Election 2016: State Representative District 60A

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(By request.)

This is a much more interesting race than a typical Minneapolis legislative race, because there’s no Republican at all and the Democrat is instead being challenged by an “Independent Progressive Liberal.”

The two candidates:

Diane Loeffler (incumbent, DFL)
Gabe Barnett (challenger, endorsed by the Green Party, chose to list his party as “Independent Progressive Liberal.”)

Diane Loeffler has been in the legislature for 12 years. Per her Wikipedia page, she has actual bona fide expertise on health care policy; she’s a health care policy analyst and planner for Hennepin County as her day job. Not surprisingly, if you click the Issues page on her website, the first thing you’ll see is a page about health care.

She supports “universal access” (“Universal access to affordable health care whether unemployed, self-employed or involved in a small business”) and doesn’t talk on her website about single-payer, even as a long-term sort of goal. In talking about costs, she focuses on “changes the promote health, prevention, and universal coverage,” which…okay. I’m not going to pretend that I have all the answers here and I am not an expert, but. There’s only so much you can do to get people to voluntarily make changes that “promote health.” (We’ve successfully shifted societal norms around smoking, but that took literally decades.) I think the idea that we can control health costs by encouraging healthy lifestyle choices is really questionable. It’s a politically safe answer but I’m super doubtful, in part just due to all the many people I’ve known over the years who were perfectly healthy until suddenly they weren’t.

On the plus side, she talks about both “support for home care” and “an improved system of options when home care isn’t enough,” and it is really damn rare to see people address caregiving; she’s clearly aware of the importance of not incentivizing self-destructive behavior (if it’s expensive to get a mammogram, a lot of people will just skip it); and public health approaches.

I was thinking that I really thought there should be some up-to-date information on how she wants to deal with MNsure-related stuff but then I got to her “Fairness and Respect” issues page and saw that it includes “Formally recognize in law all long-term committed relationships, including gay and lesbian partnerships” and now I’m curious when she last updated this site in any way.

Gabe Barnett’s campaign site is a Facebook page. He has a little sidebar that links to gabebarnett.com but when I clicked, that just took me back to the FB page. A campaign FB is definitely better than nothing, but if you want to track down someone’s position on issues they’re a lot harder to find.

In his pinned post up top, he says, “Our community’s leaders should share our values of equity, justice, and compassion for all people, regardless of race, gender, religious affiliation, or income. Our elected officials should share our passion for a truly sustainable approach to the environment, and remain steadfast in our goal of protecting our natural resources and stopping climate change. Our representatives in St. Paul should be leading the conversation on these progressive ideals, and pushing the envelope on innovative ways to address them with integrity and conviction.” Someone left a question asking how he differed from Loeffler, and he said, “Thanks for inquiring. We will be releasing my full platform in the coming weeks.” On his FB page, the closest thing I found to a platform is this image. I’ll note two things: (1) the image was posted in May, and he promised a full platform soon in June, so this is definitely not what he meant. (2) if you’re using a screen reader, images of text on Facebook are completely inaccessible. So if you’re blind, you’re not going to be able to read it.

I will admit that I feel some hostility toward people who talk a good line about progressivism, but even while campaigning, can’t be bothered to do a few really minimal things (like not posting important text in picture-only format).

I guess I’ll also note that the text starts out, “Together WE can… * get corporate money and influence out of Minnesota politics and restore power to the people. * eradicate institutional racism, sexism, and classism from the public sector” — so, no ableism listed. (It goes on for 15 more lines that I’m not going to type out. If you’re using a screen reader, I would strongly encourage you to e-mail Gabe at gabe.for.northeast@gmail.com and ask him to send you a text version.)

Fundamentally it looks like he doesn’t disagree with Loeffler on much; he thinks that in general the Northeast representative should be trying to push the Overton Window to the left and apparently doesn’t think Loeffler’s doing a good job there. Here’s his statement: “I believe that, as progressive and diverse as Northeast is, we should be boldly leading the conversation on making Minnesota an inclusively equitable and sustainable state, not meekly toeing a moderate party line.”

And, okay, I kind of get where he’s coming from here, but you know, I am pretty sure he is vastly overestimating the legislature’s overall interest in listening to anyone’s Bold Conversation.

There’s a nice article about Gabe that ran in a freebie local paper. He starts out complaining that too many people ignore “down-ballot politics.” (Tell me about it, Gabe.) He also notes, “Whether it’s gay marriage, or smoking bans, or medical marijuana, these things happen when this city does it, then that state does it, then that county does it, then this city does it, and all of a sudden it’s a national movement” — and yeah, I think he’s often correct. He goes on to say he was inspired by Bernie (cool) and that he’s undecided on the Presidential race (less cool). (He does say that if it looks close in Minnesota he’ll hold his nose and vote for Hillary, and he isn’t super impressed by Jill Stein, either.) This article also talks about his in-person outreach to the community: “Social media’s a great tool…but again, local politics should be about community engagement.” To which I would say that community engagement is great, but when you’re talking about an area with almost 18,000 households and over 40,000 people, there are some real advantages to having a centralized place with a bunch of information about yourself, like a website. With your platform.

Gabe comes across as super young to me, but he’s actually 35, so not that much younger than I am. He’s a musician (a fairly successful one — his band, Gabe Barnett and Them Rounders, has performed at First Ave).

Fundamentally, here’s what strikes me about this race.

There’s a legitimate philosophical question about what you want from your elected representatives. Do you prefer someone who is pragmatic, who will set smaller, more achievable goals and get more of those things done, or would you prefer someone who is idealistic, who will have big goals and try to inspire people to work toward that goal, and who (honestly) probably won’t get anything done in the short term? If what you want is something big and sweeping, do you think you’re more likely to achieve it in baby steps, or with the revolutionary, aim-for-the-moon approach?

At this point in my life, I will pick the pragmatist pretty much every time. Half a loaf is not only better than no loaf, it’s way more than I was expecting. Typically I feel like I’m doing pretty well if we get 1/4 of a loaf. But I have very close friends whose views I respect who want their representative to throw that loaf to the side and say “you motherfucker, that is HALF. HALF A LOAF. For people who have NO BREAD. Why should we take this?”

I guess what I really want (and what I definitely feel like I had in my old district and have in my current district) is a legislator who will grab that half a loaf and put it somewhere safe and them come back to the table and pitch a fit about the missing half.

Is that what 60A has in Diane Loeffler? This is one of the things that’s harder to know from outside the district. Even if she’ll just shrug and take the half-loaf, though, that’s who I’d want representing me in the legislature because so much of what the legislature is about is fighting for these incremental changes in the face of complete intransigence. (I mean, the titanic fight that got us passage of one of the strictest medical marijuana laws in the country would be a good illustration of this.)

Diane Loeffler’s “Results” page has some hilarious examples of what I mean, though. It includes, “Diane worked to make more aware of property tax refunds (1/3 of those eligible don’t apply).” This is one of those tiny accomplishments that nonetheless put a chunk of money in the pocket of a bunch of people who were probably able to make good use of it. She got $24 million allocated to replace a bridge in the Northeast that was in particularly poor condition. She mentions helping to pass the graduated licensing law, which restricts new teenage drivers. (Some of this stuff looks really old. I think this really might have been a good year to update her site, though possibly she checked out her opponent’s FB page and the fact that he never got a platform uploaded made her figure she didn’t need to bother.)

If I lived in this district, it’s possible that Gabe would door-knock me and blow me away so much I’d vote for him. But part of my attitude here (which also heavily influenced my preferences during the Democratic primary) is that I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, immersed in the talk-a-good-line, never-get-shit-done school of progressivism, and I’m kind of over it. If you have goals like “make Minnesota’s public colleges tuition-free” I have a lot of questions. Where are you going to get the money? How are you going to set this up so it’s not just a blank check for the university to spend money on stupid shit? How long will individuals from other states have to live here to qualify for residency, and how will this impact the ability of Minnesotans to get in to our colleges and universities? Will this be an unlimited sort of deal or four years only? What if someone changes their major? What about students who come in needing remedial work? …I mean, it’s not that I don’t think this is a good idea. At the very least, I think that public college tuition should be something that every student can pay for by working part-time in a crappy job. (I also think that if someone got B’s and A’s in college-preparatory classes at their high school and arrived at the university and got told they needed remedial classes, their school district should be on the hook for the cost of the remediation.) And finally, how are you going to accomplish this when the legislature wasn’t even able to pass a transportation bill? There are 5.457 million Minnesotans; the House Rep for 60A will represent 40,000 of them.

(If you have a request for an analysis of a Minneapolis or St. Paul race I haven’t written about, feel free to let me know. I don’t do suburban or outstate races because I’m insufficiently versed in local jargon, hot-button issues, etc.)

Election 2016: MN State Senate, District 63

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My old Minneapolis district has the following two people on the ballot:

Patricia Torres Ray
Ron Moey

So, here’s my story about Patricia Torres Ray. Back when the seat opened up, Ed and I had gone to our caucus and signed up to be Senate District Convention delegates, so we were getting door knocked and called by all the various DFLers running for the open seat. Patricia door-knocked us as we were preparing for a St. Patrick’s Day party — cleaning house, peeling carrots and potatoes, etc. We told her we were happy to talk to her but she’d need to come in and talk while we continued to get ready for the party. Which she willingly did.

We really liked her. We actually liked several of the people running that year, but Patricia wound up being our first choice. And that was true for a lot of people: she was ahead on the very first ballot, and gained each time until she hit endorsement levels.

She’s smart, progressive, thoughtful, and good at her job. I’m still a fan.

Ron Moey has no website. Here’s what I was able to glean about him:

  • He runs a drain cleaning company I’ve heard of – Ron the Sewer Rat. I looked him up on Angie’s List and he has a ton of reviews and a solid A rating. If you need a drain cleaner, he’s a great person to call.
  • A Gun Owner’s PAC thinks he’s great.
  • The anti-abortion MCCL thinks he’s great.
  • Here’s the weirdest and most interesting thing I found. He also ran back in 2002 and filled out a questionnaire about education policy. This is still online. The thing I find sort of fascinating is how differently Republicans talked about education 14 years ago. Back then, the target of everyone’s hatred was the Profiles of Learning. And let me just be clear about this: I hated the Profiles of Learning. I still consider it one of the most jaw-droppingly misguided and badly implemented educational policy iniatives I’ve seen in my lifetime. It came from my own party, and I remember looking at one particularly dismaying set of state election results and saying, “well, on the bright side, hopefully they’ll ditch the PoL.” (They did.)

    But the questionnaire talks about protecting students from job training. (“The Profile of Learning and School-to-Work system are turning K-12 schools into job training centers where job skills training is replacing academic instruction. … Will you support legislation that protects students in K-12 schools by prohibiting all requirements that all students must participate in career skills training or other work-based curriculum, instruction or employment-related activity in career areas?” Ron answered “yes,” clearly the correct answer.) I think most Republicans these days are OK with in-school job training these days, but maybe not?

    He also answered yes to this one: “Nonprofit foundations and the federal government are promoting a massive expansion of an early childcare system in every state that will place the government in authority over parenting. An early childhood government education system will require government credentialing, and therefore mandate a government curriculum. State early childhood curriculum incorporates content aligned with the Profile of Learning and often uses material deeply offensive to parental values and beliefs. For example, the early childhood credentialing program called TEACH uses a curriculum that promotes childhood acceptance of homosexuality, engages in sexual identity training, promotes negative attitudes toward western civilization and history, rewrites history that reflects a bias against traditional values, and trains young children to be political activists. Will you support legislation that prohibits the state from usurping the authority of parents for their children or from requiring early childhood curriculum that is negative toward traditional values?”

    I’m not even 100% sure what they were objecting to there — early childhood education programs like ECFE? (ECFE is a parent/child education program run through local school districts. I went to ECFE classes with Molly when she was a baby and toddler. I got some useful stuff out of the program.)  Universal Pre-K? Credentialling requirements for day care providers? The fact that the state can remove your children from your home for abuse or neglect?

    I mean, clearly they’re opposed to the book Heather Has Two Mommies but the precise objection here is genuinely unclear to me.

Anyway — Ron Moey has no website or online info and is endorsed by a bunch of people I don’t like, so I’d strongly recommend Patricia Torres Ray.

 

Election 2016: State Representative District 63A

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On the ballot:

Jim Davnie
Kyle Bragg

So there are a couple of politicians around I know personally, some from way, way back. I met Jim Davnie (State House representative for my old neighborhood) back in 2000, when he was first running. I did some lit-dropping over the summer and went to some campaign events. His wife and I were both pregnant. So when he door-knocked me in mid-October he started with “hi, I’m Jim Davnie, I’m running for–” and then broke off mid sentence when he processed that it was me, and I was holding a newborn, and that meant I’d had my baby. He squee’d over tiny Molly, asked about the birth, told me that he was not going to tell his wife (who’d had 24+ hours of back labor) about my ridiculously short-and-easy labor, and headed onward to introduce himself to someone else.

I really, really like Jim. Of all the local politicians, he’s the one who most reminds me of Paul Wellstone. He’s a committed progressive and also a terrific, rousing speaker. Once a high-school dropout, he’s now an educator, one of the major movers and shakers for the state anti-bullying bill, and in general a terrific voice for progressive values in the legislature. He’s one of the people I was always happy to vote for when I lived in Minneapolis.

Anyway, Jim’s website is here.

I looked up Kyle Bragg and was immediately sort of surprised that a black man who’s a union organizer was running as a Republican. Then I realized that this Kyle Bragg lives in New York and also this confused me two years ago, as well.

When I searched “kyle bragg mn,” my 2014 post about this race was the fifth hit down. Right below the whitepages link. That’s truly pathetic, Kyle. You could set up a Facebook page for your campaign. You could set up a LinkedIn page for your campaign. You could set up a GoFundMe page for your campaign and okay it’s not like I actually recommend that option but it’s less pathetic than what you’ve got, which is nothing.

The third hit down was a page for the SD63 Republicans, with a drop-down “pick the guy you want to e-mail” contact form. Kyle is one of them, so if you want to ask him any question, have at, I guess? The other thing of interest I discovered is that this guy I vaguely remember from college, Carleton Crawford, who I think ran the college Republican group, is now on the SD 63 Republicans Executive Committee.

On page two I found Kyle’s LinkedIn, which I’m leaving here so I can find it two years from now when he runs again and still doesn’t put up a campaign web page. Pretty sure this is his Facebook. He takes some very nice shots of the changing seasons in the Twin Cities.

Vote for Jim Davnie.

Election 2016: State Representative District 64B

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I live in 64B, which is Highland with a bit of Mac-Groveland. We are represented by Dave Pinto, who was elected for the first time two years ago when Michael Paymar retired.

I like Dave. I was a Senate District Convention delegate so I got to talk to him in some detail, and I found him thoughtful, a good listener, and a committed progressive.

The two candidates on the ballot:

Dave Pinto (DFL)
Emory K. Dively (Republican)

Dave Pinto

Dave is a Ramsey County prosecutor who works on domestic violence cases involving children. His big focus tends to be kids, especially early childhood education.

Emory K. Dively (Republican)

Emory is a pastor at Deaf Life Church on Snelling Avenue, which I pass pretty frequently and have wondered about a few times. It is apparently part of a loosely-organized Pentecostalist fellowship. Emory and his wife (who’s a co-pastor there) are both Deaf.

There is very little info on Emory’s website about his views (there’s not a ton on Dave’s, but he’s at least got a voting record plus I remember him from when I was contemplating the Senate District Convention back in 2014) so I went looking for other info on him. I was thrown for a bit by the fact that there are two Emory Divelys, this one plus an Emory David Dively who turns out to be Emory K. Dively’s son. There’s a bunch of interesting biographical information over on this site, including the fact that he speaks eight different sign languages. (Sign languages are not the same from country to country; in fact, ASL (American Sign Language) and BSL (British Sign Language) are apparently not mutually intelligible.

I also found a District 64 Candidate Forum that was held last night and is now up on YouTube:


and watched it. (Well, okay, I fast-forwarded through some bits.) It’s not just Dave vs. Emory: Dick Cohen and Ian Baird, as well as the candidates from 64A, Erin Murphy and Riley Horan, are also in it.

 

Emory used ASL and had an interpreter. Some of what he was saying came across as pretty incoherent and I’m honestly not sure whether the problem was that he is an incoherent communicator, or if the interpreter was having trouble. The interpreter sounded a lot smoother on his closing statement than on some of his answers, though, which made me think that it was him, and he was not great at coming up with answers he hadn’t practiced.

Things I noted about his positions: he is very focused on special education; that’s his pet issue. I’d say this isn’t entirely surprising, given that he’s a Deaf man working at a Deaf church, but Dave Pinto is also disabled (he’s significantly vision impaired, enough that he can’t drive) and his pet issue is Early Childhood Education.

Asked about the racisal disparities in St. Paul public schools, Emory had no real answer. Asked about climate change he said we needed to take our time and not rush and not try to tell other states what to do. Asked about improving health care his answer was just confusing.

I will say that i kind of liked him? He seemed like a warm, likeable person, especially when compared to his fellow Republicans, the very young Ian Baird and the holy-shit-even-younger Riley Horan. (Riley is twenty years old, and is currently in college at the University of St. Thomas.) I am definitely going to vote for Dave Pinto, though. Absolutely. I sat through 90 minutes of forum and I am still not sure what his views are on most of the major issues, but more to the point, I’m not sure he knows, either.

Ian Baird came across as very young and frequently inarticulate. (Ian, if you’re reading this, go to Toastmasters.) He had handful of comments that made sense but he also thinks global warming is going to be solved with “American ingenuity” rather than government interference.

All you really need to know about Riley Horan is that he thinks the jury is still out on global warming. He came across to me like a dark-haired Draco Malfoy. I will give him credit for one thing, which is that he says on his campaign website that same-sex marriage is a settled issue and Republicans should shut up about it. Other than that, eesh. The guy has a picture of himself posing with Ted Cruz, one of his favorite politicians. (His other big favorite: Scott Walker.) If you’re in 64A, vote for Erin Murphy.

 

Election 2016: Minneapolis School District Funding Referendum

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Minneapolis is voting on whether to extend an existing property tax levy to increase the funding of the Minneapolis public schools.

The actual question reads:

School District Question Renewal of Expiring Referendum Revenue Authorization

The Board of Special School District No. 1 (Minneapolis Public Schools) has proposed to renew the school district’s existing referendum revenue authorization of $1,604.31 per pupil, which is scheduled to expire after taxes payable in 2016. The revenue will be used to manage class sizes and provide supportive services and activities for students. The proposed referendum revenue authorization would increase each year by the rate of inflation and be applicable for nine years, beginning with taxes payable in 2017, unless otherwise revoked or reduced as provided by law. Shall the increase in the revenue proposed by the board of Special School District No. 1 be approved?

BY VOTING “YES” ON THIS BALLOT QUESTION, YOU ARE VOTING TO EXTEND AN EXISTING PROPERTY TAX REFERENDUM THAT IS SCHEDULED TO EXPIRE.

So let’s start by talking about how school funding works in Minnesota. Unlike many states, we do the bulk of our school funding statewide, through our state income taxes. Districts receive money from the state based on the number of pupils they have. If you live in St. Paul but would like to send your kids to an Eagan school, you can do that as long as you’re willing to get them there — for the most part, you can send your kids to any public school in the state you’re willing to transport them to, although if a school is full up they can turn away the non-resident kids.

I’ve been looking for the information on the base funding per kid, how much comes from the state, how much comes from local property taxes, and how much comes from these levies, and I’m not finding anything that breaks it down in a straightforward way. Apparently the base funding is $5,831 per kid, but that gets adjusted up in all sorts of ways. As of a couple of years ago, Minneapolis and St. Paul were both spending about $14,000 per kid and at least one article I found said that about $11,000 of that came from the state.

One of the ways you can increase the amount the kids in your district get: pass a tax levy to collectively raise your own property taxes and give the schools more money. Which Minneapolis has faithfully done during the entire twenty years that I’ve lived in the Twin Cities.

 

This is actually a renewal of an existing levy, so if it passes, your taxes will not go up from this vote. (They’ll probably go up, because I think Minneapolis raised property taxes generally, but the amounts here will stay pretty much the same.) Money from this levy covers 13% of the Minneapolis Public Schools budget, and there’s a spreadsheet showing what each school gets, if you’re curious.

The number I really wanted to see is how much a typical homeowner contributes towards this funding each year. That information is in this PDF. If you own a house worth $250,000, you will pay about $315 toward the schools in 2016 (under the current levy), and you’ll pay $291 in 2017 under the proposed new levy. (I have no idea why that number is going down slightly given that this is a renewal of something that already exists? These numbers are estimates, anyway, but you get the general idea.) Obviously the amount you’d pay goes up or down depending on the value of the property you own. (And if you rent, you won’t pay it directly but like all property taxes it will likely get passed along in rent increases, though I’ll note that if the property taxes didn’t go up at all your rent would probably still go up if your landlord thought they could get more in rent.) The levy runs for nine years, after which they will presumably ask to renew it again.

There’s a website for the Vote Yes for Kids campaign. It’s pretty content-free. (The PDF I linked up above is a lot more helpful — so is this FAQ.) No one has set up a website campaigning against the levy, at least that I found.

I endorse a “Yes” vote, and I would vote for this if I lived in Minneapolis, because I always vote for these. Even though it annoyed the hell out of me that they claimed twice that they were going to use the money to lower class sizes and class sizes in Minneapolis stayed appallingly large. This time they’re saying that they use the money to “manage class sizes,” whatever the hell that means. (To be fair, after both my kids were through kindergarten, I think they lowered kindergarten sizes. And my kids aren’t in MPS anymore so I don’t know what class sizes are like these days.)

 

 

Elections 2016: Minneapolis School Board At-Large

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Minneapolis has an at-large School Board seat coming up for a vote this year, and the incumbent, Carla Bates, isn’t running again.

Two candidates are running:

Kim Ellison
Doug Mann

Kim’s site is pretty content-free. She’s worked as a teacher both at a regular high school and an alternative high school for very at-risk kids (this 2012 interview with her gives a lot more detail on her work as an educator). She’s actually served on the school board for four years already, but previously she held the seat for the District 2 representative. She’s retiring from that seat and running for the at-large seat.

She has the DFL endorsement, which is weirdly not mentioned on her website, and the only person running against her is Doug Mann, who’s been running for the school board since 1999 with no luck.

My issues with Doug Mann can be summed up pretty well by noting that on the front page of his extensive website he lays out his priorities for schools (better retention, more mainstreaming of special ed kids, avoid watering down curricula), then adds, “Cut the war budget and raise taxes on corporations and the rich to fund the transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power to clean energy and to fund social welfare programs” and lists out a grab-bag of other left-wing positions (Medicare for all, raise the minimum wage to $15, eliminate tuition for public universities, legalize marijuana…)

I mean, do I think most of these things are a good idea? Sure. Do I think the Minneapolis School Board has the power to enact any of them? No. I am in favor of electing people who have a sense of what the job entails.

Doug’s contact information is a Facebook page which he last posted to in February. He is endorsed by the Green Party.

If I were voting in Minneapolis this year, I would vote for Kim, despite her mostly useless website. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: serving on the Minneapolis (and St. Paul) school board is supposed to be a part-time job, but it’s not; it’s a full-time job, and one of their major responsibilities is getting yelled at for making unpopular decisions. It is a terrible job for which they get paid less than $15,000/year. For much of the time I was living in Minneapolis, most of the people who served didn’t run for re-election, which meant the school board lacked any real institutional memory. At some point I decided that I would always vote for incumbents on this board running for re-election unless they had really pissed me off. Kim Ellison definitely qualifies.

Also, I think that when the work on a school board has become a full-time job, the school board members, like City Council representatives, should be paid a salary they can actually live on. (This would have to be changed at the state legislative level, and I do not think it’s anyone’s priority, unfortunately.)

 

Election 2016: State Senator District 64

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The candidates for my State Senate seat are Dick Cohen (DFL) and Ian Baird (Republican).

Dick Cohen, the Senator from my current district, has been in the Minnesota legislature since 1976. He’s not as old as you might think — he got elected for the first time when he was ridiculously young, and so he’s younger than my father. But since 1976, my father has lived in four different cities and worked at four separate universities, despite being a faculty member (who, as everyone knows, typically get tenure somewhere and stay there basically forever). In those same forty years Dick Cohen has stayed in St. Paul, and in the legislature. (He did move from the House to the Senate ten years in.) I will admit some mixed feelings about legislators who serve for this long.

But he’s kept up with the times and has been a hard-working, reliable progressive vote.

Ian Baird looks about eighteen to me. His biography talks about his parents’ dairy business and says, “Today I work as a theater artist and carpenter.  I’ve worked on shows ranging from  Les Miserables to, well, shows you’ve never heard of.” This got me curious and I went looking for his CV. Most theater professionals make it really easy to find them, via a listing like this one on Minnesota Playlist. Or a website. Or a LinkedIn page. I turned up a LinkedIn page that might be Ian’s; I’m not sure. It’s even more pathetic than my LinkedIn page. I did find a CV that might be his here. If it’s his, he graduated college in 2013, so that explains why he looks so ridiculously young.

He also probably went here: https://unwsp.edu/ (I’m not 100% sure because there are a number of academic institutions named Northwestern. This is based in part on what I found on the LinkedIn page.) This is a small, weird, very conservative, very Christian college. They also emphasize career-oriented degrees, so the fact that he emerged with a History degree and a Theater minor is kind of fascinating.

He also doesn’t appear to have turned out the sort of Christian his parents were probably hoping for when they sent him off to school, given that his “About” page that goes with the CV includes the observation that “Religion, like performance, offers a place for people to hide from the reality of who they are.”

Working my way to his actual campaign: his positions include “why do we pay for trains when I never ride them,” “I’ve heard lots of horror stories about education,” and “paid leave legislation is bad.” He’s also pro-transparency (fair), thought the police officer who shot Philando Castile should be tried (yay), and has nothing much to say either on his campaign website or his campaign Facebook page about the GOP’s social positions. His Facebook page also mentions that he’s pro-fireworks and views himself as the candidate for fans of Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation. (I am fond of Ron as a character, but have never said to myself, “wow, I wish I could have him represent me in the legislature.” I’d totally vote for Knope, though.)

Unclear: whether he’s reflected at all on the fact that most of the people in his party view arts funding the way he views trains, or the fact that most of the people in his profession are heavily dependent on health care plans set up by Democrats.

 

Anyway, it’s an interesting picture. Not someone I’d vote for, but I wish Ian success in his life as a Theater artist and I hope he’s gained financial independence from his parents, because I bet they are a lot more conservative than he is.

 

Everyone else should vote for the progressive dinosaur!

 

Election 2016 – Judicial Races -4th District Court 45 and 4th District Court 37

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When I looked at the candidate lists yesterday I missed the fact that there were in fact two contested judicial races for district courts in Hennepin County.

4th District Court 37

Carolina A. Lamas (incumbent)
Luke Kyper Bellville

4th District Court 45

Paul R. Scoggin (incumbent)
Chris Ritts

I’ll do the 4th District Court 37 first.

Carolina Lamas

Judge Carolina Lamas is a relatively recent appointee — she came to the bench in 2014, appointed by Governor Dayton. She’s relatively young, having graduated from law school in 2003. (Not scandalously young. But probably younger than me.) She’s an immigrant from Peru and prior to becoming a judge, she worked as a public defender and for a nonprofit that serves indigent people who’ve been charged with felonies.

Looking for news stories about her turned up a piece about Hennepin County judges doing free weddings for people on Valentine’s Day this year, and she set a typical (rather than an extremely high) bail for someone back in February. Searching on the guy’s name turned up no additional articles, so I’m not sure whether his trial is still pending or what. (Also, protecting the public is not supposed to be what bail is for; you’re innocent until proven guilty. You’re only supposed to be denied bail, or given an extremely high bail, if you’re a flight risk, at least that’s the theory as I understand it.)

Anyway, overall she seems to be doing a fine job.

Luke Kyper Bellville

If you visit Luke Bellville’s site you’ll probably have the same first thought I had, which is, “wait…Tripod still exists?”

Luke appears to have a family and enjoy sitting in grassy settings. He emphasizes his deep local roots, which I initially read as a fairly standard iteration of Minnesota parochialism (there are people in both Minneapolis and St. Paul who will brag about how they never ever go to the other city, which always makes me want to speculate that they’re secretly a vampire who can’t cross water) but having read up on Carolina Lamas I’m now wondering if he’s trying to channel anti-immigrant sentiment. He also says, “I, having grown up in the inner-city of Minneapolis, have little tolerance for violent crimes, and feel they are the number one thing in the modern era that needs addressing.” So possibly he’s mad about the low bail or that one guy, or again, this actually sounds a little dogwhistle-y.

He does not even hint at any actual qualifications to work as a judge, like having gone to law school. Which is weird, because he appears to indeed be a lawyer. I found his LinkedIn, which adds another odd thing to the mix — he talks about attending the U of  M Twin Cities on both his “hire me to be your lawyer” page and his “vote for me for judge” page but he got his JD in North Dakota. Which is a perfectly reasonable place to get a law degree so why he wants to cover up this fact is bizarre. (And, I mean, on his “vote for me” page, he gets really detailed: “I am a fourth generation Minnesotan who grew up on the West Bank in Minneapolis. I attended Marcy Open Elementary school when it was still on Como Avenue, then Anderson Junior High off Lake Street, and South High School off Cedar Avenue. After this I graduated from the University of Minnesota on the Twin Cities Campus.” Like, you considered it important that you attended Marcy Open but you didn’t want to tell us where you went to law school?)

Anyway, the tl;dr here is that this guy is a flake. Vote for Carolina Lamas.

On to Court 45.

4th District Court 45

Paul R. Scoggin (incumbent)

So two years ago, Paul Scoggin was running against Bridget Ann Sullivan for an open seat and I wrote about it. I thought they both sounded like strong candidates who’d make excellent judges. And in fact Sullivan won the election but Scoggin was appointed to fill an opening the following year.

I went looking for news articles about Scoggin and didn’t turn up anything about his work as a judge. Interestingly, though, I did find a news article from 2013 about a criminal case that he prosecuted and his opponent in the race defended: Minneapolis man who wrecked Lamborghini gets six months in workhouse. The case involved this idiot who was hired to repair, then store, a Lamborghini. (Presumably for the winter months.) He took it for an unauthorized drunken joyride and wrecked it. Then he tried to bill it to insurance and lied about the accident. Honestly, click and read, the whole story is sort of hilarious in an “omg what an idiot” kind of way. (I’ll note that I did some follow-up googling fascinatingly enough, his auto shop is not only still in business but doing fine. He must be one hell of a mechanic. It appears that he committed himself to sobriety and stuck with it, so hurray for the wake-up call he got working as I’m sure everyone hoped.)

Anyway, both Chris Ritts and Paul Scoggin were doing their jobs as expected in that case — I don’t think either did anything wrong. Reading the article I felt a bit more sympathy for the prosecutor, but there’s nothing wrong with defending someone guilty, I mean that’s solidly part of the job of a defense lawyer. I’m not sure how good a deal Chris got for his client — this was a plea deal — but when a guy digs himself that sort of ten-foot pit before he calls you, there’s only so much you can do. (Oh, wait. Plus he had priors, according to the Strib article. He must be an amazing mechanic to still be in business.)

Chris Ritts

Two years ago, Chris Ritts was running against Bev Benson for an open seat and I wrote about it. I thought Bev sounded a little too cozy with the police but I thought Chris sounded super flaky and not overly bright.

His website is less embarrassing now, though it definitely telegraphs “campaign committee of one.”

Searching for news stories on him turns up a couple of different stories about his work as an attorney. He defended a Maple Grove City Council Rep who stole money from her elderly father while working as his caregiver. (Maybe Brad Gerten, R-51A, should give Ritt a call.) Ritt has also worked for the family of a man killed by a Plymouth police officer and won a settlement for a man who sued a St. Paul police officer for excessive force.

The fact that he has only a single endorsement (vs. Soggins’ long list of endorsements) makes me think less “courageous outsider” and more “the people who know this guy don’t actually think he should be a judge,” though.

I would vote for Scoggins.

 

 

 

Election 2016: Constitutional Amendment 1

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There is a constitutional amendment on the Minnesota ballot this year! Statewide. (Obviously.) Here’s what it says:

Remove Lawmakers’ Power to Set Their Own Pay
Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to remove state lawmakers’ power to set their own salaries, and instead establish an independent, citizens-only council to prescribe salaries of lawmakers?

You can vote Yes, or No. If you leave it blank, that counts as a No.

So my first gut reaction to this is as follows: I suspect that the legislators have put this on the ballot because they would really like a raise, and they would really like it not to be on them to give themselves a raise, because if you do vote yourself a raise people will slam you for it and sometimes people will indignantly run against you because you gave yourself a raise after not accomplishing whatever it was they particularly wanted you to get done that session.

How much are legislators paid at the moment? I found that info over on the Minnesota State Legislature FAQ:  a Legislator’s salary is $31,140 per year. That said, it’s allegedly not a full-time job; you’re not in session all year. If legislators have another job, the FAQ notes they’re protected from firing over their legislative-session-absence and also their employer isn’t allowed to fire them if they dislike how they voted, which is hilarious but also a good idea, I’d say.

They get a per diem during the legislative session (key, for people who live somewhere up on the Iron Range — it’s not like they can go home at night to sleep) and I was trying to find that info out from this helpful document about compensation and that wasn’t in there, but it did mention that the last time the legislature got a raise was in 1999. It also noted, “The 2013 Legislature proposed a constitutional amendment regarding how legislators’ salaries are determined. The 2014 Legislature modified the text of the proposed amendment and passed a bill that put that amendment to voters. The amendment will be voted on at the 2016 general election.” So this has been in the works for a while.

There’s a MinnPost article from 2013 about the question of whether legislators are underpaid.  It covers the per diem issue but also quotes former Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe on the whole “part time” issue. “It’s difficult for the public to understand that it’s really not part-time,” Moe says. “It’s a 150-percent of the time job for five or six months of the year, and about a 75-percent of the time job the rest of the year. It’s more than a full-time job and you kind of build your life around it.”

(They’re not as underpaid as the Minneapolis and probably also the St. Paul school board. I can tell you that Minneapolis school board members work a more-than-full-time job for under $15,000/year and a measurable percentage of the job is to be the target of hatred, resentment, and angry criticism. I would raise both Minneapolis and St. Paul school board members’ salaries tomorrow to a reasonable full-time salary, if I could, because I sincerely believe that they’d get better people who would be more likely to be able to solve the district’s problems if people who need to work for a living could afford to serve. That salary: also set by the legislature.)

The MinnPost article notes that the legislature has the same problem, to some degree: the skimpy pay doesn’t stop people from running, but it causes a lot of people to decide they can’t afford to run again.

The comments section on that article kind of illustrates the problem: “Slackers and lemmings not ‘entitled’ to increases.” “That does not justify higher pay because constituents did not benefit from your choice to work long hours.” Several people pointed out that we might get better, smarter people running for office if we paid them a living wage; a not-outstandingly-smart-sounding retired woman who can’t spell said she’d serve for free.

A more recent article in MinnPost talks about this issue again, noting that even mentioning legislative pay is just full-on radioactive for legislators, and that a lot of legislators wind up really struggling financially.

Apparently in New Mexico, state legislators don’t get paid at all. This piece compares legislative pay and talks about the benefits (and drawbacks) of a well-paid legislature.

Here’s the fundamental thing, I guess. I do think people should get paid fairly for their work, and that includes lawmakers. The solution to crappy legislators is kicking them out of office at election time, not saying “none of you get paid today!” I think a citizen commission will pay people fairly. (I don’t think it will pay them lavishly. I think it will compensate them reasonably for the actual hours they work, or at least, they’ll do a better job of this than the legislators can politically do for themselves.) This seems like a good idea to me and I am going to vote in favor of this amendment.

 

 

Election 2016: St. Paul School Board

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St. Paul is holding a Special Election for school board member at-large. This is to replace member Jean O’Connell, who resigned in protest after Superintendent Valeria Silva was fired. (The board appointed an interim person back in August, but Cedrick Baker is not running.)

On the ballot:

Eduardo Barrera
Tony Klehr
Cindy Kerr
Greg Copeland
Jeanelle Foster

Eduardo Barrera

Eduardo Barrera is an executive director at CLUES, a nonprofit that provides services and referrals to the Latino community. An article about the start times of St. Paul’s high schools mentioned him: “Eduardo Barrera, a parent of two elementary students who also sits on the St. Paul Public Schools Foundation board, said he had read up on the science before joining the steering committee. But, he said, like fellow committee members, he tries to keep an open mind.” (They didn’t end up moving start times later but it’s still under consideration.)

(Here’s the thing about later high school start times: they will improve learning outcomes, improve your graduation rate, lower teen pregnancy rates, and cut the death rate because of fewer people hit by sleepy teenage drivers. It is the winniest win/win of all win/wins, except for sports coaches, who like those early afternoon hours for practices.)

His website is pretty minimalist and includes the following platform: “Eliminate the persistent disparity in educational attainment; include voices of parents, teachers, and staff who support our children; ensure collaboration for the benefit of the district; increase enrollment levels and decrease classroom size; make every resident of Saint Paul proud of our public schools.”

That is the most boilerplate generic school board platform I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve sat through quite a few DFL endorsing conventions so I’ve heard a lot of generic boilerplate delivered out loud, fists raised, with cheering volunteers holding signs as backdrop.

That is really telling me less than nothing about what you will do with your seat.

He also tried for the interim position but not hard enough to show up on the day the school board made the selection (he had a meeting) and he didn’t try for DFL endorsement. He also didn’t turn in a website when he filled out his paperwork so there’s no link on the Secretary of State candidates list; I did find him when I googled, but it’s pretty far down the page. I’m a little dubious that he actually wants the job. Oh, there’s also no way to contact him from his campaign website. Hmm. Yeah. I’m increasingly skeptical. Next!

Tony Klehr

Okay, here’s what I was able to find out about Tony Klehr. He’s a teacher in the Stillwater Public Schools (a “Credit Recovery Teacher, Generalist,” which I’m guessing means he  works with students who’ve failed classes to make up the credits.) In the comments of a pissy Joe Soucheray column about the St. Paul school board, someone named Fred endorsed Tony and said he was a Republican. According to Tony’s mostly-private Facebook page, he graduated from Woodbury Senior High in 2004, and the U of M Duluth in 2010; also, it looks like he went to China in 2006, and it looks like it was with a student group. He has a selfie on the Great Wall that is captioned, “taken moments before i threw up all over the great wall. they may have a booming economy, but we have struck at the heart of their national diginity.”

Next!

Cindy Kerr

So, this is new: a GoFundMe page as a campaign website.

Cindy has two kids, both adopted from foster care. She pulled her son out of SPPS last year after what sounds like a very frustrating experience with the IEP process. When adopting from foster care, she had to take a bunch of training on fetal alcohol syndrome and other special needs; she clearly sees the lack of similar training in the Saint Paul Public Schools.

Other info I found: via LinkedIn, she’s a an “Engagement Manager” for a company called ClickSoft, and her employer and her job description are so absolutely saturated with buzzwords I have no earthly idea what she does. She’s on Twitter, but appears to use it mostly for her job. I also found her filing form. She also lives ridiculously close to me, like I could go knock on her door right now and ask her some questions. (She doesn’t have her campaign e-mail address on her GoFundMe but anyone who reads this and wants to follow up with her can try votecindykerr@gmail.com.)

My thoughts here: it sounds like she has some personal experience in a very specific area that would be useful, but it’s a really narrow experience, specific to her children. That’s where most of us start, actually, but for school board I like to see people who’ve got some broader experience, either via working or volunteering. It’s also clear that political campaigns are an opaque black box to her — a GoFundMe page is better than no website at all but she’s gotten exactly one donor since putting it up.

Cindy, if you’re reading this, I would encourage you to join the St. Paul Special Education Advisory Council. Volunteer for the campaign of a politician you like (maybe not this season, when you’re campaigning yourself, but next year or the year after). Attend your DFL precinct caucus and become a delegate to the City Convention. You’ll have the opportunity to see how campaigns work and if this is something you’d like to pursue, you’ll have a better base of knowledge (and connections) to go forward.

Greg Copeland

Greg Copeland is a loud Republican, a perennial candidate, and the former extremely incompetent Maplewood city manager. He ran for school board two years ago, partly on the platform of firing Silva, and has not updated his website since Silva was fired. He’d like to see ward-based school board representation, like Minneapolis has — I tend to think this is a good idea, FWIW.

On his Biography page, he talks about how  every student should have an IEP created in consultation with parents, teachers, and guidance counselors. IEPs right now are created for special needs students and spell out goals and services. I’ve been through this process: it’s time-consuming. Doing this for every student would require a whole new layer of school bureaucracy. Of course, elsewhere he says that more money should go to teaching, and not to bureaucracy. To be fair, he doesn’t seem to consider guidance counselors to be the bureaucracy; he notes that the American School Counselor Association suggests that schools employ one guidance counselor for every 250 students, and the St. Paul schools have 435:1. (It’s not that I’m opposed to guidance counselors in the schools but asking the American School Counselor Association how many guidance counselors a school needs seems a little like asking a cosmetology school whether it’s really necessary to license hairdressers. This guy is solidly Republican so why guidance counselors, specifically, are the one form of non-teacher bureaucracy he thinks are awesome is something I’m kind of curious about.)

Anyway, it sounds ot me like his vision of the every-student-gets-an-IEP is that the process is less intensive than the current IEP process used for special needs students, but more intensive than parent-teacher conferences. He wants teachers, parents, and guidance counselors to set academic goals and address gaps with tutoring and other interventions. You know what, fundamentally I think this is a pretty good idea but it would cost a lot of money, and eliminating “failed, costly Silva era programs such as those operated by the Pacific Education Group” is going to round up relative pocket change. (He also suggests the technology levy funds be redirected. I am skeptical that this would work. On one hand, they’re spending money on iPads maintenance and so on but on the other hand, there are other things they were able to not spend money on like printed copies of a whole bunch of textbooks. I’m not saying that the iPads weren’t a stupid use of money — I’m saying, at this point, dumping them won’t save you much.) He then goes on to say in bold face font that no new funds or property tax levies will be required, because of course he does, he’s a Republican. This is bullshit.

I mean, okay. He says there are currently 85 counselors, and this is 1:435 and he wants 1:250 so let’s say we’re going to hire 75. That might be do-able with the money we’d otherwise be spending on stuff like PEC, maybe, but here’s the thing: the 1:250 is assuming the normal set of Guidance Counselor tasks. If you’re going to say that every student in St. Paul now gets an IEP, you’re going to need a lot more. If you’re going to say that students who’ve fallen behind will get tutoring or other interventions, you’re also going to need to hire an army of reading and math specialists who will do that tutoring. (They actually have a bunch of these people now, but that’s part of where some of that money that’s not going to classroom teachers and guidance counselors is going to.)

He says he wants to spend the maximum amount possible in the classroom, and says that he’d start budget cuts with the central administration, followed by an examination of School Support Services budget and the District-Wide Support Services budget.

So okay, the School Support Services budget is where you pay for those reading and math specialists who do the tutoring that kids needs to bring them up to speed. I imagine this is also where they pay for behavior specialists who deal with the kids who unruly and seriously disruptive, so that the teachers can teach rather than spending long periods of time dealing with kids who are being disruptive. The district-wide support services is where you get the people who go from school to school providing OT or PT or other services that a small number of students need. Do you want every child to be able to write and thus take the MCAs? Some students need OT and PT in order to be able to hold a pencil and make words on a page.

I mean, I could be making the wrong assumptions about how the money is allocated and who pays for what.

When I look back at our (frustrating) experiences in Minneapolis, there were absolutely staff members that I don’t know what the hell they did all day. In some cases they were definitely doing stuff, it just didn’t seem to bear any real relationship to what their job title suggested they might be doing. And I seriously don’t know what some of the central people were doing: not calling my kid’s teacher back ever, would be what one of them did all day, as far as I could tell. But there are also the people who test all the 3 and 4-year-olds for Kindergarten Readiness; there are the people who manage the central food services and the central transportation services. There are people who run community education, who investigate civil rights complaints, who help families who are experiencing homelessness, who make sure everyone’s checks get auto-deposited on schedule. Sure, some of the people in these offices are undoubtedy useless, lazy assholes like the person who never called my kid’s teacher back ever. Others are doing super useful work. I do not remotely trust Greg Copeland to be able to tell the difference.

On his main page he has a blog where he suggests that we should institute middle-school testing to sort all our kids into college-bound and vocational tracks, complains about “transgenders” using the bathroom, and advocates for vouchers.

Anyway, this guy is not my candidate.

Jeanelle Foster

Jeanelle (“Jeanie”) Foster was endorsed by the DFL at a tiny City Convention held a few months ago. (I got a phone call about it, I think even from Jeanie’s campaign, but was out of town that day.) According to her biography, she is a former teen mother who pulled herself out of poverty using the power of education and went on to become a teacher, then work at the Wilder Child Development Center to help struggling families get their kids through the system. Now she works as a Head Start administrator.

Her platform is another absolutely boilerplate set of goals: “Bring staff together and improve relationships with administration; Keep children and equity at the center of our decision-making and help the system to be more responsive; Increase parent and family engagement so kids and families can better navigate the system to find success.” Her background at least suggests she has experience with these specific things. (Increasing parent and family engagement was a component of her job at Wilder, I think.)

She’s my pick, and I’ll admit it’s heavily for her past experience. I have friends who went to college as single mothers, and they’re all frankly pretty amazing. The fact that she got a Master’s degree (!!!) after having a child at 16 shows that she’s someone who can work really hard and who knows to an intimate degree the transformational power of education.

If (like Greg) you’re suspicious enough of the central offices that you’d be hesitant enough to vote for anyone who’s worked there, I guess in that case I’d go for Eduardo Barrera. He’s been heavily engaged with the public schools in the past as a parent and citizen. I’m going to say that Tony Klehr is a flake, and Cindy Kerr is well-meaning but too inexperienced to jump into this particular job. Greg Copeland is the GOP equivalent of the socialists who want to fund things with gold pooped out by magical unicorns. (The GOP version of this is when you’re convinced that you can just check the trash cans for all the gold people are mindlessly throwing away because cut waste is the answer to everything, and the possibility that St. Paul spends a lot of money because it gets a lot of kids whose needs are more extreme than, say, Wayzata does, has not occurred to him.)