Monthly Archives: January 2020

Election 2020: Special Election, State Representative District 60A

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Oh hey, 60A people, you have an election on Tuesday. Your options:

Sydney Jordan (DFL)
Marty Super (Legal Marijuana Now party)

Sydney is a Democrat and seems fine. Marty hasn’t bothered to set up a website. He does seem to have a personal Facebook with a number of world-readable posts. I visited, and found out that he likes Bernie, weed, and Bernie’s stance on weed.

(Edited to add: I would vote for Sydney, in case that wasn’t clear from “seems fine.”)

If you had an opinion about this race, I hope you voted in the primary.

There’s going to be another special election this year, for the Minneapolis City Council, Ward 6, because Abdi Warsame is resigning to take over leading the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. I’ll write about that once it actually starts happening. And I’m going to write about the Presidential Primary, but not until after New Hampshire votes.

CATFISHING ON CATNET news

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Catfishing on CatNet came out in November from Tor Teen. If you don’t yet have a copy, you can order it from Amazon or BN.com or Uncle Hugo‘s (which may have signed copies) or Dreamhaven (ditto) or buy at your own local independent bookstore. It is also available as an audiobook! And you can read an excerpt from it here.

Last week I found out it was a finalist for the Edgar Award in the YA category. This was incredibly exciting for a whole lot of reasons — I’m familiar with the Edgar Awards (because they are the top award in the mystery genre) but it’s not an award I had ever thought I might be honored with.

There are awards where they call you up or e-mail you, where you know before the announcement but can’t tell anyone. (The Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards both let you know in advance, and then you have to sit on the info.) I found out about the Edgar Awards from Twitter. Specifically, I got tagged in a congratulatory Tweet, and my mental process went something like:

  1. Oh, I’m being congratulated with a group of other writers, probably for a nice review.
  2. Wait, this link is talking about the Edgar Awards.
  3. HOLY SHIT.

And then a few days later I found out that Catfishing on CatNet is also a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards, which are more specifically local but also a really big deal.

Anyway, I’m really excited!

For fans of my short fiction: I also had a short story come out this month in Clarkesworld, “Monster.”

Election 2020: Special Primary, State Representative District 60A (analysis)

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District 60A, which is mostly Northeast Minneapolis but also includes a little bit of Southeast, is having an election on January 21st. (Not sure if you live in 60A? You can find out here.) To be clear: January 21st is the DFL Primary, and it’s also almost certainly where the next representative for 60A will be decided. There is a general election on February 4th; the only non-DFLer running is Marty Super of Legal Marijuana Now.

Whoever wins will serve in the upcoming legislative session, then (presumably) run for re-election in November of 2020 for a full two-year term.

This is a really rough time of year to be running a special election. People tend to be busy and distracted in December; it’s also likely to be cold/snowy/sleeting/just a terrible time of year to go out and door-knock. There are also eleven candidates.

Here’s who’s running, with links to websites. 

Piyali Nath Dalal
Mohamed Issa Barre
Sydney Jordan
Saciido Shaie
Zachary Wefel
Susan Whitaker
Aaron Neumann
Jessica Intermill
Aswar Rahman
Amal Ibrahim
Sonia Neculescu

Other useful information you can find online:

  • John Edwards of WedgeLive sent out a questionnaire to the candidates, and most responded; you can find all their answers here.
  • The DFL held a candidate forum on January 11th. Everyone attended except for Mohamed Barre. You can view it on Facebook: Part One and Part Two. Part One, you probably want to skip about 20 minutes in to get to the actual forum. There are some sound issues early on but they got straightened out pretty quickly.
  • Another forum was held on January 13th. It’s also on Facebook; you can watch it here. All eleven candidates participated.
  • The local DFL also requested that the candidates all fill out a questionnaire with some detailed questions about their beliefs and policy ideas. Everyone other than Mohamed Barre completed the questionnaire, and you can find their answers on the Senate District 60 DFL site.

My analysis (but first, an analysis of how I’m analyzing people) below the cut.

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