MINNEAPOLIS WARD 6 CITY COUNCIL (NOT A PRIMARY)

1. Abdirizak Bihi
2. Saciido Shaie
3. Alex PalaciosAlthough I have not re-visited this one and Saciido Shaie did not register a campaign committee and Abdirizak Bihi did not file a campaign finance report. The candidates who were actually following the rules on that were Alex Palacios, Jamal Osman, and AJ Awed. Despite him having not initially made my top three, I might switch to AJ Awed at this point if I lived in the district.

MINNEAPOLIS SCHOOL BOARD

At-Large — Michael Dueñes
District 4 — Adriana Cerillo but possibly Mims in the general, undecided

US SENATE

Tina Smith, but if you want a further-to-the-left option in the primary you can vote for Paula Overby. If you’re voting in the Republican party primary for some reason, totally vote for Bob “Again” Carney.

US HOUSE

CD 4 — Betty McCollum
CD 5 — Ilhan Omar

MN SENATE

59 — Bobby Joe Champion
62 — Omar Fateh
65 — Laverne McCartney Knighton

MN HOUSE

59B — Esther Agbaje
63A — Jim Davnie
63B — Emma Greenman
66B — Athena Hollins
67A — Couldn’t decide, both candidates look awesome ETA TO ADD: a comment on my post says that Murphy actually dropped out, so Thompson it is.

FYI, I spent July mostly focused on revising my novel, CHAOS ON CATNET, which is turned into my editor and incidentally available for pre-order on Amazon. This meant I didn’t get some of these write-ups done in time to be useful, unfortunately. But also, these days I usually try to run some sort of fundraiser and I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about what to point people to.

But, a couple of days ago I got an update on the Save Uncle Hugo’s fundraiser, which included some updates from owner Don Blyly. I’ve been meaning to write about this in more detail, because Don has always been unusually forthcoming about the ups and downs of owning a small business, and the stuff he’s run into just trying to get basic stuff like a demolition permit (his store was burned to the ground but he will need to pay someone to scoop out and haul the rubble, for which he needs a permit) has been nightmarish, the kind of absolute bullshit that makes me want to scream, “does the city of Minneapolis want to transform the Lake Street corridor into a mix of checks-cashed-here places and chain stores? Is that their goal?” (It’s not just Don running into this; Ruhel Islam, the owner of Gandhi Mahal, has spoken about some of the obstacles too.)

Anyway: Uncle Hugo’s is one of my favorite stores on the planet, so much so that in my fictional Future Minneapolis in Chaos on CatNet (which takes place approximately 10 years in the future), I gave them a beautiful new storefront on Lake Street with a sculpture of a rocket ship on the front of the building. I think Don wants to rebuild if he possibly can. I would encourage my so-enthusiastic-they-wish-to-send-money-somewhere readers to please contribute to the Uncle Hugo’s rebuilding fund or buy one of their t-shirts or sweatshirts. You can also, as it happens, order a signed copy of Catfishing on CatNet from him — he’s running a mail-order business from his house at the moment.