Monthly Archives: October 2023

Election 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 11

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This is another frustrating race but at least it’ll be quick to write up.

On the ballot:

Emily Koski (DFL-endorsed incumbent)
Gabrielle Prosser (Socialist Workers Party)

Emily Koski is a conservative lackey of the mayor — I really liked this take on her time in office, which observes how she centers and pays deference to the concerns of business owners but not poor and marginalized Minneapolis residents. Gabrielle Prosser is from the Socialist Worker’s Party, which offers zero actionable plans when they run for office. She and the other SWP candidate responded to the Star Trib’s candidate questionnaire together and you can read it on their site (they have exactly the same answers) and it’s full of responses like, “There is no solution to the crisis of homelessness under capitalism.” (Compare that to Democratic Socialist Robin Wonsley’s housing page.)

I have some good friends who live in Ward 11 so I’d probably write one of them in. What a depressing set of options. ETA: I would write in Theresa Dolata, who according to a friend who left a comment, is considering a run next time. (See comments section.)

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!)

Election 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 10

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This one is so straightforward (there’s only one candidate I would consider voting for, and spoiler, it’s Aisha Chughtai) and yet so messy (there’s somehow a lot to say about several of her opponents, for all of those who want more than “omg just vote for Aisha Chughtai.”)

On the ballot:

Aisha Chughtai (DFL-endorsed, Incumbent)
Nasri Warsame (DFL, but he’s no longer allowed to even try to get endorsed by them)
Bruce Dachis (DFL)
Greg Kline (Abolish Bike Lanes) (not making that up, that’s what he listed as his party)

Again, the tl;dr here is that you should vote for Aisha Chughtai if you’re in Ward 10.

Greg Kline (Abolish Bike Lanes)

Greg doesn’t have a website. I did find his Facebook and his LinkedIn, and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that he’s a Boomer who shared an anti-masking meme back in 2021. Also, if you think bike lanes should be abolished, you’re a bad person.

Bruce Dachis (DFL)

Bruce was in the news in 2021 because, you remember that lawsuit complaining about how confusing the public safety city question was, filed by Don and Sondra Samuels along with some other dude? He was the other dude. There were some questions raised (on Twitter) at the time about whether he actually lived in Minneapolis; allegedly he lives in this weird little metal box on top of the building where his office is. (I’m just going to say, there is no way he actually lives in that weird little metal box with his wife and stepdaughter, but they may have some other residence that’s legitimately in the ward. He and his wife got married in April and I found their wedding registry, there is NO WAY all those towels would even fit in that weird little box.)

On his website, he describes himself as a small business owner. Whenever someone calls themself a small business owner I try to figure out what sort of business they own, exactly? When I found Bruce’s LinkedIn and saw that it listed him as President of “Asset Accumulation Corporation” from 1984 to the present, I thought, “oh, someone made a fake LinkedIn for him as a joke,” but I dug a little further, and no: the name of his company literally is Asset Accumulation Corporation. That feels like the sort of corporation the villain runs in a movie based on a DC comic? Anyway apparently he does real-estate-related stuff. On the plus side, while he’s been a landlord (and answered questions about it on Lifehacker a while back) I didn’t find any tenants on Twitter talking about what an absolutely godawful landlord he is, so either he’s better at being a landlord than Scott Graham in Ward 7, or his tenants aren’t on Twitter.

His campaign vision centers cops and policing, says he will “never defund” (for the record, the Minneapolis Police Department has not been defunded) and mentions law enforcement again under homelessness (“We must also give law enforcement the resources they need to stop the flow on fentanyl into our communities” — what resources does he imagine will do this? he doesn’t say). He doesn’t mention transit anywhere, although under small businesses he says “we must make it easier for small businesses to operate by […] listening to small business owners before making key decisions” which I assume means “we must provide parking, endless free parking, and never consider removing parking for any reason ever,” because he sure seems like a Save Our Parking sort of guy.

ETA: He went on a right-wing radio show hosted by the MyPillow guy’s lawyer. Do not be fooled into thinking this guy is a Democrat.

Nasri Warsame (DFL, but he’s no longer allowed to even try to get endorsed by them)

So this guy wants to be a cop but hired as his campaign manager someone who worked as a consultant for Feeding Our Future. He starts his website by saying “actions speak louder than words” but this was the guy whose supporters started a brawl during the DFL convention while Aisha Chughtai was trying to make her speech.

I’m going to start by talking about the convention incident. Back in 2016, I wrote a “political conventions for beginners” piece aimed at people who might consider going to theirs for the first time. Going to a convention normally means that in exchange for giving up a perfectly good Saturday to go to a meeting somewhere like a high school auditorium, you get a somewhat outsized piece of political influence (maybe). Normally, they’re meetings, they’re kind of tedious, and they operate by a set of rules as specific and formal as a sports tournament. If you want to compete in a sports tournament, you are expected to learn the rules, and follow them. If you show up at a tennis tournament and want to kick soccer balls into the net instead of playing tennis, you sure will disrupt the tournament, and then you’ll be ejected and banned.

Aisha Chughtai and her supporters did absolutely nothing wrong at the convention. They got up on the stage so Aisha could make a speech; bringing a bunch of supporters up to stand behind you during this speech is completely standard. She went first because of a coin flip, Nasri Warsame was going to get his turn shortly and could have brought all his supporters up if he wanted; everything she did here was totally normal.

The other thing about a convention is that it’s very common for delegates to show up not knowing what to do or how it works, and it’s totally on the candidates and their campaigns to help them understand what to do. My advice in my “conventions for beginners” essay is, if you’re new to this, put on your chosen candidate’s t-shirt (it’s how they find you!), identify the people running the floor (they’ll have clipboards), and just follow instructions. Warsame had no idea himself what was going on (according to his excuse-laden apology at an event last week) but at the bare minimum he could have gotten up and signaled to his supporters to sit back down and chill the hell out when people first started to get wound up. He knew perfectly well it was going to be his turn next to speak! In his pseudo-apology, he said that if he’d known he would be held responsible for the actions of his supporters, he’d have come prepared to take action. Dude, of course you will be held responsible for the actions of your supporters. Especially when you were standing right there and opted to just stand around! What the hell do you even think “leadership” means?

In and of itself this would be a reason to not support him. The fact that “wants to be a cop” is central to how he presents himself: another absolute dealbreaker. But I did a bunch of research on his campaign manager back in May, and I might as well share that, too. I think Warsame did fire Abshir Omar eventually, but he was still working for Warsame’s campaign in June, and the Reformer’s reporting on his involvement with Feeding Our Future was a year ago, it was publicly known before Warsame hired him.

Abshir consulted for Feeding Our Future; he participated in a protest when the state first tried to cut off funds to the organization; and he ran a nonprofit, Tasho, that had six sites where they allegedly fed 5,000 kids per day. When I went down this rabbit hole in May, I discovered that the Center for the American Experiment had gotten the addresses of the sites. (The CAE is the absolute goddamn worst but I’m guessing they did not make this information up.) There are a number of addresses that I’m frankly skeptical of but the most eyebrow-raising is 924 3rd Ave NE. This is the address of the office for an income-restricted affordable housing development for seniors or people with disabilities. There are 24 units. Abshir Omar claimed to be feeding 500 children per day from this location. And Nasri Warsame hired him to run his campaign.

Don’t vote for this guy!

Aisha Chughtai (DFL-endorsed, Incumbent)

I really like Aisha! She is a solid, reliable progressive voice and vote on the City Council. She has been a supporter of transit, an advocate for pedestrian and biker safety, and a voice for police accountability and tenants’ rights. I would absolutely vote to re-elect Aisha if I lived in Ward 10.

(I am feeling bad about providing such a brief case for the incumbents I like, but I need to get through a lot of stuff and I’m feeling really, really behind right now.)

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!)

Elections 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 9

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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.

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!)

Elections 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 7

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OK: I’m going to level with you. I am not going to research this one anywhere near as thoroughly as I researched Ward 6, because this one, thank goodness, is frankly pretty straightforward and honestly, anyone who is willing to spend two minutes looking at the candidate websites doesn’t need my advice on this race anyway.

The candidates:

Scott Graham
Katie Cashman
Kenneth Foxworth

Kenneth Foxworth

Kenneth Foxworth is on the ballot and has a website, but it’s the kind of website where the “latest news” link takes you to a page that says “blog” and has nothing else. He is on the ballot but he’s not really in the race.

Scott Graham

Scott Graham is endorsed by an amazing selection of groups and individuals I don’t like, including retiring Council Member Lisa Goodman herself but also Martha Holton Dimick, Tom Hoch, and Mark Globus; he’s also the All of Mpls pick (All of Mpls is a group aligned with the law-and-order faction of the city government: they love cops, they love landlords, and they love parking spots.) He also made a campaign ad all about how he’s a former Eagle Scout. This guy is in his 60s: if your campaign ad highlights an achievement from the 1970s, it suggests your more recent achievements wouldn’t play well, and given that he’s a landlord with unhappy tenants, he might be right about that. (Link goes to Twitter; @happyifydesign says, “He was my extremely incompetent and delinquent landlord and if his ability to responsibly manage properties is any indication…”)

OK, honestly, it’s probably worth highlighting some of the other stuff happifydesign has mentioned about Scott. From that tweet (posted in November 2021, well before he decided to run for office): “One triplex I lived, the downstairs neighbors moved out because their toilet froze solid. We spent multiple winters trying to get the heat fixed, but the landlord did nothing until we went to the City–then he fixed it (+ other violations) and sold the building and kicked us out.” Further down the thread: “Two of us ended up needing stitches due to injuries from his poorly kept unit (things not affixed safely). He wouldn’t remove the dead squirrel from inside the wall, nor did he care about the rapidly increasing population of carpenter ants, nor the ice dams leaking into the house.” And an even earlier thread: “Housing inspections had a long list of things for him to fix. He did so in a way that was absolutely punitive to us–like tearing down our three season porch with no notice whatsoever one day while I was working from home, with teens who hooked a jeep up to it with chains. Then rebuilt it EXTREMELY slowly with our wall a gaping hole with a tarp the whole time. I think it was open from April to October? I remember light snow blowing in at the end. He was just spectacularly unfit to be a landlord, based on his (lack of) respect for the structural integrity of buildings and his extreme defensiveness triggered by any requests from tenants. … We ran into a neighbor we’d never met at a party who was shocked to hear people lived in our building–they thought it had been condemned. We also found a note with phone number on the door from a handyman offering to help finish tearing the house down. … He mixed concrete in my roommate’s vintage catherine holm bowls–and left them dirty with concrete in the sink, which is how she figured it out. The three different units of the building were instructed to send our rent to three different entities.”

Maybe you live in Ward 7 and like Lisa Goodman because of her constituent services. I don’t think you’re going to get this level of service from Scott.

ETA: John Edwards of WedgeLive followed up on this and interviewed the tenant. You can watch that interview here, or you can listen to it as a podcast here. He also has some additional information on his website, including an article Scott wrote back in 2001 about buying “derelict properties in prime neighborhoods” and rehabbing them.

Here’s my favorite bit from that interview.

John: Tell me, how did the missing wall come about?
Julia: When we were trying to get heat in the apartment, Scott was just evasive and saying things that weren’t turning into action, and it was really unclear if we would get any heat. The other roommates who’d been there longer had suggestions, like maybe if we can’t get the heat replaced the landlord [could] cover part of the electric so that we can run space heaters. We’d done things like putting the plastic — this is the long answer — putting the plastic over all the windows. Scott was not responsive and we ended up trying to figure out what else we could do. We talked to the city and found out that one option to really put pressure on was to look into putting rent into escrow or starting an inspection process. […] So the city did an inspection which revealed additional violations. Including the three-season porch on the front which led to the wall coming off.
John: So the thing you didn’t even complain about — the city shows up to inspect the thing you were complaining about, finds more problems, and that turns into a big repair job.
Julia: I mean repair would really be an understatement. It was a demolition job. […]
John: So you had a big gaping hole in the side of the house, is that accurate?
Julia: There were tarps.

You know, the thing that really strikes me about the whole story is how much Scott’s tenants tried to work with him. How much they didn’t want to go to the city. How much they put up with. And this is so! common! among renters! And she goes on to say that she thinks Scott mistreated them because they’d been “the squeaky wheel” because they pushed him repeatedly on not having any heat and squirrels living in the walls and the roof leaking and being left with a tarp covering the front of the house for multiple months.

Katie Cashman

Katie Cashman is endorsed by Faith in Minnesota (a left-wing progressive group, if you’re unfamiliar with them), OutFront, some environmental groups, and then also a whole bunch of people I like a lot, including Jim Davnie, Tom Olsen, and Becky Alper. She’s also the Minneapolis for the Many candidate (Minneapolis for the Many is a PAC created to support candidates who support things like police accountability and tenant’s rights.)

She comes at housing questions from the perspective of a renter, rather than a landlord. While both Katie and Scott talk about building more affordable housing, Katie talks about funding free legal counsel for tenants facing evictions. She also offers up specifics for dealing with homelessness like housing-first approaches and offering co-ed and gender-neutral shelter spaces.

She commits to a bunch of very specific goals for constituent service (forums before budget meetings, office hours for constituents, neighborhood association visits, newsletters…) (Scott just says he’ll provide “the highest level of service,” he doesn’t say what that means. Someone should ask him whether he believes he provides the highest level of service to his tenants.)

Fundamentally, though, this is one of those races where the endorsements make it really easy. I would absolutely vote for Katie Cashman if i lived in Ward 7.

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!)