Usually when I’m blogging about an election, there’s a lot of stuff on the ballot. But this spring we have a primary — Minnesota votes on March 5th, Super Tuesday — and the primary is the only thing on the ballot.
Barring anything really surprising like, for example, someone literally dropping dead, the election this November is going to be Biden vs. Trump. But even if the primary results are basically a foregone conclusion, you can still go vote for someone. There are in fact three primaries. You will have to pick one, but you can pick whichever party you want, and you can vote for anyone you want, including the woman who did not consent to be on the ballot and would like you to please not vote for her.
That said: you have to ask for the ballot for the party you would like to vote in, and this gets recorded, and the names of people who voted in each party’s primary get passed along to the party, so if you are a Democrat who votes in the Republican primary, bear in mind that you will get a lot of calls and texts from Republicans, and if you run for office as a Democrat, the fact that you voted in the Republican primary might be brought up. (“I was hoping to encourage Nikki Haley to stay in the race and do damage to Trump” is probably a motive a lot of people will be fine with, just know it might come up.)
ETA: someone pointed out to me that there’s also an attestation in the oath you sign when you pick up a ballot in the Presidential Primary that goes, “I further certify that I am in general agreement with the principles of the party for whose candidate I intend to vote.” (Via the Election Day Manual for election workers, here).
Legal Marijuana Party
The LMP is a bunch of clowns which will hopefully drop from major party status in Minnesota soon and fade into obscurity. But they’re holding a primary and you can vote in it if you want.
Krystal Gabel
Krystal Gabel is the Colorado woman who is on the ballot and did not actually consent to be. In an e-mail to the Star Tribune, the LMP leadership said that they had been “posting about this in our leadership group of Facebook, which Krystal is a part of” — who among us has not just quit reading a Facebook group rather than leaving it, only to find out later that we are now running for an office we don’t want? The e-mail went on: “Krystal is a party leader and all indications were that she was ready to be in the MN primary. We thought this was all worked out but by her request she has been withdrawn the candidates are now Edward Forchion, Rudy Reyes, Dennis Schuller, Vermin Supreme.” (She is still on the ballot because the ballots had been printed, and I assume the run-on sentence was in the original e-mail.)
Anyway, Krystal has a Wikipedia page that lists all the many, many things she has unsuccessfully run for and zero other qualifications. She also doesn’t want the job. I would not vote for Krystal.
Dennis Schuller
Dennis Schuller used to do a radio show or podcast or something with fellow weirdo Mickey Moore; you can watch a video in which they make basically the same joke over and over about the phrase “dirty hoe.”
You know something about the LMP, they really seem bound and determined to embody every possible stoner stereotype. I would not vote for Dennis.
In 2020, Edward Forchion legally changed his name to “NJweedman.com” and yet has not maintained a website at the URL NJWeedman.com. I submit this is all you really need to know about Edward Forchion and his qualifications for presidential office.
(I want to note for the record that I started this post all the way back in January, with no idea that Noted Internet Personality Will Stancil would jump into the race for 61A and make a related error. At least in Will’s case he did not change his name to a URL that he then failed to maintain ownership of.)
Rudy Reyes
There are multiple Rudy Reyeses but I’m guessing it’s this one that’s running. If he has a website, it was buried under stuff about the more-famous Rudy Reyes and I couldn’t find it. (I don’t think he has a website.) I did find his Twitter but he hasn’t posted to it since 2020.
Say what you will about his “mandatory toothbrushing” proposals, Vermin Supreme is a man who understands how to be a crackpot candidate. Over on Twitter you can find some great videos of him being a little weirdo and freaking the hell out of one of the Trumps.
I can understand being tempted by Vermin Supreme. (Weirdly, he was on the Democratic primary ballot in New Hampshire. I’m curious if he’s on the Republican ballot in any states, but not curious enough to try to figure that out.)
Republican Party
Donald Trump
Noted piece of shit Donald Trump is running again. There are probably people voting for him in the primary on the grounds that he’ll be easier for Joe Biden to beat than any of the people running against him, and I mean, I guess. If you’d consider voting for him in the general, get the fuck out of here, I don’t write my blog for you.
No longer actually running, he attempted to run as the Trumpiest guy in the race who wasn’t actually Trump. He not only has no prior elective office or civic experience, he didn’t even vote until 2020. He’s an “entrepreneur” which in this case means he runs a fucking hedge fund.
Also no longer running. You know who Ron DeSantis reminded me of kind of intensely? Norm Coleman at his smarmiest. Except somehow even less likeable.
Dropped out even before Iowa, he’d probably have been my pick of this group of assholes because while he’s unquestionably an asshole, he was at least aggressively running against Trump.
Back in 2016 I remember joking about that thousand-mile stare we saw on Christie at some point after he endorsed Trump — specifically I joked that he’d run into a time traveler in the bathroom right before this happened, who handed him a knife and said “YOU GOTTA DO IT CHRIS IT’S OUR ONLY CHANCE.” I’m still not entirely convinced that didn’t happen.
Still running as I type this (it’s now February 26th). I was basically expecting her to drop out after losing South Carolina, but she’s stayed in, and … good for her, I guess. The nicest thing I have to say about Nikki Haley is that she’s not Donald Trump. She’s the closest option around to a “normal Republican” in the sense that she hates trans people and wants to make abortion illegal, but she is not opposed to democracy as a concept and doesn’t say she wants to be a dictator. “In favor of democracy” really seems to me to be a lot lower than the lowest possible bar one might set for a potential president, but here we are.
Nikki Haley would be significantly harder for Joe Biden to beat, and yet I would have liked to see her win because that would suggest that a majority of Republican primary voters support democracy as a concept, which would mean better things for this country than a Trump victory. She is not going to win in 2024. Anyway, if you want to go to the polls on March 5th and fuck around with the Republican race, the useful feature of a vote for Nikki Haley is that it reinforces the story that Trump is an incredibly weak candidate, so weak that even at a point when he’s obviously winning, a huge number of people are turning out to vote for his last primary opponent standing.
The risk of voting for Nikki is, I guess, the slim potential of a come-from-behind victory and also setting her up for a run in 2028. I’m not great at gaming this stuff out. I guess I’ll leave you with: Nikki Haley, unlike most of her party, supports democracy; I would like to see the democracy-supporting minority of Republicans regain control of their party. But I would not like to see her as president. (Also, see above about how you will have to ask for a Republican primary ballot, this will get recorded, and you’ll get calls from Republicans asking for money.)
Democratic Party
A note before I get into this: I do not usually discuss anything Israel or Israel-adjacent on this blog, but at the moment, it’s the biggest reason that people who usually vote Democratic are furious at Biden.
There’s no obvious alternative candidate (Dean Phillips signed a ceasefire letter last week with a bunch of other congressional reps but this was after dodging the issue for months) but as a tactic for expressing anger over this, activists in Michigan organized people to vote “Uncommitted” (this is a vote to send uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention) as a protest specifically of Biden’s handling of Israel. This is a valid tactic: it gives you a visible measure of numbers, and it also, if it spreads as a tactic, has the potential to cause problems because the national Democratic party absolutely does not want a contested convention. (Editing to add a link to Sahan journal, which talks about the local movement with the same suggestion.)
Anyway, I think withholding your vote in the primary from a candidate who’s doing something you profoundly object to is a totally reasonable way to do a protest vote and is also far and away the most likely to keep the coverage on message. (Whereas a sudden bump for, say, Marianne Williamson would be, “so are people pro-Gazan, or anti-vax?” And Dean would be “is his message on Biden’s age resonating?”)
Anyway, on to the Democrats on the ballot.
I have in many ways been pleasantly surprised by Biden. For example, his SAVE income-based student loan repayment plan is actually pretty great and demonstrates a lot about how he’s approached being stonewalled by Republicans; he comes up with another route to what he’s trying to do.
I’m less happy with his handling of Israel’s war on Gaza, although I’d be even less happy with Trump. (Trump has been largely avoiding taking a meaningful stance in the hopes of getting votes from leftists, apparently. I hope no one considering their options in November thinks that the trigger-happy virulent Islamophobe being in office would have improved this situation.)
Eban Cambridge
Eban Cambridge does not have a campaign website, but digging around I found some odds and ends. He has a LinkedIn where he says, “I’m seeking a position as a Full Stack Web Developer. As a person who loves to learn new things, I think it started when I earned merit badges working towards becoming an Eagle Scout.” I also found a “Lesser-Known Candidates Forum” where he also starts out by talking about how he was an Eagle Scout. My dude, you are at least 35 years old; you are too old to brag about having been an Eagle Scout. If you want to see him talk, skip to 25:22 (the thing about that forum is, there are a bunch of people in it who are not on the ballot in MN, so you need to skip over a lot.)
He actually kind of grew on me as I watched, because he’s so sincere about his heartfelt belief that his ideas (a tax cut on overtime pay specifically, and a new tax on corporations that buy up housing) are very ordinary common sense and should be obvious to implement (“these things would pass without a filibuster,” he assures us, then says we should blow up the filibuster anyway). He also said to look him up at “votecambridge24” on Instagram. It’s actually votecambridge2024 and at the time I first looked there was nothing in the account. He has since added a video clip (from the forum, above).
When they got asked about Gaza at the minor candidate event, he said we should end Apartheid in Palestine. He may in fact be the most straightforwardly anti-our-current-Israel-policy candidate of the Democratic primary candidates. Unfortunately, he is so obscure that if you’re trying to send a message with your primary ballot, no one will know that’s why you voted for him.
Jason Palmer has an actual campaign website, complete with posed publicity shots of himself and a campaign ad (which had been viewed 327 times when I first looked it up and, about a month later, has now been viewed 704 times). (The ad starts out with his voice saying “We started with a beautiful vision of what we could be” over video of a group of football players praying in a locker room, which I’ll be honest, that does not fill me with conviction that he’s the sort of progressive leader he wants us to imagine him.)
His central idea is “conscious capitalism,” which he doesn’t explain very well. (He was in the same Obscure Candidates Forum as Eban and he didn’t explain it particularly well there, either.) His background involves being some sort of tech exec (I guess) and working for an investment firm (he says he “has served in executive and leadership positions at multiple organizations, including Microsoft, Kaplan Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation” — here’s his LinkedIn, which shows him as a Board Member for 8 gazillion places plus having actual jobs at a few.)
Per his website, he’s pro-choice, pro-gun-control, pro-reparations for descendants of slavery (though he’s kind of vague about what form that might take) and yet his overall vibe is “what if Mitt Romney ran as a Democrat.” (Possibly because he’s a rich white middle aged guy?) There is almost no information on his foreign policy ideas, but when I asked him about that on Twitter he directed me to a video interview he did. He starts talking about Israel about 13 minutes in: says he agrees with Bernie Sanders, and the US should stop funding Netanyahu’s government unless they declares a ceasefire and support a two-state solution. However, he doesn’t want to say this is genocide and he opposes South Africa’s case in the International Court (“I am not actually a huge fan of the International Court”). At 31:33 he gets asked for more details about his Ukraine solution. He wants to start with a ceasefire, then negotiations, and if Putin will end the war in exchange for Crimea he thinks Ukraine should go for that (and we should pressure them to do so).
Anyway: he’s better organized and more coherent than a lot of the other fringe candidates, to the point that I feel like, he could run for the Maryland state legislature from a suburban district and have a genuine shot at a seat. The weirdest thing about him is that he’s instead pouring a fair amount of money into a completely quixotic run for the presidency. It’s not like he’s got some grand singular thing he’s running on, like … whichever bland white guy it was in 2020 who ran on All Global Warming All The Time (who had held elected office before, unlike this guy). He’s a middle-aged white guy and a business-friendly centrist Democrat. If that’s what you want, Dean Phillips has some actual political experience.
Here’s the nicest thing I have to say about Marianne Williamson: in a sea of completely unqualified dudes, it’s nice to see that at least one completely unqualified woman is putting herself forward as well. I also like what she has to say about Israel. (“I understand Israel’s need to slay the monster. But this military action is only feeding it. There was never a military solution here. And there is not a military solution now.”)
Marianne Williamson is an author of several New Agey books and an enthusiastic seller of New Agey ideas. She insists she’s not an antivaxxer (but she has absolutely promoted the garbage theory that vaccines cause autism and described mandatory vaccination as “Orwellian”) and people who talk negatively about her online tend to get swarmed by aggressive Marianne stans who want to insist that everything you’ve ever heard (about her AIDS charity telling people that they were dying because they didn’t love themselves enough, about her saying that people get cancer because of negative thoughts, etc.) is just cherry-picked out-of-context quotes being used to keep a good woman down, or whatever.
What I would recommend, if you want a better grounding on her weird ideas with more context, is the Maintenance Phase podcast episode on her diet book (and on her, more generally). At that link you can find both an hour-long episode you can listen to, or if you’d prefer, a transcript.
Marianne’s weird ideas boil down to a somewhat incoherent rendition of a set of philosophies that circulate and recirculate under various labels, but which I first encountered when I did a college term paper on Christian Science (which is one iteration of them): all people exist as perfect children of God (or perfect manifestations of the universal consciousness or whatever), and all illness (or pain or misfortune) is an illusion. Some versions take a more absolutist line on this, where you’re discouraged from seeking medical care (because that simply reinforced the illusion you should be shedding) and that’s honestly more coherent than Marianne’s philosophies, which try to keep the “all suffering is an illusion” idea but also embrace the idea that of course you shouldn’t depend on that if you get cancer, you should go ahead and get cancer treatment while also trying to say that you probably got cancer because of negative thoughts (“Cancer and AIDS and other serious illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream”).
One of the other iterations of this set of ideas is the “Law of Attraction” garbage. At its heart, this philosophy is really gross, victim-blaming bullshit. It’s saying, if you’re poor, it’s because you thought the wrong thoughts, and if you’re sick, it’s because you brought it on yourself. People sometimes boil it down to, “we’d all be healthier if we were under less stress,” which is true, not problematic, and not what she’s saying.
I think that some of Marianne’s weirdness rolls off people because we all know people like her, most of whom are similarly inconsistent because if they weren’t, they’d lose all their friends. You know? If you have a friend who read The Secret but would never in a million years say to you, “your misfortunes are because you thought the wrong thoughts,” if their spouting of the bullshit from that book is kept to relatively innocuous stuff, it’s easy to get kind of inured to it.
But we’re talking about a candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
Marianne has also never held elected office. I have long believed that the US Presidency is not an appropriate entry-level elective job, and nothing about Donald Trump’s presidency made me rethink my beliefs about this.
Dean has held elected office! (Unlike literally everyone else presenting themselves as an alternative to Biden.)
Unfortunately, he’s basically a more conservative version of Biden.
Also younger — which is good — but has much less name recognition.
Look, if you’re reading this, you probably live in Minnesota, you’re literally from Dean’s state, so either you know what he stands for, or you should think about the fact that you don’t and consider that maybe that demonstrates part of the problem here.
In early January, I specifically went looking for any statements he’s made on Israel and Gaza and here’s what I found: a fairly anodyne statement from November, calling for the release of hostages, followed by a ceasefire with UN peacekeepers, and a Tweet saying “the mutual bloodshed must end.” He has since signed a ceasefire letter, but realistically: he would not be any better on this than Biden. (Also, if you vote for him, the message that will get through is, “Biden is old.”)
In that obscure candidate forum, he was reasonably well-spoken and used the tag line “Make America dream again,” and mostly pulled it off with the power of sincerity.
His website does not mention abortion rights at all, which is an odd omission for a Democratic candidate. I asked him on Twitter what his stance was, and he said, “in short, I am a pro-choice advocate” and linked me to a candidate questionnaire he’d completed. In the actual questionnaire, he starts his response on abortion with “I believe in striking a balance that respects both the rights of women and the value of life.” He goes on to talk about providing contraception (great) and support for women who would prefer to keep their pregnancy but don’t have resources they need (great) but also says “I also recognize the importance of safeguarding the sanctity of life, particularly as pregnancy progresses” and really does not unpack what he means there. (He has since written a longer statement, which he provided to someone else who asked him on Twitter about his position.)
But, I have to admit the most eye-catching bit of his platform came from his Facebook page, where he says he supports nuclear power and explains, “If nuclear power is deemed safe enough for destructive purposes, then it’s safe enough for GOOD!”
I am actually a supporter of nuclear power (is it ideal, no, but is climate change more urgent than someone disregarding the “THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR” sign in a couple of centuries, yes) but that … that is hilarious. I’m sorry, Frankie. “If we can use it to annihilate cities than it’s safe enough to use for good purposes” is not a good argument.
When I searched for the candidate, I found a news story from 2017 about a Gabriel Cornejo who wound up on the hook for $65,000 in child support for a kid that was not actually his and that he had no relationship with. I am fairly certain that this is a different Gabriel Cornejo. (He doesn’t look like the other one and also lives in Nevada, not Texas.)
Gabriel’s most interesting policy position is that he’s pro-UBI (everyone should get a $1000/month “freedom dividend.”) His website had basically nothing about foreign policy, so I asked him on Twitter, and he said, “Yes, I’ll be posting soon. FYI, this attack on the post in Jordan with 3 affects me directly. I’m not running for fun, these are real world ramifications for myself and the average Americans 🇺🇸 like me.” (Hopefully that flag emoji comes through on WordPress.) That was on January 30th. It took him several weeks but he did get a statement up, which you can read here: https://www.gabe2024.com/policies (under Israel and Palestine).
Cenk Uygur
Cenk is one of the “Young Turks,” which I am only vaguely familiar with and associate heavily with misogynistic bullshit. (I couldn’t remember why. Maybe this was it?) Anyway, this is all beside the point because Cenk is literally constitutionally ineligible to serve as US President; he’s an immigrant.
I disagree with this particular constitutional clause, but it’s going to require an amendment to change, it is absolutely in there. Cenk was blocked from a bunch of ballots on the grounds he’s ineligible to serve, but Minnesota’s supreme court has ruled (on a case about Trump, not Cenk) that there’s no law requiring primary candidates to be eligible for office, and that applies to Cenk as well. So he’s on our primary ballot.
This guy is just fucking awful.
If you want, you can go peruse this page. (He pulled it down, but it’s archived here.) It includes: gross ableist ranting; open antisemitism against Dean Phillips, Kamala Harris, and Marianne WIlliamson; racism and misogyny against Nikki Haley; misogyny against Kamala Harris; the claim that Kamala Harris is Biden’s house slave; and gross, aggressive Nativist sentiments. And that’s ALL ON ONE PAGE. Further digging around his site turned up a deep hatred for homeless people and a plan to build a water pipeline down from Canada (curious why he thinks Canada would go along with this, but not curious enough to e-mail him.)
Uncommitted
“Uncommitted” is not a candidate per se, but an option you can vote for on each party’s primary ballot. What it’s actually saying is, “send someone to the national convention, which officially picks a candidate, who is not committed to support one of these specific candidates.” Since Joe Biden will definitely get enough national convention delegates to become the nominee, this is a symbolic vote, but it’s a symbolic vote that this year has a really clear and well-understood meaning.
And that’s it! Now, when you look at the ballot and think “who the hell are these people?” you’ll have an answer.
As of 2/29, I am planning to vote for Uncommitted.
Will Tell Stories For Food 
I appreciate your thoroughness.
If Vermin Supreme is running as a Republican anywhere, Ballotpedia doesn’t mention it–but they don’t mention that he’s running as a Legal Marijuana candidate in Minnesota, so that doesn’t prove anything.
If you would like an entertaining read … from my daughter.
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