This is a statewide race and there are three people running. Incumbent Julie Blaha is not running for re-election. On the ballot:

Zack Filipovich (DFL)
Scott Jensen (Republican)
Jay Reeves (Forward Independence)

I spent more time than I thought I would on this one because Jay Reeves is running a fairly serious campaign and I wanted to treat him seriously. The tl;dr is that I am going to vote for Zach Filipovich, who’s well qualified for the job; I do think Jay Reeves is both more qualified and less of a creep than Scott Jensen, but I think Zach is the best candidate and also, that Jay Reeves is going to come in third.

All three candidates have appeared in two debates together: Almanac on PBS, and on The Sunday Take at the State Fair. I watched (well, listened to) both of these debates.

Scott Jensen (Republican)

When we last saw Scott Jensen, he was losing the 2022 Governor’s race by 8 percentage points. He manages to embody the Republican party at its worst in a whole range of ways; back in 2022 I noted that he’d gone around spreading the “kids have LITTERBOXES now” urban legend, and this year in the State Fair debate (in his closing statement, you can find it 37 minutes in) he brought up Zach’s endorsement from OutFront in order to showcase his own transphobia. You really have to be committed to transphobia to make your transphobic garbage an issue in the race for state auditor. He also seized several opportunities to brag about his COVID denialism. He’s also just not particularly qualified in this race compared to either of his opponents.

He’s also old. I mean, he’s not Trump levels of old, but he’s 71, and since he made an issue of it in the debate (“I will not hold my opponents’ youth and inexperience against them, heh heh”) I feel like I can point this out. He’s 71 and if you watch the debate and then look at his website it’s clear his staff has filtered and photoshopped the heck out of his photos to make him look younger (while still leaving sufficient wrinkles and gray hair that it’s not super obviously filtered.)

The main reason not to vote for him, though, is his record (as a creepy, transphobic, COVID-denying Trumpist). Plus he loves AI and wants to use it more in the Auditor’s office, which sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Jay Reeves (Forward Independence)

Jay enlisted in the Army in 2006 and stayed in until 2023, retiring as a Major (I am very inexpert on this, but my sense is that it’s fairly unusual to make the leap from enlisted man to commissioned officer.) I think he took a medical retirement because he developed cancer in 2022, which he has now recovered from. He talks a lot about his experience with “data analytics” and one of my frustrations in researching him is that it’s hard to figure out what he’s saying he did, exactly. Here’s his LinkedIn. It says he spent 15 years as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist; got a Master’s in Health Informatics from the U of M in 2019; worked as a “Capability Manager (Data Analyst)” in Virginia from 2019-22; and was a laboratory manager for one year at the end. He retired when he did because he had cancer, which I think he’s since recovered from. In 2023, he had a Data Analyst internship at a place called DivvyDose, after which he was a Business Analyst there for three months. Basically, his data analytics experience was presumably while he was in the military so it’s hard to know if he only talks about one thing (making a database to track something COVID-related in the early stages of the pandemic) because that’s the big data analytical thing he did, or because some of what he did, he’s not allowed to talk about. And this matters, because that’s really his major case for qualification, that he does data analysis well. (Or, “data analytics,” a phrase he loves so much you could turn it into a drinking game while watching the debates.)

The Forward Independence party is basically what’s left of the Jessecrats. I used to stop by their booth at the State Fair and pick up their literature to see what they had for a platform, if anything; I remember one year it was a long list of extremely random complaints, like if you had Andy Rooney write you a political platform, and at this point I’m not sure they have a unifying idea beyond “we aren’t Republicans and we also aren’t Democrats.” Jay apparently tried to get endorsed by the DFL to run for the CD 6 seat (against Tom Emmer) and didn’t get endorsed; this came up in one of the debates because Scott brought it up, and Jay’s explanation of why he was trying to run as a DFLer while also still an Independent and also they wouldn’t let him get endorsed because he refused to sign off on some of their beliefs, you know, it was confusing. I was confused. He sounded confused, like it made me wonder if he understood what endorsement was, how it worked, what it means to ask for a party’s endorsement.

Especially since he’s pretty conservative! Over on his Facebook, he has a long post whining about Keith Ellison calling (some) Republicans bigots and racists. Here’s a fun fact: a whole lot of Republicans are bigots and racists. Jay’s post links to a piece on Townhall (a conservative site, I’m not sure if it’s technically pretending to be news or just commentary) that linked to a Twitter post from noted local asshole Dustin Grage who was retweeting some garbage from Alpha News. Garbage all the way down, in other words.

He’s less loudly enthusiastic about AI tools in the auditor’s office (that I found! I may have missed something) (also, he talks a lot about “modernizing” the technology, and probably that means AI) but he is definitely using them in this race. Some post of his mentioned he’d used ChatGPT to write a summary, and this post in particular has the distinct cadence of ChatGPT’s writing style. I don’t love it! It’s already enough work to research candidates without having to wade through piles of crap they couldn’t even be bothered to write, you know?

Finally, even if you love the idea of a third-party guy in this role I will note that he shared a poll that shows Scott with 43% support, Zach with 36%, Jay with 4%, and Undecided at 17%, which means that even if every single Undecided voter breaks for Jay, he would still come in third. Also, Scott Jensen would win.

Zack Filipovich (DFL)

Zach is an uncommonly qualified candidate in that he’s an actual accountant who has worked in local government finance, the thing the Minnesota State Auditor actually oversees. He’s also served on the Duluth City Council.

I do want to acknowledge that it’s been many decades since there was an actual accountant serving in this role. In 2018, the Republican candidate was a CPA which might have been tempting (that’s a link to my post where I acknowledge that an actual accountant in this job might be a good thing) if Pam Myrha hadn’t been so generally loathesome. Anyway, this year I can vote for an accountant who’s also a Democrat, and while this is in fact a job where party should not matter, it’s clear from listening to Scott that it does.

Zach also understands what this job is and he’s energetic, thoughtful, and (I thought this was interesting) aware that in addition to fraud, part of the job of the auditor is to catch mistakes, which are in fact way more common than fraud. I am absolutely going to vote for Zach, and would encourage other people to do the same.

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This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.) I raised $7,230 during primary season so I’ve raised the goal.

I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies.