Primary Election 2026: MN House, District 65B

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This is a seat that represents parts of St. Paul and West St. Paul. It is currently held by Maria Isa Pérez-Vega, but she is running for Ramsey County Board instead, so the seat is open. On the primary ballot:

Sebastian Ellefson
Elena Mena

Sebastian Ellefson is the DFL-endorsed candidate. He’s a legal aid attorney. His endorsements include Daniel Suitor, a lawyer I know by way of Bluesky who has spent the last six months filing habeas challenges on behalf of detained immigrants. He’s a board member of the West Side Community Organization and he leads a Girl Scout troop. He sounds like a stand-up guy and a good neighbor.

Elena Mena has no website that I could find. I did find her personal Facebook, where she has a picture of a flower and “adventurous, explorer, rock climber, marine biologist, cloud connoisseur, lake babe, water protector” as her personal description. She did not reply to my e-mail asking if she wanted to tell me literally anything about herself and what she stands for.

I would vote for Sebastian Ellefson, actual candidate in this race!

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026: MN Senate, District 62

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This is the seat currently held by Omar Fateh, and he has two people running against him. On the ballot:

Brenda Short
Omar Fateh
Jeanelle Austin

Brenda Short

Brenda Short ran for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2025 and does not appear to have updated her website much since then. (She changed the header, but “why am I running” leads to a page where she talks about how Minneapolis needs strong leadership (and this is true across her site, she has mostly swapped out “mayor” for “State Senate” and the 2025 dates for the 2026 dates, but she doesn’t seem to have changed much else.) Brenda is not a serious candidate (she’s the person who fired her campaign manager by giving an interview to a newspaper and waiting for the campaign manager to read the story). If you want to replace Omar Fateh, vote for Jeanelle.

Omar Fateh

Omar Fateh also ran for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2025 but with a much more serious campaign (and, no surprise here, his website now is specifically for his re-election campaign.) His legislative accomplishments include the statewide minimum wage for rideshare drivers (an 11th-hour compromise that kept the services available in Minneapolis while also ensuring that drivers were paid something closer to a fair wage), an exemption to drug paraphernalia laws for fentanyl test strips, and the North Star Promise scholarships. This spring, he introduced a bill (along with Jamie Long and Bobby Joe Champion) to allow Minnesotans to sue ICE for violating their rights; I think this passed in the Senate but died in committee in the House because the Democrats lacked a majority there. Fateh is an outstanding organizer, a good listener, and genuinely really effective in the legislature. I am disappointed that he lost to Frey because I think he’d also be a much better mayor.

Jeanelle Austin

Jeanelle Austin is the executive director of Rise & Remember, a nonprofit that maintains the memorial at George Floyd Square. (They also organize events, and offer guides for people who want to visit, among other things.) She has community service experience and strong progressive values, and iff she were running for an open seat I would probably view her as the obvious pick. But she’s not running for an open seat! She’s running against an incumbent (a young, energetic incumbent who’s done really good work so far and whose constituents have told me he’s responsive to contacts.)

I e-mailed her to ask as tactfully as I could if Omar did something bad and I missed the memo? Her reply:

My reasons for running have nothing to do with my opponents. I am fighting for issues that continue to harm our community that must be addressed at the state level of government. I believe that I will be an effective senator because of my 27 years of leadership experience, cross-cultural communication skills, and community activism. I believe many of the people in our district are in alignment with what my campaign outlines as what we need to begin to thrive—fully funded public education, improved gun laws (although I’ve learned that many neighbors vary on what this looks like), affordable healthcare for all, gainful employment for everyone, and affordable housing. It’s not the “what” that is in question, as much as it is the “how.” And it is not the policy that needs more strategy, it is the working with people. Though we in D62 need and want something, getting that something agreed upon and passed by other Minnesotans with different lived experiences is the challenge. I have the skills, experience, and imagination to serve effectively with my experience working with people. I feel called to lead through the Minnesota Senate in this next season of my life. I would be honored to be put forth by my neighbors in D62 to do so.

If you’re running for an open seat, I think that’s a reasonable way to frame it, but if you’re running in a primary against a fellow progressive Democrat, I need you (or someone else!) to be able to tell me why that person needs to be replaced. Being a state legislator is a job that comes with a learning curve: replacing a sitting legislator means a new person has to learn to do the job, re-establish the relationships, and start building up seniority. This is clearly worthwhile when someone’s been in their seat so long they’ve fossilized, or they’ve had a major scandal. I backed a prior challenger to Omar two years ago because he’d had some scandals; he got that situation straightened out and has not had any issues I’ve heard about since. (If anything, he seems to have learned from this to be extremely careful with campaign finance paperwork, etc., which is good. That’s a good thing for people to be extremely careful with.) Four years ago (note: Senate usually gets 4-year terms but they all had to run at the two-year mark because of redistricting) I backed Omar over the incumbent he was running against because he’d had a scandal.

I’ve asked around and no one seems to know of any current scandals and I’ve been told Jeanelle likes Omar fine, she just also very much wants to serve in the legislature and doesn’t want to wait for an open seat.

I like and respect Jeanelle and I hope she runs for an open seat in the future. I would vote for Omar Fateh. If you dislike Omar Fateh for whatever reason, you can definitely vote for Jeanelle; she seems pretty great. This whole race is honestly kind of perplexing.

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026: MN Senate, District 65

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This is a State Senate seat in St. Paul and West St. Paul. It is currently held by Sandy Pappas, who’s been in it since 1991. She had a serious challenger four years ago, said she wanted one final term where the DFL was in the majority, and got it. She is now retiring and two people are running in the primary:

Robyn Gulley
Natasha Bennett

Robyn is a labor organizer and former City Council member from West St. Paul. She’s also DFL-endorsed, which means that she’s been vetted by her community, and endorsed by a long list of City Council people from both St. Paul and West St. Paul. She seems fine.

Natasha Bennett is a substance abuse counselor and real estate agent. Her website has a long bio about growing up in St. Paul (“I don’t just know Saint Paul from a map—I know from lived experience”) and an extremely thin set of issues. (On her front page, under “ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE BROUGHT TO THE FOREFRONT FOR DISTRICT 65” she has a list of neighborhoods. On her issues page, she mentions affordability, “stopping corporate interests from pushing out local residents,” and wanting people to be heard.

Honestly my biggest hesitation about Natasha is this: she quotes Bible verses (well, one verse: “we walk by faith, not by sight”) absolutely everywhere: her Facebook shows her name as Natasha Walkingbyfaith Bennett, her campaign email is natashawalkbyfaithbennett at gmail.com, her LinkedIn has a truncated version of the quote plus the citation at the top (I think the omission of “faith” there was a typo). I have nothing against Christians, to be clear; some of my favorite politicians are, in fact, Christians. However, it does raise some questions for me, so I sent her an e-mail asking where she stands on abortion rights and trans rights, and also whether she has any past experience with policy work or governance type stuff. She has not replied. (I’ll note, there’s also nothing on her website or her campaign Facebook that addresses either of these questions.)

I would vote for Robyn!

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026: US House, District 4

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This is the seat currently held by Betty McCollum. On the DFL side of the ballot:

Betty McCollum
Aswar Rahman

On the Republican side:

Gene Rechtzigel
Paul Wikstrom
Paul Xiong

(Minnesota doesn’t require you to register as a party member to vote in primaries, but in any given primary, you have to pick one party and stick with it throughout. My friends who work as election judges have people who want to litigate this every single time. If you vote in more than one party’s races, you have spoiled your ballot.)

I live in St. Paul, so Betty McCollum is my US House Rep. She’s in the progressive wing of the Democratic party but is not as fighty as some of the other people in that part of the party (like Ilhan) if that makes sense. For example, she’s a long-standing critic of Israel (she’s literally one of the longest-standing supporters of Palestinian human rights in Congress) but sticks with moderate language while talking about Israel’s war crimes (she prefers the term “human rights abuses”).

My personal recent frustrations with Betty: she voted last week for the KIDS Act, which is an Internet censorship / age-verification bill. (There are a lot of problems with age-verification bills; one is that they’re basically data-exposure bills.) She voted last month for the “Combating Organized Retail Crime Act” bill, which expands the criteria where shoplifting can be federally prosecuted. (This bill is 100% a response to the claim that we’re in an “organized retail theft epidemic” which is just horseshit. Or possibly it’s 50% that, 50% an opportunity for the Feds to increase surveillance. Both are bad!) She’s a Democrat in a safe seat and did not have to vote for these.

Anyway, if you’re here because you are mad about these votes (or other things she’s done) and you want to cast a protest vote, and you just want to know if Aswar Rahman is evil: no, he’s not evil, you can totally vote for him if you want.

Aswar came to speak at my caucus, which I was chairing and that was very distracting so I don’t actually remember what he said, just that he was a very dynamic speaker. He has run for office before: he ran for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2017 on a “we’re going to save money by cutting stuff based on vibes” platform; he dropped out to do a reality TV series and endorsed Frey. In 2019 he was starting a jeans company and in 2020 he ran for office again, this time in the 60A Special Election. If you read his bio (which is still up but doesn’t appear to be linked from his front page anymore) you’ll see that prior to all this he had “a passion for filmmaking” and made some movies. After the reality TV show (I think after? I may have the sequence wrong) he worked for Dean Phillips and Amy Klobuchar doing digital content. He moved to Los Angeles in 2021 (to try to make it in movies, I think?) but then “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shook Aswar to his core” and he dropped everything and flew to Poland.

He started a nonprofit to bring refugees to Minnesota (the Star Trib wrote about it in 2022) and then used this organization to help US citizens get out of Israel immediately after the October 7th attacks. This organization seems to have run for about a year and a half before overextending itself and going bankrupt. In July 2024, there was a student-led mass uprising in Bangladesh, where Aswar is originally from, which led to him getting interested in the inefficiencies in the textile trade, so his next project was a company called AmeriBangla to sell American cotton to Bangladesh. (That still seems to be a going concern.)

Anyway, my point here is this: Aswar has a ton of energy and a ton of charisma. He also lacks focus and has a tendency to get in over his head.

His website back in February also had a detailed immigration plan (not linked from the home page now but still up). He presented it as a plan that would “FIX IMMIGRATION” (that’s the title of the page). It would, in fact, probably mitigate a number of problems in the tiny corner of immigration that is refugee resettlement specifically (which, as you recall, he worked in with a nonprofit) but it’s absolutely not an Immigration Plan in the sense of dealing with all the other fairly complex pieces, including the key one of “getting the plan you want (whatever it is) through the US Senate.”

His website now is heavily focused on attacking Betty McCollum’s support for the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act, which he describes as a “Betty McCollum’s inhumane attack on my refugees.” His website centers on that as a reason for running against Betty (although that’s definitely not why he got into the race, since she didn’t sign on to the bill until February 11th, a week after the caucuses.)

So let’s talk about the DIGNIDAD Act of 2025. It’s not, in fact, a great bill. The National Immigration Law Center describes it as “an outdated and harmful approach to immigration reform.” It does provide a path to citizenship for some DACA recipients and it provides a type of renewable legal status (but not a path to permanent residency or citizenship) for some undocumented immigrants; it also has a big pile of money for new detention centers for asylum seekers, more walls, more enforcement, etc., because the tactic for years now from Democrats has been to offer more money for border enforcement in an attempt to get Republicans to sign on to literally any sort of immigration reform. This is a bipartisan bill; it was introduced by Maria Salazar, a shitty Florida Republican, but with 16 immediate cosponsors, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. It looks to me like as they’ve had cosponsors sign on, they’ve tried to make sure the numbers stayed close to equal.

I’m going to say that under a Trump presidency, this has zero chance of passage because it has any amnesty provisions. But it is in fact a good example of the problem with the Democratic party’s approach to immigration: in an attempt to act reasonable and bipartisan, they offer up increasingly draconian enforcement mechanisms in exchange for literally any movement on immigration reform, and we wind up getting the increasingly draconian enforcement and zero actual progress on immigration reform.

Anyway, I wrote to Betty to ask why she signed on to this bill, if her staff can unpack that for me? What was it about this bill she thought was worth supporting? She doesn’t have a news release about it and doesn’t seem to have spoken about it publicly (that I could turn up). (I wrote to her campaign site. If I hear back I will update.)

But a lot of Aswar’s framing of the bill and Betty’s sponsorship of it just feels like… I don’t know, like someone who literally does not know how this sort of thing works. From his website: “Before Betty signed on, less than 10% of Congress sponsored this bill. They crucially lacked a prominent Democratic supporter. […] When Betty signed on to sponsor this MAGA-written immigration bill, it was the victory that Rep. Maria Salazar was praying for. Betty became the most powerful member of Congress — Democrat or Republican — to sign on for this law. She legitimized a fringe effort into a serious law that can realistically pass.” Nineteen Democrats had signed on before Betty and zero have signed on after her (she signed on in February). Betty is, I think, the most senior Democrat to sign on but one of the original cosponsors, Adriano Espaillat, is also on the Appropriations Committee and is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Also the Democrats aren’t in power and also there’s no companion Senate bill.

Anyway, this was a whole lot of rabbit-hole-diving to say, if you are mad at Betty for whatever reason, you can go ahead and vote for Aswar, he doesn’t seem to be evil. He is absolutely not going to win the primary: someone online was complaining that they’d like to door-knock for him but he has no way to sign up to volunteer, which is not the mark of a serious candidate. I’m probably going to vote for Betty because my bar for casting a protest vote is actually pretty high (Amy Klobuchar has really pissed me off) and while I think he’s non-evil I am not at all convinced that he’d be competent in Congress.

And a quick tour of the Republicans:

Gene Rechtzigel

Gene is a perennial candidate who’s been running for stuff long enough to have been made fun of by the City Pages (that’s a link to my blog post from 2020, because the City Pages is not online) which said “In the age of widespread disinformation campaigns like QAnon, it’s almost refreshing to hear from a good old-fashioned solitary crank like Gene.” That blog post gives you a pretty good overview of his views, which don’t seem to have changed much. He won the Republican primary a few years ago but needless to say did not win the general election.

Paul Wikstrom

Paul Wikstrom is the GOP-endorsed candidate in the primary. He’s a software engineering manager at Raytheon (per his LinkedIn), where he has worked for eight years. (Before that he worked for 17 years at Medtronic, so he’s someone who left the medical device industry to build weapons systems.) His website is top to bottom about fraud and how bad it is, so I sent him an e-mail to ask if he would support HR 7852 (the “No Getting Rich in Congress Act”) and HR 8309 (a law that would prevent Presidents from enriching themselves with public funds)? That was a week ago and you’ll be shocked to hear he has not responded.

Paul Xiong

Paul Xiong’s website says he’s a former law enforcement officer and was the chair of the Hmong 18 Council. I think I found his LinkedIn and like the other Paul, his actual job is in IT. Unlike the other Paul, he still works in health care rather than in weapons systems, so, point to Paul Xiong there. His social media is full of posts that make me think there’s some drama happening I can’t find. He’s apparently supported Democrats in the past and also got some pushback on his Easter post because he’s not a Christian.

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026: US House, District 5

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This is the seat currently held by Ilhan Omar. There are five people running as Democrats (including Ilhan) and also four Republicans running for the opportunity to be crushed like bugs (Ilhan got 74% of the vote in 2024.)

On the DFL ballot:

Ilhan Omar
Nate Schluter
Latonya T. Reeves
Abena A. McKenzie
Julie Trang Le

Ilhan Omar

If you live in Minneapolis, you probably know whether you like Ilhan Omar or not. In any given two-year period, there’s usually stuff she’s done that I was very happy with, and stuff that annoyed me.

My biggest recent irritation with her was the financial disclosure screwup. thing. Ilhan’s husband Tim Mynett owns a “winery and venture capital management firm” and she filed a disclosure statement valuing his share at $6M-$30M, only to revise that down to $0 a few months later. Ilhan’s statement on this: “The original filing was based on incomplete information from Mr. Mynett’s businesses’ accountants in good faith and deference to professional judgement. It listed assets without liabilities, and it significantly overstated her husband’s net worth. The accounting error created a misleading picture of far greater wealth. The Congresswoman amended her disclosures voluntarily as soon as the discrepancy was identified.” The whole thing is weird. However, given Trump’s unconscionable politicization of the justice system and his petty personal hatred of Ilhan, I’m pretty sure that if there were anything illegal (rather than weird) to dig up, his pet justice department would have filed charges by now.

What I’ve liked about her: Ilhan Omar is one of a handful of Democrats who actually seem like she’s meeting the moment in the fight against fascism. She continues to make Republicans frothingly angry just by existing. When she got assaulted at a Town Hall she was ready to fight the guy herself. I would absolutely vote for her on her own merits, although also, her primary opponents are all terrible in one way or another.

Nate Schluter

Nate is a perennial candidate who no longer bothers to maintain a site (back when he had one, the URL was “candidatenateschluter5thdistrictcandidateminneapolis.com.”) He has a Facebook page that he hasn’t updated since 2022. My post about him from back when he had a website said that it included some gross anti-immigrant sentiments. Don’t vote for him.

Abena A. McKenzie

Abena ran last time but there was almost zero information about her. She now has a website up and a campaign Facebook that continue to be utterly devoid of substance. Don’t vote for her.

Julie Trang Le

Julie Trang Le is the former ICE attorney who lost her shit during a court hearing and said to the judge, “The system sucks. This job sucks. I wish you would hold me in contempt so I would have a full 24 hours sleep.” She then got fired from her job. She seems to have mistaken “notoriety” as “qualification for elected office.”

Her website says that “before Julie served as a federal prosecutor, she was a realtor, an insurance agent, and a restaurant owner,” and I’m very curious about the timeline here but she doesn’t offer one (despite having a “Career Timeline” sidebar) and I couldn’t find her on LinkedIn. She has served on some civic boards, which is fine. But her main qualification, the thing that made her decide to jump into the race, is that she took a legal job doing the work on the side of the fascists, did it badly, melted down in court, and got fired. I am not impressed and would not vote for her.

Latonya T. Reeves

Latonya Reeves is a probation officer and centrist Democrat who is pals with large numbers of my least favorite people in local politics. My reasons for opposing her are so wide-ranging I’m going to have to do bullet points.

  • Last September, she was one of the main offenders at the disastrous Zoom meeting of the DFL Feminist Caucus. She both went to the mat to defend her buddy who killed a guy with her car, and made fun of the idea that people should respect folks’ pronouns at a meeting where several trans people were repeatedly misgendered. Here’s my writeup from when it was recent. Here’s Dex Anderson’s writeup (Dex does not call Latonya out by name, but various people have confirmed that Latonya is the person who put “Black Queen” as her pronouns.) Here’s an article from May about Cyndy Martin pleading guilty to criminal vehicular homicide. (Even prior to the plea, the fact that she hit the guy with her car was not in question, despite her buddies acting like bringing this up was mean.)
  • At the CD 5 DFL convention, she chose Tim Peterson to nominate her. Tim Peterson is an awful person who uses violent rhetoric towards DSA members (example here.) Also at the 2025 Minneapolis City convention he reportedly shoved a woman volunteer. Having him nominate her was a choice: a really, really gross choice.
  • This one is just weird. She was listed as the Chair for something called the Minnesota Civilian Public Safety Commission. This is not the Minneapolis Community Commission on Police Oversight, which she lists on her LinkedIn and is an actual public board; the Minnesota Civilian Public Safety Commission was a fraudulent nonprofit run by someone who started nonprofits and gave them deceptive names that made them sound like they had government affiliations, for the purpose of funneling people to his legal consulting business. AG Keith Ellison sued the CEO, David Singleton, in 2025, and the groups Singleton ran were dissolved. I would love an explanation for why she was on the board of this group and have sent her an e-mail asking about it (we’ll see if I hear back.) (Honestly I’m including this one because she’s been using “fraud” as a talking point. I don’t know why we should believe that she’d be better at rooting out fraud than Ilhan Omar, when she doesn’t appear to have been aware that she was Board Chair at a fully fraudulent organization.)

As a general rule, I have a lot of tolerance for centrists in swing districts but Minneapolis deserves a progressive who will fight. I would 100% vote for Ilhan Omar.

Now for a quick tour of the Republicans, for those who are curious. On the ballot:

Abbey Zieska
John Nagel
Angie Windhauser
Dalia Al-Aqidi

Abbey Zieska

She has no website. Hunting around I turned up a couple of people who might be her. Here’s a Tiktok account of an Abbey Zieska who lives in Minneapolis (so, probably her?) but the most recent videos on there are from 2021. And here’s a Backstage listing (Backstage is like actor LinkedIn, basically) where she says she can play characters ranging from 16-30 and lists her skills as Singing, Witchcraft, and Latin American Spanish. I didn’t turn her up on regular LinkedIn.

John Nagel

John Nagel is a retired State Trooper. His website is sort of generic Republican talking points (law and order, “we’re going to lock down the border,” he hates gay and trans people, etc.) He claims to be a “moderate conservative” but scrolling down his Twitter makes it clear there is nothing moderate about his views (posts from the last day and a half included a lot of grotesque anti-immigrant sentiments, including of people who came legally, a bunch of homophobia and transphobia, etc.) Gross.

Angie Windhauser

Angie is the weirdo who endorsed Bill Gates because God told her to do so and her website is about what you’d probably expect from that endorsement. It starts with “MAKE MINNESOTA FOR JESUS AGAIN!” and continues about as you’d probably expect, almost entirely in all capital letters. She has a Twitter account and posts to that also mostly in all-caps. (Yesterday she seemed to C&P the same post over and over, threatening Minnesota with fire and brimstone if we don’t vote for her. On her YouTube page she has a video of herself delivering a speech somewhere like a public park; she manages to distinguish herself as particularly unhinged by saying abortion is not OK even when the woman’s life is in danger (because she herself had pre-eclampsia and went into cardiac arrest during labor, and if you die your children and husband will carry on your legacy.)

Dalia Al-Aqidi

Dalia is endorsed by the GOP; she was also the Republican candidate two years ago. Like John, she tries to make herself look very moderate on her website, and she does a somewhat better job of keeping her Twitter focused on stuff that polls well for Republicans (mainly fraud). I sent her an e-mail asking her if her commitment to ending fraud would include passing laws like  HR 7852 (the “No Getting Rich in Congress Act”) which bans insider trading etc. for members of congress, and HR 8309 (the House version of Elizabeth Warren’s “Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act.”) It’s extremely rare that Republicans answer my e-mail messages but I’ll update if I’m wrong.

She probably learned some caution around Twitter when two years ago she had to fire her campaign manager at the time for tweeting that Israel should “carpet bomb” the area in Lebanon that Irish peacekeepers were refusing to leave “and then drop napalm on it.” Her Tweet saying that abortion should be illegal with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother is still out there, though.

She herself is Muslim and an immigrant, but she’s very willing to stand up for the rights of her fellow Republicans to be racist, nativist, and Islamophobic. (From her “Meet Dalia” page: “We must be free to express ourselves without the fear of online bullying; reprisals against our businesses or employment; or unjust accusations of racism, ‘Islamophobia,’ xenophobia, or misogyny.” Yes, she put scare-quotes around Islamophobia. I’m curious how she’d describe the experience of the Muslim Republicans in Texas who got told to their faces that they didn’t belong in the US.)

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026: Minnesota Governor & Lieutenant Governor

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This is one of those posts that feels low-stakes because let’s be honest here: Amy Klobuchar is going to win the DFL primary. However, she’s going to do it without my vote, so I do need to figure out who to vote for instead. (Editing to add: someone on Bluesky complained about people who thought Hillary Clinton had it in the bag and they could cast a protest vote. My friends, this is a primary. A primary is a fine time to cast a protest vote.)

On the DFL ballot:

Mohammad Wazwaz and Murad Alshloo
Po Vang and Mark Frascone
Ole “Viking” Savior and Ashley “Skol” Johnson
Bill E Gates J.R. and Leah Harris
Thomas Evenstad and Jason Haarsager
Kobey J Layne and Paul Ference
Amy Klobuchar and Ben Schierer

Mohammad Wazwaz and Murad Alshlool

Mohammad’s site offers a deeply generic platform (“Increase healthcare access in rural and underserved areas” is one bullet point. “Cut red tape for small business owners and startups across Minnesota.” Everything on his platform is like this. I wanted to joke about how it’s so generic he might have stolen it from Amy, but that’s unfair to Amy, who has some actual specific proposals on her site.)

One of my biggest concerns about Amy is a deep distrust that she’ll stand up for vulnerable groups such as trans people and immigrants. The bullet points on Mohammed’s site are as follows: “Protect immigrant families and create pathways to economic participation; Ensure equal access to education, healthcare, and legal services; Stand against discrimination in all its forms.” (He is not himself an immigrant, nor were his parents, per his website.)

His site says he’s a “business owner, community leader, and advocate for working families,” but with zero specifics (what kind of business does he own? what has he led people to accomplish? what sorts of advocacy has he done?) When I went hunting for more info I found a lot of Mohammed Wazwazes but I think they were all other people. Anyway: he’s a potential alternative to Amy but if the message you wish to send with your vote is “be more progressive” or “stand up for trans people,” Kobey Layne is a better alternative.

Po Vang and Mark Frascone

I’m genuinely not even sure how to characterize Po. He’s very anti-Israel and anti-ICE. One of his proposals is a “Super Anti-Ice Castle Law”: he wants to pass “ironclad Castle Doctrine laws so families and immigrants can legally defend their homes against Trump’s ICE raids and unlawful federal intrusions.” He self-identifies as a cripple and his site says “vote for the cripple, not for the retards” (he also uses this as a catchphrase on his social media). He’s a huge crypto fan and wants to give Minnesotans cryptocurrency “to start building real wealth.” Over on his Twitter he re-tweets a lot of absolutely unhinged right wing commentators and also posted identifying himself as MAHA (RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” pseudoscience/antivax movement) and accusing Israel of assassinating Charlie Kirk.

I’m not going to vote for him.

Ole “Viking” Savior and Ashley “Skol” Johnson

Ole has been a perennial candidate since the mid-1980s. Probably the high point of his career was in 2010, when he was allowed to briefly address the 2010 DFL State Convention and made a pitch for changing the mascot from a donkey to a unicorn. If you really want to know more about this guy you can find a whole lot of random stuff here (under “Additional Information”) but none of it is information about policy proposals or political views. I’m not going to vote for him.

Bill E Gates J.R. and Leah Harris

Bill E. Gates is not to be confused with the other, more famous Bill Gates, who is not currently running for governor of Minnesota. This Bill Gates describes himself as a centrist, has a 78-page PDF of his “governing platform” that manages to be filled with eye-glazing detail and yet offers zero specifics of stuff he wants to do, and his one endorsement is from Republican congressional candidate Angie Windhauser, who says, “The Holy Spirit whispered in my ear: ‘Loyal, Faithful Servant…there HE is, the next GOVERNOR of Minnesota!’ It is my Honor to support and Officially Endorse, Pastor Bill E. Gates, Jr. as the next Governor of Minnesota 2026. God Bless You Mightily!!!” (He put this on his website verbatim.) I don’t actually see anything on his website that indicates he’s a pastor; I kind of wonder if God got him mixed up with John Krhin (one of the Republican candidates for governor) while whispering in Angie’s ear. I’m not going to vote for him (honestly, if I wanted a moderate I’d probably be happy voting for Amy.)

Thomas Evenstad and Jason Haarsager

Both of the men on this ticket were convicted of serious sex offenses in the late 1990s / early 2000s. I would strongly suggest that if you’re considering voting for this ticket that you run Thomas’s name through the Minnesota Court Records System and do a little browsing. This post from Mercado Media is also worth reading.

Kobey J Layne and Paul Ference

Kobey is running as the progressive alternative to Amy and managed to mount enough of a challenge to her at the DFL convention that she was able to make a speech and force a written ballot (on which she got 28% of votes.) Kobey is trans, and I absolutely trust her more than Amy to protect trans rights, despite the fact that (this is the concern I’ve heard raised about her) she was a Republican as recently as 2022.

Kobey is young, and her political journey is one that a lot of young people make when they leave home (especially when they grew up in a small town) and learn new things about themselves and about the world. She has a master’s in public policy and worked as a legislative assistant; this is a fully symbolic vote and yet I also find it reassuring that in the improbable world where she somehow becomes governor, she’s not rolling up with zero idea of what she’s doing. Anyway, I’m going to vote for Kobey.

Edited to add: Kobey, on her website, explicitly pledges to stand behind the nominee.

Amy Klobuchar and Ben Schierer

I mean, realistically, Amy is going to win the primary, and I will take her as governor over anyone running as Republican, but I’m not going to vote for her in the primary, because she has been chronically disappointing on a huge number of points — centrally, her cheerful business-as-usual bullshit as Trump and his lackeys do their best to make it impossible to dislodge Republican rule while stripping us of fundamental rights.

The reason why progressive are surging around the country in primary races is that progressives are actually behaving like we’re facing an existential threat, rather than just fundraising off it.

I think I mentioned up above that her website has some specific proposals (more than Muhammed’s website). Here’s an example: “Make state services mobile-first. Make state services fully accessible on a phone – if a service can’t be completed on a phone, it isn’t moving at the speed Minnesotans expect.” This is, frankly, where Amy has always excelled and why she’s popular: she’s good at spotting low-hanging fruit and getting it in the basket. Ambitious: no. Will she protect trans Minnesotans and immigrants: I mean, she probably won’t attack those groups, making her better than the Republicans, but I am not optimistic about her fighting for vulnerable groups. Will she make everyone’s life better in some small but tangible ways: probably. Is that better than what Republicans will do: yes. And if we give her a DFL legislature that sends her good bills, I think she’ll probably sign them.

But she’s going to have to make it through the primary without me or my endorsement, I’m voting for Kobey Layne.

And now, a quick tour of the absolute horror show that is the Republican candidates.

John Krhin and Dennis Conn
Ross Nova and Kerry Busby
Loner Blue and Andrew Maass
Mike Lindell and Phillip C Parrish
Raul J Estrada and Joe Kincaid
Lisa Demuth and Ryan Wilson
Kendall Qualls and Brian Nicholson

John Krhin and Dennis Conn

John Krhin’s website looks like fan art for The Handmaid’s Tale done by someone who thinks Gilead is aspirational.

Ross Nova and Kerry Busby

There were two things I took away from browsing through Ross’s website. The first is that he was adopted internationally as a child, and yet didn’t become a citizen until after serving a tour in the US Army. That is deeply fucked up and his parents, who adopted internationally and yet didn’t take the steps to get him citizenship as a child, are deeply irresponsible people who failed him. (It worked out for Ross but a number of other people in his position have been deported. These days naturalization is automatic for adoptees, but this was not always the case.)

The second is that Ross has written 43 proposed bills, all (almost all?) of which have some sort of cutesy name that spells something out. This would be more entertaining and fun if it weren’t for the fact that the very first one proposes to ban from all streaming services anything that “Promotes or endorses transgender ideology or gender transition; Portrays or promotes homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or cross-dressing behavior in a positive
or normalizing manner; or Encourages rejection of biological sex or traditional male and female roles.” Fuck this guy, but also, he should have received his US citizenship as soon as his parents had completed the adoption and the way he frames it (“His military service also led to one of the proudest moments of his life: becoming a United States citizen”) is a scathing indictment of the people who brought him to North Dakota from Bulgaria, whether he intended it to be or not.

Loner Blue and Andrew Maass

No campaign website; the link just goes to Loner Blue’s Facebook page. For a quick rundown of why you shouldn’t vote for Loner, check out the post from two years ago and scroll down to the comments section.

Mike Lindell and Phillip C Parrish

Does anyone really need a rundown of the MyPillow guy? He’s a conspiracy theorist and fascist wannabe who has spent many years and a mountain of money promoting Trump’s election denial. He very well may win the primary because Minnesota Republicans love to lose and hate women and Black people, and Mike is the front runner who is a white man.

Raul J Estrada and Joe Kincaid

Raul is a weirdly old-school red-baiter who uses a lot of violent rhetoric on his site. (“ERADICATE Socialism at the root.” “We need people that are experienced in hitting back….and hitting back hard.”) Back in January he was trying to get people to go to the far-right rally that was allegedly going to march through Cedar-Riverside. I think this was the rally that turned into Jake Lang being pelted with water balloons as he attempted to hide in a city hall window well.

It’s frankly weird to me that Raul would buddy up with the sad wet Nazi, because he’s Native American. I know there are some extremely conservative Native folks but partnering with white supremacists seems like an odd choice.

Lisa Demuth and Ryan Wilson

Absolutely everyone knew that Lisa Demuth was the strongest contender vying for endorsement at the GOP State Convention, and yet they didn’t endorse her. Unlike Michele Tafoya she’s got unimpeachable anti-abortion and pro-gun credentials and actual legislative experience so I am forced to conclude that Minnesota’s Republicans hate women.

Lisa Demuth partnered with streamer and noted piece of shit Nick Shirley to gin up paranoia about Somali-run day cares in Minnesota, which gave Trump an excuse to send thousands of ICE agents to beat, harass, kidnap, and murder Minnesotans. Lisa defended Metro Surge and claimed it made Minnesota safer. So, you know: she can absolutely go fuck herself. But she was by far the most plausible candidate in the Republican field and they endorsed Kendall Qualls, who (like endorsed Senate candidate Adam Schwarze) is so obscure he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. (“Is that really fair to point out? Republicans HATE Wikipedia, they call it ‘Wokipedia.'” Okay, but neither of them are in “Grokipedia” either, I just checked.)

(It’s possible that by posting this, I will shame some Republican into putting together Wikipedia pages for Kendall and Adam, but as of June 28th, neither has one.)

Kendall Qualls and Brian Nicholson

Kendall Qualls is running on the “I’m different: unlike Lisa Demuth, I have no prior political experience” platform. (“For 20 years, we’ve repeated the same failed strategy: nominating candidates for governor drawn from the same pool—the Minnesota state legislature. The results speak for themselves.”) I would argue that Jeff Johnson (failed candidate in 2014 and 2018) was better known for being a Hennepin County Commissioner than a State Legislator, but I guess it is accurate that they were all legislators. (So was Tim Pawlenty, the last Republican who successfully got elected to the governorship.)

In his bio he says “For the past 15 years, I’ve worked to transform stagnant or declining business units in the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries by introducing transformative strategies.” Does that mean “laying people off”? Because that’s the sort of rhetoric that usually means “laying people off.” I looked him up on LinkedIn and he says his job from 2017-2020 was at “a disruptive AI startup company empowering cancer patients with actionable information to make more informed decisions about treatment options,” which definitely doesn’t not sound like “I laid people off.”

He’s also “founder and president” of a nonprofit called TakeCharge, which is an organization dedicated to the proposition that racism isn’t real and Black people aren’t getting married enough (which is the fault of the liberals). I should note, Kendall is Black. (So is Lisa Demuth. It’s nice to see the Minnesota GOP discovering the value of diversity.) It appears to have one employee other than Kendall. The held a gala in May and the photos are all framed so as not to show very much of the room but it does look like they got at least 18 people to come. It appears that this organization hosts Kendall’s blog (at least I’m assuming he’s the one who writes the blog posts) but I am genuinely uncertain what else they do.

Anyway, here’s the thing about all those former legislators that Kendall trash talks: they have literally any experience with policy, legislation, governance, etc. We did have a governor who arrived with none of that, and while I feel some nostalgic affection for Jesse Ventura, he was not very good at being a governor. I do not think running a business is the same thing as running a state, and the phrase “disruptive AI startup” gives me hives.

Also, his running mate was at the January 6th riot. (He says he left when things turned violent. Dude, you went to DC to try to overturn an election. You wanted to deny the majority of Americans the right to pick our president.)

I haven’t set up a fundraiser for this year yet but you can go buy my new book!

Primary Election 2026: US Senate

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The tl;dr here is that I am going to vote for Peggy Flanagan and would encourage others to do the same. I actually felt strongly enough about this one that I went to my caucus and got elected as a Senate District delegate and then went and sat through an uncontested Senate District Convention just so I could join a Peggy Flanagan caucus to maybe tip the balance into sending one more Peggy Flanagan delegate to the DFL State Convention. (And the DFL State Convention did in fact endorse Peggy Flanagan; in fact, Angie was trailing in delegates so badly that she just decided not to even go.)

On the DFL Primary Ballot:

Peggy Flanagan
Peter John Murgic
George H Kalberer
Kurt Michael Anderson
Angie Craig
Billy Nord

I’ll start with the people who are absolutely not going to win.

Peter John Murgic

Peter Murgic has no campaign website or any online presence I could find. There’s a FB that might be his but there’s nothing on it that’s publicly visible. I couldn’t find a LinkedIn. His candidate filing page has an e-mail address so I sent him a message asking if he had any views or goals he wished to share, and I got no response.

George H Kalberer

George Kalberer is a perennial candidate who ran last time as well. As was the case last time, all I found about him was a Facebook page he last posted to (publicly, at least) in 2015; it’s full of vitriolic anti-gay and anti-Muslim bigotry.

Kurt Michael Anderson

Kurt Anderson ran for City Council in 2021 on the “Broken Windows Policing 2.0” platform (I’m not unfairly characterizing his positions; that’s what he called it). His campaign site is a PDF and also an unsorted Dropbox you can dig through if you want. He’s an anti-porn, anti-gambling, pro-confiscatory-taxes-on-billionaires oddball.

Billy Nord

Billy Nord has a website with a single paragraph of policy positions: “Home closing costs and downpayment coverage for anyone 18 and over; tax breaks for new parents; free breakfast, lunch and take away dinner for all schoolchildren; free Narcan delivered to everyone; annual vacation credits for all retirees, our Golden Generation; ending the health insurance industry; and stopping grocery corporations from price-gouging.” He did a Reddit AMA where he answered some questions and expanded on other stuff he believes (kinda). He has zero previous political experience, even of the “work on someone else’s campaign” or “volunteer on a county board” variety.

So that’s the also-rans; on to the two real candidates:

Peggy Flanagan
Angie Craig

Peggy is currently the Lieutenant Governor; Angie Craig is the US House representative from the 2nd Congressional District.

I want to start by noting that I will cut a certain amount of slack for swing-district legislative and congressional representatives, when they’re running in their swing district. Angie flipped that seat red to blue, and while she’s often exasperating she’s a hell of a lot better to have in Congress than Jason Lewis (the Republican she replaced). If she were running again in CD 2, well, I don’t write about CD 2, but I wouldn’t be driving down to Northfield to doorknock for a primary challenger, you know? But my standards for statewide office are higher, especially as the state has gotten more blue, and Peggy is quite a bit more progressive than Angie Craig.

Angie Craig voted for the Laken Riley Act. (There was a candidate debate on the local PBS show Almanac and right off (the debate starts 20 minutes in) she got asked about this; her excuse was basically that at the time, it felt like there were other Democrats supporting it, which is a very weird defense given that absolutely no other Minnesota Democrats, including Notorious Moderate Amy Klobuchar, voted in favor.

Other ways in which she’s bad: AIPAC, on their candidate endorsements and fundraising page, enthusiastically notes that Angie “also backed a letter stating that no further conditions should be placed on security assistance to Israel and a resolution rejecting BDS.” In the Almanac debate, Angie claimed that AIPAC had not contributed a penny to her campaign, but that’s because enough Democrats now view AIPAC as utterly toxic that they’ve shifted fundraising strategies. They’re still funneling money to her, which she is still happily accepting.

Angie is also pro-crypto, at least according to the crypto industry. (Here’s their page on Peggy.)

Angie’s campaign has done their best to make hay with a donation that the Democratic Lieutenant Governor’s Association received from CoreCivic, a private prison contractor that also runs ICE detention facilities. This was a $25,000 donation, that was to the DLGA and not to Peggy, which was solicited by someone else before she was chair (though it came in after she became chair), received in 2024. Also, the biggest reason donations like this are a problem is if they work to influence the positions people take in office and on Peggy’s positions page (under Safety) she says she wants to ban private prisons at the federal level. (I looked on Angie’s site to see if she said anything about Israel. Not that I could find!) So basically my feeling on this is that if this was the worst thing Angie’s campaign was able to dig up, Peggy’s fundraising is about as sparkling clean as you can reasonably expect of a viable politician running for US Senate in 2026.

Peggy has endorsements from most of the Democrats I genuinely like (and the DFL) and a set of genuinely progressive policy proposals. She is someone I trust to stand up against fascism.

The biggest legitimate concern around Peggy is the Feeding Our Future scandal, not because it was her fault (it was not) but because it gives the Republicans an angle to attack her on. She pointed out in the Almanac interview that they will go after all the Democrats on this issue — but this is an issue where Angie has a little more distance and is thus a “safer” candidate.

That said, I’m absolutely not convinced that Angie is the safer candidate statewide. The top of the ticket is going to be Amy Klobuchar. Here in my metro-area bubble, I know almost nobody who finds Amy likeable or inspiring; at best, people are resigned to her. If the Senate candidate is similarly the equivalent of a lukewarm cheese pizza (in the sense that “people will probably grudgingly eat it if they’re hungry but no one’s going to be happy to see it on the table”) I think it’s going to be a lot harder to get progressive DFLers to turn out and vote for all the other DFL candidates on the ticket. From a purely pragmatic perspective, I think the DFL will benefit from having someone on the ballot who excites the progressives.

But also, I believe that Peggy will be a better Senator, and I believe that we can elect the better Senator in November. I am going to vote for Peggy Flanagan.

If you’re curious about the Republicans, or if you’re one of the five Republicans who reads my blog, here’s a quick summary of all the evil clowns in the evil clown car:

Adam Schwarze
Bob “Again” Carney Jr.
Ahmad R. (Raafat) Hassan
Patrick Munro
Joyce Lacey
Tom Weiler
Cynthia Gail
Michele Tafoya
Royce White

Adam Schwarze

Adam Schwarze is the endorsed Republican candidate for US Senate despite being so obscure he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page. (Quick tip for any dedicated Republicans: you could go fix that for him. He’s clearly notable enough for a Wikipedia page now.) He’s a former Marine/SEAL (he swapped from Marines to Navy because he wanted to be a SEAL) and his “about” page is almost entirely about his military service; I don’t think he has any prior political experience. His issues page says “TACKLING THE ISSUES THAT MATTER MOST” and then starts off by bashing trans people, which is sure a choice.

Anyway, I’m not sure whether the Republicans decided not to endorse Michele Tafoya because she’s pro-choice, because they hate women, or because they love to lose. Maybe it’s all three?

EDITED TO ADD: Sometime after I wrote this post I started e-mailing the Republicans running on “we have to stop fraud” to ask if they would support the Stop Insider Trading Act and the Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act. It occurred to me today to email Adam Schwarze and Michele Tafoya about this, and Adam wrote back immediately. “I would support both of those acts. I hate fraud, and corrupt politicians even more. I’m not in this for the ‘money or power’ and want to go after politicians that are. I have publicly stated I would fight to pass the ‘Stop Insider Trading Act,’ as well as the ‘SAVE America Act.’ Additionally, I have already publicly signed ‘Term Limits Pledge.'” I don’t know how he squares his hatred of corrupt politicians with his support for Donald Trump, but hey, at least he’s currently theoretically committed to the principle that elected officials are not above the law. If Michele Tafoya responds I’ll add her response as well.

Bob “Again” Carney Jr.

Bob is a perennial weirdo who no longer even bothers to maintain a website.

Ahmad R. (Raafat) Hassan

Ahmad Hassan is the dipshit who runs for Senate in Minnesota despite living in Texas. This year he’s switching things up by running in the Republican primary instead of the DFL primary.

Patrick Munro

Patrick’s big thing on his website is “the MAMA movement” (“Make Americans Makers Again”) and given this you’d think that his Facebook page would have a bunch of photos of things he himself has made, but no, it’s a mix of gun-humping and miscellaneous bigotry. He also ran two years ago.

Joyce Lacey

Joyce ran in 2024 and I did a bunch of digging on her at the time, which you can still read. She remains a flake.

Tom Weiler

Tom is another veteran (career Navy, retired early due to Parkinson’s.) His issues page is almost refreshingly boring in the sense that there are no unhinged anti-immigrant rants. The focus on his Facebook page is to convince people that he can totally win the primary even though he’s currently polling at 7% (all he needs is for ALL the undecideds to swing his way.) The focus of his Twitter is to tag other candidates to try to get them to talk to him instead of ignoring him completely. I’m not impressed. Well, I’m slightly impressed that Republicans as basically normal as Tom still exist. Given that Schwarze won the endorsement, I’m going to say that Tom probably had a chance at some point but at this point, he definitely does not.

Cynthia Gail

Cynthia ran in 2020. She has no campaign page but her personal Facebook shares a number of opinions, so I linked to it. She shares a lot of conspiracy theories. She also posted about being a frustrated delegate at the GOP State Convention; if I’m reading between the lines correctly, she was a Michele Tafoya supporter and was really mad at how Michele was treated, so instead of volunteering for Michele she got in the race to run against her. (Although maybe “When I realized how they treated another woman I was hurt for her and disgusted with the voting strategy. […] Did they ghost her because she can’t be bought?” was about Lisa Delmuth, who didn’t get endorsed for Governor.)

Michele Tafoya

Michele Tafoya is a former sportscaster who got into politics in 2022, in the sense of “doing political commentary/consulting and chairing someone’s campaign,” not in the sense of having held an elected office previously. None of the Republicans running have held elected office before. Nor have any of them (so far as I could find) done anything like volunteering on county commissions. The veterans (Adam, Patrick, and Tom) have at least done military service. Michele’s prior political experience seems to be that she chaired Kendall Quall’s gubernatorial campaign in 2022, only to have him explicitly rule her out as a potential running mate on the grounds that she was pro-choice. (That was in 2022, to be clear — in 2026 she wasn’t on the table as a running mate because she’s got her own race going.)

Anyway, despite what strikes me as a pretty thin political resume, she’s widely agreed to be the best and most electable of the Republican Senate candidates. The GOP failed to endorse her at their convention, though, because in addition to being at least somewhat pro-choice (she thinks abortion should be legal up to 12 weeks) she’s been in favor of red flag laws in the past. Regardless, I’m sure she would not let her views stand in the way of doing whatever Trump told her to do.

I was curious who all has endorsed her but her website doesn’t have an endorsements section.

Royce White

Royce White is virulently homophobic, misogynistic, and antisemitic. Naturally, he was the Republican candidate for US Senate in 2024. Per court testimony, he has violently assaulted his ex-wife and his son, and stalked his ex-wife, and she received an order of protection from him in February of this year (good for fifty years.) I fully expect thousands of Minnesotan Republicans to vote for him in August, but I think odds are low he’ll be the candidate this November.

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

Primary Election 2026

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Minnesota’s primary election will be on August 11th. Here are the races I’m planning to write about:

Statewide

US Senator
Governor/Lt. Governor of Minnesota
Attorney General
Secretary of State (maybe, if I have time: the DFL race is uncontested, only the Republicans have a primary.)
State Auditor (maybe, if I have time: the DFL race is uncontested, only the Republicans have a primary.)

(The overwhelming majority of people who read my blog are not Republicans. You have to pick one partisan primary to cast your vote in, and if you’re a DFLer you probably have enough of an investment in the Peggy vs. Angie race that you’re not going to cross over.)

Saint Paul (or a subset thereof)

US Representative District 4 (all of St. Paul)
Ramsey County Commissioner District 5 (part of St. Paul)
Minnesota Senate District 65 (part of St. Paul)
Minnesota House District 65B (part of St. Paul)

Minneapolis (or a subset thereof)

US Representative District 5 (all of Minneapolis)
Hennepin County Attorney (all of Minneapolis)
Minneapolis School Board At-Large (all of Minneapolis)
Hennepin County Commissioner District 3 (part of Minneapolis)
Hennepin County Commissioner District 2 (part of Minneapolis)
Minnesota Senate District 62 (part of Minneapolis)
Minnesota House District 60B (part of Minneapolis)

EDITED TO ADD THE LEGISLATIVE RACES.

I think that covers everything that’s on the primary ballot in the two cities but if you live in one of the two cities, check your address, and see something on your ballot that I didn’t mention, feel free to let me know. For nonpartisan races, there’s only a primary if more than 2 people filed to run for the office; the top two vote-getters will advance to the November general election.

P.S. I had a book come out in early June! Go buy a copy!


OBSTETRIX is out! & some upcoming events

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OBSTETRIX is out and now available at a bookstore near you! If you would like a signed copy, I signed stock at Dreamhaven, Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Next Chapter. If you would like a personalized signed copy, you can go order one right now from Uncle Hugo’s because I am signing there on Saturday, June 27th, from 2-3 p.m.

I am also going to be at Convergence! Here’s my schedule.

Thursday, 3:30 p.m.: Golems in Science Fiction
Hyatt 1, Lakeshore A
The golem is a well-known figure from Jewish folklore. How has this concept and metaphor influenced science fiction and artificial intelligence (androids, cyborgs, etc.) stories throughout history and today?
Participants: Jen Rogachevsky (mod), J.R. Dawson, Andrea Herman, Joe, Naomi Kritzer

Friday: Informal Hanging Out
I have no programming but I’m going to try to be the barcon I want to see at Convergence. I will be hanging out drinking overpriced soda in the Hyatt Regency hotel bar in the afternoon, probably starting around 2 p.m. If people show up and/or promise to show up later I might come back after dinner and hang out some more.

Saturday, 2 p.m.: Beyond Binary: Gender and Robots
Hyatt 2, Greenway HI
Why gender a robot? What purpose does it serve? Does it help us form attachments? What does that say about how we view/perform gender in our everyday human lives? We’ll address these questions and more as we explore our favorite cyber friends!
Participants: Jules (mod), Lee Brontide, Naomi Kritzer, Jamie Riedesel, TG

Saturday, 3:30 p.m.: Signing
Hyatt 1, Exhibit Hall Signing Table A
BRING YOUR OWN BOOKS. I’m not going to try to sell books at the con and I don’t know if there are any booksellers in the dealer’s room these days. (You can check, but no guarantees!) You can also drop by to just say hi.

Sunday, 12:30 p.m.: Reading
Hyatt 4, Great Lakes A1
I’m planning to read something I wrote this March.

Sunday, 2 p.m.: The Art of Disobedience
Hyatt 4, Lake Minnetonka
Art is often used to speak truth to power. Learn about various avenues and means of creating art as resistance. From sculpture and painting to performance art, we’ll discuss it all (or at least what we can in an hour)!
Participants: Naomi Kritzer (mod), Leslie Barlow, Kendrick Edmund Hogue, Lyda Morehouse

Also coming up: AN ELECTION. Yes, I’m going to write about the primary election. I’ll get started as soon as I’ve had some lunch.

OBSTETRIX Tour!

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Anyone can get a signed and personalized copy of Obstetrix by ordering from Dreamhaven Books or Uncle Hugo’s but maybe you want to get a copy signed in person? Or you want to say hi? Keep reading to find out some of the places you’ll be able to find me!

June 9th (release day). Friendship, Wisconsin, The Friendly Brew / Books On Main, 6 p.m. 500 Main St, Friendship, WI.

June 11 – June 14th. Scintillation Convention, Montréal, Quebec.

June 18. Moon Palace Books, Minneapolis. In conversation with John Chu, author of The Subtle Art of Folding Space, 6 p.m. 3032 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN. Masks required.

June 27th. Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore, Minneapolis. Signing. 2-3 p.m. 2716 E 31st St, Minneapolis, MN.

July 2nd – July 5th. Convergence, Minneapolis. My schedule includes a reading at Wordslinger’s Way on Sunday, 12:30-1:30 p.m., and some panels. Please feel free to say hi, or ask me to sign something at the end of any of my panels.

July 10th. Stacks Book Club Broadway, Tuscon, AZ. Conversation, Q&A, and signing, with a themed drink available for purchase (!) (super excited to find out what the themed drink is, honestly). 7-8:30 p.m. 2920 E. Broadway Blvd, Tuscon, AZ. (This is a new location for this bookstore that I think may have just opened.)

July 16. Content Books, Northfield, MN. Reading, Q&A, signing. 7-8:30 p.m. 314 Division St., Northfield, MN.

July 23 – 25 (actual schedule for me TBD). SDCC, San Diego, CA.

August 19th. Sidekick Coffee and Books, Iowa City, IA. 1310 1/2 Melrose Ave., Iowa City, IA (More details soon.)