I’m going to do Ward 8, but they have a LWV-sponsored forum coming up really soon and I want to watch it, so for now I’m skipping it to do 9.

There are two candidates on the ballot:

Jason Chavez (DFL, incumbent)
Daniel Orban (Independent)

Daniel Orban (Independent)

Daniel put his campaign website on Github, presumably because he already had a website there (he’s a programmer and CS teacher). He has no social media that I could find, campaign or otherwise, and lists no endorsements.

As far as I could determine, he also has no experience with policy or city issues beyond living in the city (part time since March, when his family bought a “20 acre off-grid Amish hobby farm” in Lanesboro) — I found no evidence that he has ever served on a committee or a task force or gone to a neighborhood group meeting. On his website he describes his involvement with the city as follows: “In Ward 9, my family and I eat, sleep, work, play, ride bikes, attend church, and go to school.”

His website is both rambling and vague: he’ll say things like “Let’s bring back the ancient virtues of good will, courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to empower those in need” but it’s not even clear if he’s trying to talk there about the office he’s running for, or policing. (It’s under the heading “Restore Trust in Public Servants.”) Things I was able to suss out: he opposes rent control; he wants to crack down on drug dealing (“we need to stop the flow of drugs at every step of the distribution chain all the way back to the source”) and force addicted people into treatment (“Key to the solution is to invest in and incentivize and/or mandate drug treatment.”) When he talks about protecting the environment, he means a city beautification program, painting over graffiti and picking up trash; he does not mention the climate.

Anyway: I get a conservative vibe, but even aside from that, he has no experience around city policy and it shows (in that his website is incredibly vague about actual policies he thinks the city should enact).

Jason Chavez (DFL, incumbent)

I like Jason. He’s been a reliable progressive voice and vote on the City Council and has an impressive list of accomplishments. I would absolutely vote to re-elect Jason if I lived in Ward 9.

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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.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students. (Previously: a new Art teacher at Jenny Lind elementary who needs to stock her classroom with supplies — funded!)