the Dakota border are a bunch of counties that Senator Amy Klobuchar won in 2018. While a long shot, that means a democrat can win here and a few have already announced their candidacy. But the DFL Party and outside democratic groups are risk adverse and will probably instead spend their $$$ trying to hold on to HD4B on the outskirts of Moorhead which leans republican and the incumbent DFL representative is retiring. Or maybe they’ll surrender that district without a fight, given that the suburbs are their preferred political battlegrounds.
So after all the drama of redistricting not much has changed other than the Minnesota becoming the odd percent more democratic, and a few minority opportunity districts appearing that the DFL Party will probably waste anyways…
Sassy Democrat 