Kim Ellison is almost certainly going to make it through to the general election (she’s DFL-endorsed and the incumbent) so rather than deciding which of these three I most want to see win, I’m going to decide which of the other two I most want to see advance. (I have a general bias towards Minneapolis school board incumbents, because it’s a hard job, very few people stick with it, and the lack of institutional memory is often a problem. However, I’m not a huge fan of Kim Ellison.)
Elena Condos ran in 2022 for the seat in District 5; her website this time is identical to her website last time, and she doesn’t have a campaign Facebook or Twitter or in general seem to be doing much. (She does seem to have a personal Facebook but she’s shared nothing about the race that I saw.)
Shayla Owodunni became interested in the job by volunteering in the schools, and got so engaged in it that she set up a YouTube channel where she reads picture books and then started digging into the district finances and concluded that her background in corporate finance and accountability could actually be really useful. She’s got a campaign Facebook up and held a meet-and-greet; a teacher on Twitter who went to meet her described her as “lovely” and “the real deal.”
Anyway, despite the corny running gardening joke on her website (she’s very into plants so she starts out with “seeds of change” and that theme never lets up!) I like her. For the primary, this is an easy choice: Shayla Owodunni.
I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but I get a lot of satisfaction by pointing people at fundraiser that I can then see fund. I may mix things up later but for now, if you’d like to make a donation to encourage my work, please send some money to this young adult raising money for top surgery. (Ly is someone I know personally; they were a good friend of my kids when they were younger, and they were possibly the very first person I ever knew who used they/them pronouns. They grew up into an activist and work for TIGERRS, a support organization for trans and intersex young people.)
Every MN House district is up for vote this year in November, but most of them don’t have a primary happening right now. There’s exactly one contested DFL primary for a House seat in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and it’s this one, 61A.
There are three candidates running to be the DFL candidate in November, and — important note — this is not an instant-runoff ballot because those aren’t a thing in state races, only city ones. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
There will be no Republican on the ballot for this seat in November, but there will be a Green party candidate, Toya López, so I will write about the race again after the primary. (When I wrote about the upcoming primaries back in June, she was not going to be on the ballot, but she appealed and got on.)
tl;dr I like both Katie and Isabel, but I would vote for Katie because I think she’s got a better shot at beating Will.
Like a lot of very (or even moderately) online people, I know Will first as a very annoying person on Twitter. He decided at some point (two years ago? I’m not sure) to see whether being very very loud and persistent in defense of Biden’s economic successes could change the narrative. Will has accomplished something real here, which is that he’s managed to become one of those people who is so annoying on social media that I will want to argue against points I actually agree with.
I really dislike some of his favorite tactics, including endless endless quote-tweeting of utterly reprehensible stuff in order to dunk on it.
It’s not actually an own, in 2024, to quote something blatantly racist and suggest that the person should just own up to their blatant racism. At least, it’s not a particularly effective own, especially on Twitter.
Will has also used a lot of over-the-top violent rhetoric that’s common on Twitter and not particularly acceptable in most other contexts, like “someone should hold you underwater for five to ten minutes,” “go guzzle bleach,” and “you really are deranged. you really should consider the bleach option,” all of these to people who are operating on the same side of the political spectrum as Will and not one of the Nazis. (You can see a collection of these as screen shots here if you’re on Bluesky and here whether or not you’re signed in on Bluesky.)
Will’s habit of picking fights with Nazis on Twitter rebounded partly on Will and partly on his opponents, Katie Jones and Isabel Rolfes. When Will declared his candidacy, some of the Nazis got a website up faster than Will did (it showed up if you searched for a website, and was just plausible enough that a lot of people thought it was real) and mobbed Katie’s Twitter with almost indescribable levels of vileness. (They framed this as “support” for Will.) Isabel did not get the Twitter backlash but got violent and specific threats that were so disturbing that her campaign hired security to protect Isabel’s safety. (This is not normally something people need in a legislative primary race in Minneapolis.)
At the candidate forum earlier this month, social media got brought up, along with how people would communicate with constituents. Will said he loved doorknocking and he was going to keep doorknocking and completely ignored the part of the question about social media. Katie Jones said, “What we say on social media has consequences and we have to take that responsibility seriously,” Isabel Rolfes cosigned this, and Will just … ignored the question. He has said (on Twitter) that if he gets elected he will have less time for Twitter, but he’s currently campaigning (and has legitimately knocked a ton of doors!) and somehow continues to find time for Twitter.
Some other notes on Will: he was endorsed early by Lisa Goodman (who I can’t stand) and the Senior DFL Caucus (still the most conservative politically viable group in Minneapolis), and his endorsements list is just a remarkable collection of elderly white people. Lisa Goodman retired last year, but his other political endorsements are people who retired in 2003, 1978, 1993, 1997, 1982, and 2000. Oh, plus (Republican donor!) Tom Hoch.
If Will had never used Twitter, I would look at his endorsements and still say that 61A should choose someone else. But I dislike his use of Twitter so much that I’m not sure a better set of endorsements would help him win me over. There are two good candidates in this race and I want one of them to win.
So: Katie or Isabel?
They both have their strengths and their weaknesses, and — crucially — this is not a race that has instant runoff. You don’t get a backup choice. And what I’ve been worrying about since the convention adjourned with no endorsement is that Katie and Isabel will split the progressive vote, Will will take the centrists, and he’ll win. So while I’m going to talk about the things that make Katie and Isabel distinctive, in the end, my focus is on who I think has a better shot at beating Will.
Katie Jones previously ran for the Ward 10 City Council seat (and lost to Aisha Chughtai — who has now endorsed her for the legislative seat). John Edwards (WedgeLive) described her as “intellectually relentless, methodical, focused, and exactly the person I trust to attack a complicated problem.” She’s an engineer, and takes an engineer’s approach to policy writing and problem solving.
Her endorsements include Faith in Minnesota (the endorsements arm of ISAIAH). I’ll note that last year, when my City Council seat in St. Paul was open, I had two candidates running with a shot at winning, Saura Jost and Isaac Russell. Pre-DFL convention, they presented themselves as similarly progressive and I went to the convention planning to support Isaac. Faith in Minnesota endorsed Saura, giving her a first-ballot victory at the convention. Isaac did not drop out, and spent the rest of the campaign aligning himself with the most centrist-y centrists around. I went from being an Isaac supporter to a Saura doorknocker, and this left me with a lot of confidence in Faith in Minnesota’s ability to ferret out secret centrists.
Which is good, because her endorsements also include RT Rybak (ugh) and Ember Reichgott Junge (UGH) (addendum: Katie’s campaign wanted to let me know that Katie did not seek out Ember’s endorsement, this was just an e-mail from Ember to her neighbors about who she was planning to vote for). But she’s also endorsed by Keith Ellison; Aisha Chughtai and Katie Cashman from the City Council; Tom Olson and Becky Alper from the Park Board; and Irene Fernando and Marion Greene from the Hennepin County Board.
I watched the League of Women Voters’ Candidate Forum and noted down a couple of points that spoke well for Katie: in response to a question about fraud and waste, she said that we needed to bring it to light even when things go wrong within our own party. (She’s right. I know how much it sucks when it feels like we’re handing the Republicans one more stick to beat us with, but the alternative is Chicago.) She talked up multigenerational housing as a priority, and in a discussion of street safety, brought up the complete bullshit that is Metro Mobility. (I mean, it’s not bullshit that we have a system for providing rides to the disabled; it’s bullshit that you have to have a two-hour window for pickup and dropoff.)
I mentioned her comments about “responsibility” on social media but I also appreciated her observation (in the context of communication with constituents) that most people actually do not want to hear from their elected officials every day. When we have something to say to them, a problem we want them to solve or a policy we want them to change, we want to be able to reach them and feel heard and get a response (ideally, a solution! but if not, at least some sympathy) and the rest of the time we kind of want them to do their thing and not bug us.
Isabel has been a legislative assistant since 2022 and has a ton of support from the legislators she’s worked with — she’s endorsed by 19 House Reps and 2 State Senators. And they exemplify something I’ve noticed, which is that people who work with Isabel tend to speak very highly of her. Someone from Minneapolis Twitter commented, “I love Isabel and support her completely. She went out of her way to help me get a hearing for a bill I was working on because she believed in it. She also knows how to campaign in swing districts, something your legislators from safe districts do every 2 years. Seriously, I’ve seen how she activates and works like hell for things she believes in. That bill is a law now and without her quick advocacy it would have died in committee. Now ableism and disability justice training taught by a disabled trainer is a part of teacher licensure.”
Some moments in the forum that I wrote down from Isabel: when asked about streets, she immediately talked about pedestrian safety and about cleaning up after storms. Also, when Education came up, she brought up the legislature taking steps to fix our completely inadequate mandates around sex ed. On housing, she talked about wanting to pass tax credits for converting office space into apartments.
For me, it really comes down to who’s more likely to beat Will, and after checking and having friends check for yard signs (Katie was outdoing Isabel, but there just weren’t enough overall to make it remotely conclusive) and looking at their lists of campaign events (also inconclusive) I decided to hold off until campaign finance information rolled in this week. You can see a summary of it in this spreadsheet created by Josh Martin. Will has raised the most ($93,165) — given that he does have a substantial Twitter fanbase from outside the state, I don’t find that surprising (exasperating, but not surprising). Katie Jones raised $70,254, and Isabel Rolfes raised $42,109.
Money is an awkward proxy for campaign strength, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate and at this point, it’s the best I’ve got. (I’ll note that “Katie has a better shot at beating Will” is also something I’ve heard from several friends who live in the district and have a clearer sense of the politics there than I do.)
I really like both Isabel and Katie, but I would vote for Katie Jones.
I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but I get a lot of satisfaction by pointing people at fundraiser that I can then see fund. I may mix things up later but for now, if you’d like to make a donation to encourage my work, please send some money to this young adult raising money for top surgery. (Ly is someone I know personally; they were a good friend of my kids when they were younger, and they were possibly the very first person I ever knew who used they/them pronouns. They grew up into an activist and work for TIGERRS, a support organization for trans and intersex young people.)
This is the Minneapolis (with some surrounding suburbs) seat currently held by Ilhan Omar. There is a primary on the DFL side, which you should plan to vote in if you live in this district. The Republican candidate (Dalia Al-Aqidi) is unopposed (not that it particularly matters. This is the bluest of blue districts. Although feel free to encourage your Republican relatives to donate heavily to Dalia’s campaign rather than anywhere their donations might matter.)
In the DFL primary, Don Samuels is once again challenging Ilhan Omar. (There are also two other candidates running but this is very definitely a race between Don and Ilhan. The tl;dr: vote for Ilhan.)
Nate also ran in 2022, and had an actual website that year, with the impressive URL, “www.candidatenateschluter5thdistrictcandidateminneapolis.com.” My comment two years ago was that Nate liked football metaphors, was susceptible to scams, and expressed some gross anti-immigrant sentiments. That was all based on his website, which no longer exists. His campaign Facebook (linked above) has not been updated since 2022. Don’t vote for him.
Abena A. McKenzie
Literally the only information I found on Abena was a Facebook post from her cousin (“This beautiful lady is my big cousin Abena Mckenzie she is running for congress so people let’s give her our support vote for Abena Mckenzie Mn congress”) that linked to a Tiktok video in which someone (I assume Abena) smiles but says nothing. Like not just “nothing of substance,” nothing at all. The Tiktok account seems to have mainly vacation pictures. Her campaign affidavit lists no campaign address, so I’m honestly not sure how she even got on the ballot (you’re allowed to keep your residence address private but in that case, a campaign address is required.) Searching up her e-mail contact address got me to a business website in Yuma, California, and I’m honestly not sure she lives in Minnesota. It’s a mystery. Don’t vote for her.
In a reasonable world, if you took a child on a bike outing and one of the children wound up drowning because you said “sure, you can go wading in the Mississippi River” even though you could not swim, you might not withdraw permanently from public life, but you certainly would not run for office again. But here we are.
When Don ran two years ago I made a list of his decades of buffoonery and I will recap here.
In 2005, he explained that his family (he’s from Jamaica) had a leg up on everyone else because they were descended from house slaves rather than field slaves. (“The reason that my family got a leg up on the people in our village in Jamaica is that we were in the big house. We saw homework done. They saw books read. They saw the piano lessons. And that’s why my wife and I say, ‘we want our house to be the big house on our block.’ And we’re going to open it up to every kid on our block.”)
He also sat for an interview with the late Sarah Janacek and in his discussion of Katrina’s aftermath he said the following: “Those were dark faces on those women, almost bizarrely unblended. They looked like they were from Haiti or Africa. This is part of the unspoken evolution of race. We cannot seem to talk about the reality that lighter- skinned black people are more likely to escape poverty.” The “unspoken evolution” line made me flinch because I don’t think he was just talking here about the damage done by colorism, especially given his comments, also in 2005, about being descended from mixed-race people. (Don’s actual quote emphasized that he was descended from “mulatto men.”)
In 2012, he had an op-ed published in which he described confronting someone for public urination, who then stole Don’s phone, only Don used the Find my IPhone feature plus the services of the cops to retrieve it and have the thief arrested, at which point he delivered a long lecture to the thief. (Two notes about this. First, I have known a ton of people who’ve had Apple products stolen, have known exactly where they are thanks to Find My iPhone, and usually have had zero luck getting cops to help them get their devices back. Second, there are multiple spots in this story that had a distinct “AND THEN EVERYONE CLAPPED” vibe.)
Don was a Vikings stadium supporter and after voting to approve it in 2013 (overriding the law that was supposed to require a municipal referendum) he had this comment about being surprised to be handed “an envelope with … a couple grand” from trade unions. This was at least less corrupt than his giddy comments made it sound. Overriding the will of the people to build a giant sports palace was, and remains, bullshit.
In 2014, he called the cops on a hot dog giveaway being run by a neighborhood organization trying to encourage people to vote. He said he thought they were selling the hot dogs illegally. They had a large sign saying “Free Hot Dogs” and were doing this right outside their organization’s office, which Don had been to. (There’s a video of the conversation between the organizers and the cop that includes the cop saying in a slightly confused tone, “I’m here … for the grilling of the food,” which clarifies that Don literally called 911 over this.) (In 2021, he claimed in a Facebook thread about this that there had been repeated grilling incidents and it was a fire hazard.)
The drowning happened in 2020 and the details are here. Don can’t swim. When two of the little boys lost their footing and were pulled away by the current, Don’s wife Sondra was the only one who could go after them, and one of the children drowned. This happened in the summer of 2020 and was a heartbreaking, awful accident.
Which Don joked aboutwhen he ran in 2022. (In response to someone talking about the incident and the incredible hubris involved in running for office a a year and a half after a child died because of your poor judgment, Don tweeted, “Can’t swim but can govern.”)
When I first saw that tweet, I honestly just assumed that “donsamuels49” was a satirical troll with extremely bad taste. I was absolutely flabbergasted to find out this was actually Don joking about the death of a child who was in his care.
This year, while complaining on a podcast that Ilhan was unresponsive to her constituents, Don said, “you’re not cute enough, you don’t dress well enough, nothing about you is attractive enough to overcome that deficit.” I kind of get what he was trying to say here (that she’s cute and attractive, but this doesn’t make up for what he sees as her failings) but even reframed the way I think he meant it, that’s a gross way to talk about a woman in politics. He also proceeded to deny having said any of this.
Don’s campaign put up “Missing” posters on utility poles with Ilhan’s photo. He’s been heavily criticized for trivializing the issue of missing and murdered BIPOC women. The thing that bugs me about these ads is the delivery, the fact that they are posted up in a way that makes them look like an actual “missing person” flyer, because that genuinely is a twist of the knife to anyone who’s ever looked at a flyer to see if maybe they’ve seen that person. (The “MISSING: your congressional representative” rhetoric is kind of standard. This approach to the advertisements absolutely isn’t.)
You probably know at this point whether you like Ilhan Omar or not. In any given two-year period, there’s stuff she’s done that I really like, and stuff she’s done that really pisses me off. She had two major controversies recently, so I will talk about those.
The speech about Somali interests. Back in January, Ilhan delivered a speech in Somali to a group of Somali supporters. It got mistranslated and the mistranslation has been widely circulated by Republicans (because Republicans haaaaaaaaaaaate Ilhan). Here’s the Star Trib article with an accurate translation and the translation that was circulated. She basically said, “as Somalis in America you have the same rights as anyone else to ask your representatives to do stuff; I, your representative, am Somali, and will represent your concerns” (on, let me just add, a foreign policy issue that 99.9% of non-Somali Americans know nothing about and don’t care about — a port deal between Ethiopia and the breakaway republic Somaliland. Do I know anything about this topic? No. This is, in fact, part of what I value about having a representative democracy: I do not have to have a take on every single thing our government has to have a take on.) Anyway, if you’ve heard versions of the speech where she supposedly said “The U.S. government will only do what Somalians in the U.S. tell them to do,” she literally did not say that.
The line about Jewish students. During the campus protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza, which Ilhan’s daughter participated in, Ilhan said, “all Jewish kids should be kept safe. […] We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide.” The fact that she suggested that some Jewish students were pro-genocide was viewed as super problematic and the Republicans tried to censure her (I can’t find anything saying they actually succeeded, just that a censure resolution was introduced). I am, once again, really not interested in having an extended discussion of Israel in my space and trying to parse out the exact lines one might draw between “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes but not actually genocide, just war crimes,” honestly. I’ll just say, I don’t actually have a problem with her framing here.
I would unhesitatingly vote for Ilhan to be re-elected.
I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but I get a lot of satisfaction by pointing people at fundraiser that I can then see fund. I may mix things up later but for now, if you’d like to make a donation to encourage my work, please send some money to this young adult raising money for top surgery.
Amy Klobuchar is running for re-election this year and there are in fact a lot of people on the primary ballot, in both parties. This is a low-stakes primary because the only real question is whether Royce White (GOP-endorsed) or Joe Fraser (lost endorsement but is at least 25% less embarrassing than Royce White) will get to lose to Amy K in November, so if you mainly come to my blog to see me make fun of people, you’ll enjoy this post. If you’re hoping for a more-left-wing alternative to Amy K, I regret to tell you that you are once again SOL.
Will Tell Stories For Food 