This is always the ward I find the hardest to sort out, and it’s because there’s always a bunch of stuff happening in Somali, which I do not speak. I do my best, but even more than in other wards, there is stuff happening in the race that I just do not know about.
And even just on the English-language side, this is also an incredibly messy race. The tl;dr is that I think people should vote for Kayseh Magan.
Edited 2/2024: Hello, MN District 49A voters searching for information on Tiger Worku! Apparently he moved to Minnetonka and is s now running for legislature in your district. You can absolutely do better. I do not recommend supporting him for DFL endorsement, or in the primary. Details below!
Hey Naomi where are you, early voting is about to start, hello?
I had proofs to review (for my book that’s coming out in November) and then just as I was thinking “I really need to get focused on the election guide” I had a really nasty fall during which I did not hit my head but may have mildly concussed myself anyway so I limited screen time for a few days. Anyway, I’m going to give myself permission not to watch the Ward 5 candidate forum given that I knew even before I sat down to research this who I was going to endorse (Jeremiah Ellison) and frankly my post from two years ago gives a detailed rundown on why Victor Martinez is a nightmare of a candidate that no one should vote for.
On the ballot in Ward 5:
Jeremiah Ellison (DFL, incumbent) Victor Martinez (claims on the ballot to be DFL, is absolutely full of shit, he is a fucking Republican and a Trump supporter, goddammit)https://phillip4the5thorg.godaddysites.com/ Phillip “OMac” Peterson (DFL)
Finding Phillip’s website was kind of a journey: he didn’t put it on his form, it didn’t show up when I googled, but when I found his Instagram there was an image of some of his lit with a QR code, which I used to bring up his website on my phone. Hilariously, the title of the website is phillip4the5th.org, and that showed up on my phone, but when I typed it in on my laptop, that brings up nothing because his actual URL is phillip4the5thorg.godaddysites.com.
His proposals include evicting the farmer’s market to replace it with a neighborhood of tiny homes built in shipping containers that people can rent with an option to buy. (Look, if you’re going to put up a bunch of tiny homes, just freaking use single-wide trailers, because at least they have plumbing. Most of the ultra-cheap tiny homes do not. Single wide trailer homes are also significantly more accessible to anyone with mobility issues because they don’t do things like put your bed at the top of a ladder to make space for your fridge, and they cost about the same as he thinks we’d spend on shipping container homes.) He also wants to heat all highway entrances and exits to make winter driving safer. Rather than going down the rabbit hole of trying to provide you all with a cost estimate, let me just say: this would be very expensive. His solution to policing is to sit down and talk (“we’re going to sit down, and we’re going to figure it completely out there will be no cutting corners.”)
I do not think he’d be particularly good at the job, although he’d be less of a disaster than Victor because that bar is somewhere underground.
Victor Martinez is a Trumpy Republican who puts on a nice-guy face while running in Minneapolis and pretending to be a DFLer. Do not vote for this guy. If you want to know what he actually thinks (vs. what he finds it politic to share with Minneapolis voters), his Twitter troll account is still up (here’s my thread with screenshots of him admitting it’s him): he uses it to complain about the universal student lunch program, student debt relief, affirmative action, and trans people. He particularly likes harassing State Rep Leigh Finke.
There were a couple of people this year who pretty blatantly tried to set up fraudulent delegates for the endorsing conventions. Victor had an enormous number of delegates who had all registered from the same IP address, and he had “accidentally” thrown out the paper forms so he could not provide stuff like their signatures. After the DFL disqualified those delegates, Martinez posted the home address and phone number of the local party chair; after getting literal death threats from his supporters, she was granted a restraining order against Martinez. One of the people Martinez sent after the DFL chair was a man with a history of violence against women. (Apologies for the links to Twitter. I’m trying to strike a balance between “providing documentation” and “not filling up my page with upsetting screenshots of stuff like Victor harassing a trans woman.”)
What else. Well, he also puts down renters by saying they’re irresponsible and uninvolved in their communities. He was established as a prolifer back in 2021 but if you’re wondering, he’s also a prolifer. He’s proud to be endorsed by the Police Federation. And (this is hilarious, honestly) he blocked me on Facebook from his campaign website. He would be absolutely terrible in this job and under no circumstances should he be given any more power than he already has.
I like Jeremiah and I think he’s done a good job. He’s a reliable progressive vote on the council, which in the last two years has meant a lot of stuff like “helped pass the minimum wage for Uber/Lyft drivers, only to have that vetoed by Jacob.”
Jeremiah has pushed for police accountability and worked to implement and expand stuff like mental health teams to respond to mental health crises (instead of cops). He’s gotten money invested in affordable housing. He holds open office hours and town halls. I would unhesitatingly vote for Jeremiah Ellison if I lived in Ward 5.
This was a very close race last time. If you live in Ward 5, please please vote.
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
Leslie Davis thinks that COVID is a hoax, that EMF waves degrade oxygen in the atmosphere, and that both masks and vaccines are bad. When he ran in 2021 he at least had a few positions specific to local governance but I couldn’t find any this year.
Marvina Haynes has a website I would describe as “half-assed.” (For example, she used a website template with a “book online” link and the link is still active although if you click it it tells you that there’s nothing to book right now.) Her positions are as follows: she wants “stable rent and stable property taxes” (so I assume that means that unlike LaTrisha, she’s in favor of rent control, although honestly I’m not sure); she wants the city to fix potholes; and she “will advocate for the safety and security of all community members and their families.” That’s a thoroughly content-free statement: everyone running wants the “safety and security of all community members and their families,” what differs is what they think the solutions are that will provide that. (Leslie, for example, thinks that getting rid of vaccines is key. Don’t vote for Leslie.) In particular, there’s really no clarity here on whether she thinks the solution is spending more money on cops.
Which is weird, honestly, because when I looked her up on Facebook, I found a page devoted pretty single-mindedly to getting the conviction of her brother, Marvin Haynes, overturned. Unicorn Riot did a series on Marvin’s conviction, and it’s worth reading, but let me just note that much like the Innocence Project, I am convinced that he’s not the one who did the crime. Given that her brother’s false conviction, and prison reform more generally, are so central to her life, I find it really startling that there is nothing about this on her campaign website. (This was so odd I sent her an e-mail at her campaign address asking her if the FB page was her, or if there was another Marvina Haynes? She did not reply, but did link to her campaign page from her FB page a few days later.)
Anyway, I am on her side regarding her brother, and I hope that Mary Moriarty, someone I supported in part because of her commitment to reconsidering bad past convictions, steps up here. But nothing about her campaign web page makes me think she’s even spent much time thinking about what the job of City Council rep entails.
If I were worried about the antivax guy or the Republican beating LaTrisha I’d vote for her as a lesser evil, but since I’m not worried about that, I would probably either cast a protest vote for Marvina just to express an objection to LaTrisha or I’d stay home.
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
In the “Progress” section of his website, something went wrong with the display and the “Homelessness” section looked like this when I pulled it up:
This struck me as humorously ironic, since what it suggests is, “I want to make a vague statement of goodwill towards homeless people, while demonstrably not really giving much of a shit.” (Which, you know … maybe that’s not irony. Maybe that’s just accurate?) To be fair, though, I use Firefox, and it might look OK in Chrome, so I pulled it up in Chrome for another look….
FYI, when I selected the text in Chrome, the rest of it came along, so that sentence is supposed to finish, “typically been responsible for addressing homelessness. If we are going to continue this progress, we need to work together toward solutions in good faith.” Even with all the text there, this is a real nothing of a statement, and when you say that homeless encampments pose “serious public and individual health risks” without acknowledging that the biggest health risk homelessness poses is to the people who are living in Minneapolis without homes, you’re being pretty goddamn shameless about the extent to which you think you serve the wealthy people who view homeless people as the central problem, rather than a lack of housing.
Also, under public safety, there’s this: “Public safety reform should be guided by the lived experience of officers and citizens, not just ideology. That’s why I make frequent visits to the First Precinct and listen to officers discuss their experiences on the job. We must reckon with the fact that we are down over 300 officers from pre-2019 levels, and that recruiting more officers cannot be fixed immediately, even with additional funding. Rebuilding the force will help restore community policing, reduce response times, and improve police-community relations. But there is so much more that we must do.” When you say, “Public safety reform should be guided by the lived experience of officers and citizens” and then talk at length and in detail about how much time you’ve spent listening to officers and have zero examples of listening to the people who are policed by those officers and all the rest of your rhetoric is about how hard things are for police officers and there’s not even any lip service about stuff like accountability: you have made your position and priorities really, really clear! This is why I do not like or trust you, Michael Rainville.
Marcus Mills is endorsed by the Green party, former City Council representatives Cam Gordon and Jeremy Schroeder, and former Mayoral candidate Sheila Nezhad. He has reasonably substantial local policy experience (an energy advisory committee, a community engagement commission, chair of the neighborhood association land use and development committee). On his issues page he talks about wanting participatory budgeting, solar panels on schools, and tenant protections (among other things — basically, his goals suggest that he’d be more aligned with the progressive wing of the City Council than Michael Rainville is.)
He also mentions playing D&D in his bio. I feel like there’s a whole set of jokes to be made here about the ways in which D&D does and doesn’t prepare you for serving on a City Council (on one hand: you’ve proved you’re capable of paying attention through long meetings. On the other hand: at a City Council meeting you don’t ever get to solve problems by casting Chain Lightning.)
His Facebook page has no new posts since June; his Events page turns up no events. So I am not sure how actively he’s campaigning. But he’ll be on the ballot, and I would absolutely vote for him.
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
She is unopposed. If you live in Ward 2, Robin Wonsley is going to continue to be your City Council representative. You still have an election, but the only person who will appear on your ballot is Robin. (I like her fine and would vote for her.)
(“Why are you even posting this, Naomi?” “Because when I don’t include the districts with only one candidate, people e-mail me and ask when I’m going to write about that district. Also, this took me five minutes and gave me a nice sense that I’m making fast progress on getting these up.”)
This is one of the very straightforward ones to write up, because Elliott Payne, the incumbent, has been a solid progressive on the City Council, and I like him a lot. He is endorsed by the DFL (and by lots of progressive groups, various local unions, etc.)
Edwin Fruit is running with the Socialist Worker party, and like all their candidates, he links to “The Militant” as his website, which means you can go there and read about their take on the Argentine elections but not about Edwin’s priorities for Minneapolis. Edwin has also run for office in Iowa (for US House in 2002) and in Seattle (for City Council in 2013, as a write-in). He was party to a lawsuit in Maryland in 1989 challenging filing fees for ballot access. I would not vote for him for anything he’s run for, but that’s fine, because Elliott is great.
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
Welcome to election season, and, as always, apologies to the people who followed me for my science fiction rather than my election blog (I feel less bad about inflicting science fiction on the people who follow me for election blogging).
Minneapolis and Saint Paul both have City Council races. Saint Paul also has a School Board At-Large race with four open seats.
In Minneapolis, there’s a race in every ward except Ward 2 — Robin Wonsley is running unopposed. There are open seats in Ward 7 and Ward 12. (Which is to say, the current incumbent is not running again.)
If you live in St. Paul and it feels like we just did this, well, we last had City Council races in 2019, you’re just suffering from the “what even is time?” problem where March of 2020 lasted for 847 days. Or else you’re remembering that we had a mayoral race in 2021. Our City Council and mayoral races have been out of sync either forever or for a good long time. The St. Paul candidates are all running for a four-year term.
Saint Paul also has a City Question regarding the implementation of a 1% sales tax to fund repairs to streets and parks. I don’t think Minneapolis has any City Questions this year.
I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.
Will Tell Stories For Food 