Every politician has an origin story, the tale of why they got into the game in the first place. Rarely tied to personal ambition, the story is usually about how some person, some event, some turning point in their lives called them to serve. They didn’t volunteer as much as they were drafted. For DFLer Tim Walz, it was a campaign rally for then-President George W. Bush that he attended with some of his Mankato high school students. Once there, Walz said the students were questioned about their political views after security found a sticker for Democrat John Kerry on…
Author: MinnPost
The Minnesota campaign drawing the most national attention – and the most national money – isn’t the race for governor or the 2nd Congressional District. Instead, it is the race to determine whether DFLer Steve Simon wins a third term as secretary of state. Simon was among a handful of elections officials on the cover of Time magazine who were depicted as “The Defenders: Inside the Fight to Save America’s Elections.” He faces GOP nominee Kim Crockett, who wants to curtail early voting and limit absentee ballots. This usually sleepy, down-ballot contest is this year one of a handful of secretary of…
Questions regarding police accountability and gun violence in Minneapolis communities dominated a public forum on Thursday featuring candidates for the Hennepin County attorney’s race. Candidates Mary Moriarty and Martha Holton Dimick traded responses to several questions submitted by the few dozen people in attendance at the forum put on by the League of Women Voters inside the gym of the Sojourner Truth Academy in north Minneapolis. Moriarty, who spent 31 years in the Hennepin County Public Defender office, the last six as chief public defender, retired in 2021. She won the DFL endorsement and dominated the crowded field of seven…
A decision in the early 2010s to put part of the Southwest Light Rail Transit project underground is the likely inflection point where financial gaps and construction delays began to plague the project. A tunnel squeezed between a condo tower and a village of townhomes is now the leading cause of cost overruns that has driven a half-billion-dollar hole in the budget. Construction problems and completion delays can also be laid at the feet of the tunnel, what Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle has dubbed “the gnarliest segment of this whole, very complicated project.” But for the tunnel, the SWLRT project…
Many of the campaign issues in Minnesota are issues in races across the country as well, put there by partisan strategists who see them as potent for bringing the right voters to the polls. Similar talking points on public safety, abortion, inflation and school curricula can be seen and heard in congressional and state campaigns in every state, Minnesota included. And now some national Republicans are trying to add ESG to the list – or, as they call it, “woke investing.” First, what is ESG? The acronym for Environment, Social and Governance describes a move to consider issues such as…
The Southwest light rail transit project, also known as the Metro Green Line Extension, is rarely spoken of without the precursor “troubled.” As such, a report by the Office of Legislative Auditor ordered by a rare state House-Senate bipartisan agreement must carry the precursor “much-anticipated.” Released last week and discussed Thursday by the House and Senate’s Legislative Audit Commission, the special review was something of a disappointment. Rather than follow the normal pattern of findings and recommendations, the review was instead an explanation of a lot that was already known about how the project’s budget and timeline expanded. Judy Randall, the legislative…
Tom Weiler has never run for office before, but the Republican congressional candidate knows enough about politics to plan to spend every day at the Minnesota State Fair. Weiler, an Eden Prairie native who now lives in Plymouth, had a 20-year career as a submariner before illness prompted him to retire from the U.S. Navy and challenge Rep. Dean Phillips to represent the 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses many of Minneapolis’s north, south and west suburbs. Weiler’s brother John Weiler manned a cardboard submarine at the entrance of the fair’s Minnesota Republican Party headquarters, eager to promote the candidate to curious…
It was spring 2020, the beginning of the pandemic. City and state governments across the country were implementing stay-at-home orders. So much was unknown about COVID-19’s dangers or its trajectory. And yet, government responses to the crisis were already drawing partisan judgments. On April 17, barely a month into emergency orders restricting access to public spaces, then-President Donald Trump tweeted “Liberate Minnesota,” a message meant to give support to protesters who thought the state had over-restricted business, education and social life in the state. Two weeks later, TikTok creator justinpollock7 posted a video in which he danced to the tune of “Fifty Nifty United…
The Nov. 8 ballots in Minnesota will be crowded with candidates for governor, attorney general, Congress, the Legislature and county offices. One thing they won’t have in nearly the entire state: a contested race for judge. There are two Supreme Court seats on the ballot, 10 for the Court of Appeals and 94 for the District Court. In only one race — a District Court race in Shakopee — is there more than a single choice for voters. Minnesota, which elects judges in nonpartisan elections, rarely has a lot of contests for judicial spots. In 2020 there were five, in 2018…
In election politics, you take victories wherever you can find them. The two endorsed candidates for governor of Minnesota did just that following primary victories Tuesday, Aug. 9, against unknown and unfunded party rivals. Jensen carried more than 87 percent of the vote on the GOP side of the primary against two marginal opponents. Walz did even better — 97 percent — against a perennial DFL candidate. While the separate primaries are hard to compare, more state voters chose DFL ballots than GOP ballots by nearly 110,000. “While tonight’s victory may have been more of a formality, it’s still a…