Gifts for People You Hate, 2023

Posted on December 8, 2023 by naomikritzer

It’s December, and you know what that means: it’s time to buy things. Hopefully, for the most part we’re buying things for people we want to give presents to: loved ones, children, friends. Some of these people are easy to buy for (I valiantly resisted the temptation to give my nephews a stuffed pug dog that makes fart noises. They would love this. My brother might stop speaking to me) and some are very hard, but if your goal is to make the other person happy, there are a gazillion other guides full of gift ideas — that is not what we’re here for today. And you know that! That’s why you’re here! Because sometimes, etiquette or family dynamics or office politics demands that you buy a gift for someone you absolutely cannot stand, and I am ready to help you express your dislike with all the tact of Joe Biden writing an epitaph for Henry Kissinger.

Important disclaimers: I don’t buy presents for anyone I don’t like, so if I give you a terrible gift, that’s because it was a swing and a miss, not because I was trying to be passive-aggressive. I don’t scrutinize gifts I receive critically, so if you’re shopping for me, don’t worry about that. And finally, in the interests of official full disclosure, I have an Amazon Associates ID set up, so if you actually buy any of the Amazon items for someone using my links, I get a kickback.

ON TO THE HORRORS.

Horrifying Housewares

Back in the summer, I wandered into a Goodwill store and walked around through the housewares aisles looking at the various gently-used items that people found so useless they wound up donating them to Goodwill, thinking about what this said about what kinds of things people really don’t want. There were a whole lot of decorative shelf clocks:

A bunch of decorative small clocks like you'd put on a shelf.

The fact is, most people these days, if they want to know what time it is, look at their phone. I’m an oddball because I still wear a wrist watch. Shelf clocks don’t exist for people to look at; shelf clocks exist to be a chore every year when we spring forward or fall back. Alas, if you go buy a clock from Goodwill, it won’t come with the box that makes it look new. I went looking for an inexpensive clock suitable for gifting and discovered that you can buy a melting clock that looks like the clocks in that Dali painting, The Persistence of Memory. As a bonus, this clock is extremely difficult to read. Even better: there’s also a melting clock that looks like the clocks in the Dali painting except it has Roman numerals on it so it’s both harder to read, and inaccurate in a way that will definitely irritate any serious Dali fan you buy this gift for.

Possibly my other favorite decorative item this year is this heart-shaped vase, where by favorite I mean “the stuff of nightmares” and by “heart-shaped” I mean “shaped like an actual human heart, you know, with the veins and arteries forming little tubes into which you stick the flowers.”

A bunch of flowers artfully arranged in a vase shaped like an actual human heart, mostly threaded through the veins and arteries.

Let’s just go through some highlights about this object. First of all, it’s got the problem a lot of vases have, which is that it rests on a narrow point and if you use it for flowers and have a cat, it’s going to get tipped over in about five minutes. Second, what most of us do with vases — well, what I do with vases — is that we take a bouquet, and we stick it in the vase with water to keep the bouquet alive longer. We do not wish to carefully thread a bunch of individual carnations or roses into a bunch of separate little tubes. Third, it looks like a human organ. (Don’t get me wrong: I do recognize that this is definitely a GOOD gift for someone out there. Provided that they don’t have cats who like to knock stuff over.)

Let’s Unnecessarily Gussy Up Your Car

I don’t know how I stumbled into this corner of Amazon but they sell some hilariously over-the-top car accessories. Lots of cars have a button now to start them and you can gussy up the Start button by making it look like a red-eyed glitter leopard. (This is an especially terrible gift to anyone who still starts their car with an actual key.) You can also buy decorative vent clips (you can add air freshener to them, apparently) that look like little skeletons doing the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” poses. There’s a coin sorter that would probably have been super helpful back in the era when you paid your tolls in coins and now just suggests that you should be sorting all your coins instead of leaving them to rattle around your car’s ashtray. And finally: a hoodie for your gear shift, so it doesn’t get cold.

Candles!

So I’ll just note: I don’t burn scented candles. Most scented things give me a headache. I have also smelled the results of a Blueberry Pie Yankee Candle being burned to inadequately cover up some really unpleasant smells and this did not leave me with a positive association with Yankee Candles. Anyway, a few times I have been gifted a scented candle, and I said thank you and then re-gifted it to someone who I thought might actually enjoy it. I’m mentioning this just as a heads up — I suspect that a lot of people see scented candles as an appropriately generic gift that you can just re-gift without a lot of thought, and that could wind up being unfortunate if you buy one of these amazing artisan-made prank candles available from EarthsEssenceNC on Etsy. The top 1/4 smells like something nice (you can pick from a variety of scents); the bottom 3/4 smells like, let me look up the options: baby diaper, bad breath, canned tuna, farts, garlic, gunpowder, gym socks, or motor oil.

There’s also a candle that is truly a perfect gift if you are not Minnesotan but have an annoying coworker who’s, say, very loud about their Minnesota Vikings fannishness. There’s a Minnesotan candle seller that makes a Lutefisk scent. (Reviewer: “I was not prepared for this candle, it’s absolutely noxious. I’m very impressed!”) If you aren’t Minnesotan, you can plausibly claim that all you know about lutefisk is that it’s a Minnesotan thing that Minnesotan people are into and so this gift made you think of him because it seemed very Minnesotan, just like his football team. Lutefisk, well, it’s sort of a fish Jello eaten by an ever-decreasing number of Minnesotans in November and December at church dinners. (Here’s an outstanding story from MPR News that explains the tradition. I’ll note that this piece is much, much funnier as an audio piece than a written one.)

Prank candles are probably ideal gifts for officemates you can’t stand because most offices are not going to let you light the candle at the office, so there’s very little risk you’ll have to smell it.

You Need a Hobby and also should spend more time in the kitchen

There’s this genuinely excellent book called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter in which the author goes through a long list of things that she tried making (with recipes) and then assesses whether they were worth it. On the butter, she notes that she tried making butter and it was delicious. But then she bought some unsalted butter from the store, let it soften up, and paid attention while she was eating it, and the fundamental thing is, butter is delicious. And cream is more expensive than butter. I’ll also note that if someone wants to make butter, you can do it with a hand mixer (or a stand mixer, if you’ve got one), you basically just make whipped cream and keep going.

But maybe your cousin who shares tradwife memes would like to get her Laura Ingalls on? You could give her an actual literal hand-cranked butter churn and she could find out for herself just how utterly tedious it is to make butter by hand (and then have an extremely specialized kitchen item to stick on a shelf and feel guilty about.) For a less expensive “you fantasize about living like Laura Ingalls Wilder: let me help you out!” gift, you could give her this hand-cranked coffee grinder so that she can hand-grind the wheat while the blizzard rages outside, or else spend ten to fifteen minutes hand-grinding coffee beans for one 12-cup pot.

There are, in fact, a lot of things you can make from scratch, and some of them are great, if you want to spend a lot of time rolling out pasta dough, for instance. I received a pasta maker as a gift because I requested one. I have used it … hmm. Twice in twenty-five years? I think? Anyway, this pasta-maker is cheap and if I’ve used mine about once per decade after requesting it, you can pretty much guarantee it’ll just be a shelf space hog for someone who didn’t request it.

Here is a yogurt maker that produces a large vat of yogurt. Let me tell you the story of my mother’s yogurt maker. It was the 1980s, and like many 1980s-era children I liked my yogurt pre-sweetened and either fully flavored or with fruit on the bottom that I could stir in. My mother assured me that plain yogurt with jam stirred in was just like Dannon’s. I assure you that this was not remotely the case. I remember my mother’s yogurt maker taking up cabinet space for many years after she gave up and just bought me Dannon. Most people who eat yogurt want to eat something with a veneer of healthfulness but all the sugar of ice cream: wholesome unsweetened plain yogurt produced by the gallon is not actually what they’re looking for. They’d probably rather not admit that, though. Even to themselves.

Other things that most people are happy to buy from the store but you could give them equipment for making: cheese (this kit is just for mozzarella and ricotta), tofu (soybeans not included), plant milk (soybeans not included), peanut butter (as a side note, this machine apparently does not work at all), and sliced bread (that is a very fancy precise slicer, to be clear — they’ll still have to bake the bread). If all those seem like something your recipient might actually want, there’s also this sourdough starter kit so they can feel all nostalgic about the early pandemic.

A Miscellaneous Collection of Pointless Stuff

I usually have a section for terrible (bulky, overspecialized, dysfunctional) kitchen gadgetry but that section kind of got taken over by the Kitchen Hobby Stuff this year. But I really want to share some of these notably pointless items I found:

Do you know someone who would like to make tiny, seriously so tiny sandwiches over an open fire or maybe by holding the sandwich maker directly over a gas flame? No? Have I got a gadget for you! From the reviews: “Could only fit half a hot dog inside it.”
Possibly someone you know could use a specialized pickle fork with a fork holder you stick (with adhesive) to the side of the jar of pickles. It comes with three snaps you stick the fork holder to, after which I think you’re supposed to throw it away and buy a new set, I’m not sure.
Or how about a wind-up blender shaped like an outdoor motor that’s only big enough to stir stuff like coffee. Also, based on the reviews, it may not actually even work on coffee.
Also! This isn’t a kitchen item but was passed along by a friend specifically for this guide. A “keepsake charm” in a cute little box with a poorly written poem on it. Julia commented: “I feel like this is a gift for someone you are obligated to get something for, who is maybe in the habit of asking for money. Look at the message on the front of the box! Kitty doesn’t care if you are rich or poor. Stay poor! Kitty won’t mind! I can’t tell if it’s better for someone who loves or hates cats. I can see arguments in either direction.”

Cursed Clothing

Do you recall the memeified Three Wolf Moon t-shirt of years past? (OK, wow, probably plenty of you do not recall this. You could be a full-on grownup person and have been in preschool when that meme hit. That might actually make this gift funnier.) Anyway, here is a Three Possum Moon t-shirt.

A black t-shirt with a big full moon and three possums who all appear to be energetically singing opera at the moon. Their mouths are wide and their arms are spread wide.

What I particularly love about this shirt is the dramatic flailing the possums are doing; they look like they’re singing O Fortuna.

Or! Perhaps you know someone who’s got a dress code that requires a collared shirt; good news, cursed shirts are now available with buttons and collars. That one’s also available in “sloth riding a t-rex with laser eyes.”

I went looking for dresses in similarly cursed prints but you know, most of the dresses I found made me think, “I would wear that, if I wore dresses and would look good in this cut, it’s kinda cool,” which may actually just say bad things about my personal taste. I did, however, find this tube top, which looks like a giant bow tie directly over the boob area.

Books Are Always a Good Gift

Books make amazing gifts, all the more so when they’re hand-picked to match the recipient’s interests (or, you know, to do the opposite).

I had a book come out this year! Liberty’s Daughter, in which a girl growing up on a seastead is hired by someone with no money to investigate the disappearance of that woman’s sister. The book includes mystery, danger, the IWW (International Workers of the World) union, reality TV, an epidemic, and an atheist humanitarian aid group with a ship called the Mary Ellen Carter. If anyone you have to give gifts to flies one of those “don’t tread on me” flags, this book would be the perfect gift for pretending that you 100% sincerely assumed they would like it (they will likely be thoroughly annoyed by the time they’re done reading). If you’d like a signed copy, you can order one from either Uncle Hugo’s or Dreamhaven.

Some other books I really enjoyed this year that might either hit the spot or annoy the hell out of people on your gift list:

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan, a fantasy novel set in Inquisition-era Spain. Excellent gift for Jewish people, fantasy readers, and anyone who’s down with assuming that the Spanish Inquisition is the bad guys. Potentially upsetting gift for tradcaths.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, a fantasy novel set in the present day. Another excellent book for Jewish fantasy readers. A good passive-aggressive gift to a parent, or a person who played a parental role, who used their position in your life to make profoundly unreasonable demands of you.

You could pair it with Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmermann, which is also about parents making unreasonable demands on their kids, although the mother here is feckless rather than scheming. This is a YA novel and a good gift for fans of Dicey’s Song and other “teenagers left on their own” books, although I found the ending of this one particularly satisfying. The biggest villain in the book is a guidance counselor so if anyone you can’t stand works as a high school guidance counselor, you could just note that you heard that this book has a guidance counselor as an important character.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, a science fiction novel about people surviving an apocalypse, set on a remote tribal reservation in Northern Ontario. If you know any white dude gun-collecting survivalists, they’ll absolutely love this book right up until they realize they’re the bad guy.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is a ghost story set in a Minneapolis bookstore in 2020. (It actually starts in late 2019.) This would be a really good gift to anyone from Minneapolis, and a really bad gift to any of the suburbanites who send indignant letters to the Star Tribune about how very unsafe they feel when they drive through Minneapolis in their speeding SUV. Also an ideal (truly ideal) passive-aggressive gift to any white person who has ever claimed that their great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess.

Passive-Aggressive Charitable Gifts

I am delighted to share with you that the Cincinnati Zoo offers an “adopt your favorite animal” option where you just fill in whatever it is in their collection you wish to symbolically adopt, and they have an extensive collection of insects, all of which you can find listed and described in their “World of the Insect” exhibit section! Options include but are not limited to the Giant African Millipede (“its body is lined with many repugnatory defense glands. When the millipede is disturbed, these glands secrete a foul smelling and tasting liquid”); the Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (“sometimes cause serious damage to citrus and vegetable crops”); the Zebra Bug (“this handsomely marked insect is actually a species of cockroach”); the Bat Cave Cockroach (“This roach dominates a populous bat cave on a large tropical island. Countless roaches cover the cave’s walls and floor, and feed mostly on fresh bat guano”); and the Thorny Devil (“When disturbed, the males painfully clamp down with the especially large spines on their powerful hind legs and release a skunk-like odor”). You can also symbolically adopt a kangaroo (will fight anything that moves), a cockatoo (extremely loud), or a komodo dragon (false advertising: neither breaths fire nor flies).

I feel like the true ideal gift for a Republican relative this year would be a symbolic adoption of a wild orca, given the whole “sink the yachts” campaign some orcas have been engaging in. The Icelandic nonprofit Orca Guardians does non-invasive research on orcas and will allow you to symbolically adopt a specific individual orca for €30. Everything in the package arrives by e-mail. You could pair it with an inexpensive orca tree ornament if you also want something tangible.

I will also note that while MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders) does not offer a cutesy gift catalog they do allow for “tribute gifts” with an e-card. Usually my favorite international charity is IMC Worldwide (in part because they’re very good about not spending all the money I donated bugging me for more money) but this year I’m going to point people to MSF.

Happy holidays!

Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving Guides from Previous Years:

Upcoming book events for LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER

Posted on December 2, 2023 by naomikritzer

I will be reading and signing at Dreamhaven Books from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 6th, and signing at Uncle Hugo’s from 1-2 p.m. on Saturday, December 9th. I’ll sign anything I’ve written, it doesn’t have to be copies of the new book, and you are not required to buy the books on site.

If you aren’t local, and you would like one or more personalized signed copies, you can pre-order from either Dreamhaven or Uncle Hugo’s and specify how you want them personalized, and I can do that while I’m there. The bookstore will handle shipping it to you and barring some sort of USPS meltdown you should have them in time for holiday giving.

Here’s the ordering page for Uncle Hugo’s: http://unclehugo.com/prod/ah-kritzer-naomi.php (you can put personalization instructions in the “Special Instructions” when checking out).

Here’s the ordering page for Dreamhaven: http://dreamhavenbooks.com/product/libertys-daughter/ — again, they have a spot for “special instructions” during checkout.

Both booksellers also accept orders by phone.

(Yes, yes, I know what you REALLY want is my Bad Holiday Gifts post. I’m working on it!)

LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER comes out today!

Posted on November 21, 2023 by naomikritzer

Today is the release day of my new book, LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER.

Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review: “Kritzer shows off her worldbuilding chops in this impressive mystery set in a near future world.”

Cory Doctorow reviews it here: “There’s so much sf about “competent men” running their families with entrepreneurial zeal, clarity of vision and a firm confident hand. But there’s precious little fiction about how much being raised by a Heinlein dad would suuuck. But it would, and in Naomi Kritzer’s Liberty’s Daughter, we get a peek inside the nightmare.”

You can order Liberty’s Daughter from the publisher or from the bookstore of your choice. You can order signed copies from Uncle Hugo’s (online ordering page here) or Dreamhaven Books (online ordering page here) — I’m planning to go sign stock today, and I will also be doing a reading and signing at Dreamhaven on December 6th.

New Short Story, New Book

Posted on November 13, 2023 by naomikritzer

I had a short story come out this month in Uncanny called “The Year Without Sunshine.” It is set in South Minneapolis and you can read it free online here. If you prefer audio fiction, it’s also available on the Uncanny pocast.

I also have a book coming out on November 21st, Liberty’s Daughter.

You can order Liberty’s Daughter from the publisher or from the bookstore of your choice. Uncle Hugo’s has an online ordering page available and you can get a signed copy (because I will go in and sign copies once Don gets the books). Dreamhaven Books also has an online ordering page available and I will be doing a reading and signing there on December 6th.

Election 2023: Sample Ballot / Index of Posts

Posted on November 5, 2023 by naomikritzer

Hello to a bunch of people looking up this site on their phone from a voting booth! Here are links to (hopefully) all my posts about this year’s races. (If you scroll and don’t find what you want, try a search, but remember, I only write about races that appear on the ballot in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Here is my new post about researching a race from the voting booth, though, if you’re looking at this from elsewhere, and here is a set of Google Docs put together by someone else for school board races statewide — she tells you who’s endorsed by the teacher’s union vs who’s endorsed by the MN Parents Alliance, a hair-raisingly right-wing group.)

MINNEAPOLIS

Minneapolis has a City Council race this year but no school board race. There will be another round of citywide races (for City Council and Mayor) in 2025, when everyone will run for a four-year term.

WARD 1

Elliott Payne

WARD 2

Robin Wonsley

(No one else will appear on the ballot but there are a couple of write-in candidates campaigning actively enough to make it worth showing up to vote for Robin.)

WARD 3

Marcus Mills

WARD 4

Marvina Haynes, I guess, or maybe whichever Ward 4 friend doesn’t object to being my write-in protest vote of a lack of better candidates.

WARD 5

WARD 6

WARD 7

WARD 8

WARD 9

WARD 10

WARD 11

I would write in my cat before voting for either candidate on the ballot.

WARD 12

Aurin Chowdhury

WARD 13

Write in my cat.
Linea Palmisano I GUESS or maybe I’d write in one of my other cats.

More info on Ward 13 here.

SAINT PAUL

Saint Paul has a City Council race on the ballot (four-year terms, because our City Council and Mayor aren’t in sync) and a citywide School Board race (choose four).

Ward 1

Omar Syed
Anika Bowie
Suz Woehrle

More info on Ward 1 here.

Ward 2

Rebecca Noecker

Ward 3

Saura Jost
Isaac Russell
Troy Barksdale

More info on Ward 3 here.

Ward 4

Mitra Jalali

Ward 5

Hwa Jeong Kim
Nate Nins
David Greenwood-Sanchez

More info on Ward 5 here.

Ward 6

Nelsie Yang

Ward 7

Cheniqua Johnson
Pa Der Vang

More info on Ward 7 here.

Saint Paul School Board

Pick four (not ranked choice). I am probably voting for Carlo Franco, Zuki Ellis, Chauntyll Allen, and Yusef Carillo, but Erica Valliant is also a strong choice. More info on that race here.

Saint Paul City Question 1

A grumpy Yes vote.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like. ETA 11/7: Also! You can pre-order it directly from local bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and get a signed copy. And new today, you can read my short story (set in Minneapolis), The Year Without Sunshine, for free on Uncanny Magazine, if you’d like.

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, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney in Minneapolis who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students, or this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

“How do I know who to vote for?” — the quick guide

Posted on November 5, 2023 by naomikritzer

I have a longer, more in-depth how-to on researching candidates that I wrote in 2022, which you can read here, but what I want to offer here is a shorter version for people who are, say, reading this while standing in a voting booth.

ETA: If you are trying to vote in a Minnesota school board race, someone (tallmomrunning on Tiktok/IG) has put together a guide to all the school board races in the state in 2023. It tells you who’s endorsed by the Education Minnesota affiliate (the teacher’s union) vs who’s endorsed by the MN Parents Alliance (the Moms-for-Liberty affiliate of wannabe book-banners and anti-gay bullies.) In most races, that’s really all you need to know!

If you’re picking between a Republican and a Democrat, vote for the Democrat. (Very, very occasionally this will be the wrong answer, but usually in those cases it’s a district that’s so tilted it won’t matter.)
Visit the candidate websites, if they have them. Google the candidate name + the office they’re seeking to (usually) turn them up. If you don’t find anything that way, try looking on Facebook (many small campaigns set up a page on Facebook.)
Check for endorsements. Even in a non-partisan race, progressive candidates often have endorsements from labor unions, LGBTQ+ groups, and local Democratic politicians. On the other hand, if you see endorsements from Republicans, or from groups with names that give you bad vibes, trust your gut. You can generally treat it as an endorsement if someone appears with a candidate at an event, says nice things about them publicly during the campaign, or co-hosts a fundraiser.

In my area, there’s a group called the Minnesota Parents’ Alliance (with local affiliates) that’s hair-raisingly conservative and endorses candidates. Every single candidate endorsed by a group like this, you can assume you should not vote for.
Check for news coverage. Searching for a candidate’s name + controversy (or their name, the office + controversy) might get you helpful hits.
Check the reddit subforum for your area; there is frequently discussion of local races and redditors do not mince words.
Ask your friends. Talking to people you know about the upcoming races in your area is a GREAT idea and they might have already done the research, and can just tell you what they found.
If you have time, check to see if there was a candidate forum (the League of Women Voters sponsors many of these, and posts them on YouTube) that you can watch. (That’s probably not helpful if you’re standing in a voting booth.)
It is OK to vote based on incomplete information. Also, if there are four school board seats open and you can find only two candidates you like, it’s still worth voting for those two candidates.

Popular dog whistles to watch for in school board races: “parental rights” (they mean that in a bad way); “divisive social issues” (they mean that LGBTQ kids should have to stay in the closet and Black kids shouldn’t be allowed to talk about racism); “should be taught how to think, not what to think” (means that schools should not be allowed to say that slavery was bad). If someone’s website makes fun of mask mandates or objects to vaccination requirements, that’s another huge red flag. Candidates who talk a lot about how schools want too much money or aren’t providing a good “return on investment” are usually conservatives trying to redirect attention away from their desire to ban books. Anyone who talks about social-emotional learning (SEL) like it’s a bad thing or uses the term “critical race theory” is an automatic no from me.

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Question 1 (the Sales Tax question)

Posted on November 2, 2023 by naomikritzer

Saint Paul ballots will include the following question:

CITY QUESTION 1 (St. Paul)

1.0% SALES TAX FOR IMPROVEMENTS TO STREETS, BRIDGES, AND PARKS

Should the City of Saint Paul establish a one percent (1%) sales and use tax over the next 20 years to generate $738,000,000 to repair and improve streets and bridges, $246,000,000 to improve parks and recreation facilities, and associated bonding costs? A vote YES means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax. A vote NO means repairs and improvements to streets, bridges, parks, and recreation facilities would not be funded through a new one percent (1%) sales and use tax.

You can vote yes, or no.

I’m going to vote yes, but I’ll admit I’m doing it kind of grudgingly, despite being a Democrat who is generally happy to pay more money for better services.

Continue reading →

Election 2023: Saint Paul School Board

Posted on November 2, 2023 by naomikritzer

There are four open school board seats, and this race is not done with instant runoff, you just vote for four people and the top four vote-getters win.

On the ballot:

Zuki Ellis (incumbent)
Chauntyll Allen (incumbent, DFL-endorsed)
Yusef Carillo (DFL-endorsed and not an incumbent but he served on the school board previously to fill out Marchese’s term)
Erica Valliant (DFL-endorsed)
Carlo Franco (DFL-endorsed)
Gita Zeitler
Abdi Omer

Sahan Journal did interviews with every candidate. There was a LWV forum that Zuki Ellis, Chauntyll Allen, Yusef Carillo, and Carlo Franco all attended but the others did not; you can also see the screening interview done by SPFE with Yusef, Erica, and Carlo (although I didn’t get very far because FB video is so frustrating to watch for anything long-form — there’s no easy way to skip forward/backward).

Cut for length.

Continue reading →

Election 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 6

Posted on October 30, 2023 by naomikritzer

Another fast one. The incumbent is Nelsie Yang. On the ballot:

Nelsie Yang
Gary Unger

Gary Unger

Gary is a retired engineer and it took me a while to find his campaign website, so I looked for one on Facebook and found his personal page, which is top to bottom stuff like “[picture of a sad dog] I’m 15 today and I bet I can’t get even ONE SHARE,” shared three times in a row.

He’s endorsed by Republicans, took a strong stance against the Summit Bike trail (he’s at least honest about believing that it doesn’t need the sewer/water lines replaced, either), and says he wants a return to the basics (which he defines as roads, trash collection, and public safety.) He has not filled out any questionnaires and did not show up for the Ward 6 LWV forum. (ETA: the Republican site that recommended him is apparently not official, so I have changed my statement to say that he is endorsed by Republicans, i.e. the people running the site, vs. by the Republicans, i.e. officially by the party.)

Nelsie Yang

Nelsie was elected last time and has been a strong progressive on the St. Paul council. She also showed up for the LWV forum and has filled out all the questionnaires despite not having much in the way of an actual opponent. I would vote for Nelsie.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this music teacher at Washington Technology Magnet in St. Paul, who is raising money to buy guitars so that students don’t have to share 1 guitar between 4 students.

Elections 2023: Saint Paul City Council, Ward 2

Posted on October 30, 2023 by naomikritzer

Rebecca Noecker is the incumbent and has three people running against her, none of them very impressive.

On the ballot:

Rebecca Noecker
Noval Noir
Bill Hosko
Peter Butler

Bill Hosko

Bill Hosko’s hobby is running for office. He is not very good at it. In 2015 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “no parking meters” platform. In 2019 he ran for the Ward 2 seat on a “we should spend huge amounts of money to install turnstiles around every light rail station; also, taxes are too high; also, we should spend huge amounts of money holding referendums on literally everything” platform. In 2021 he ran for mayor on a “turnstiles” platform and also on the grounds that Mayor Carter had weeds in his yard, which Bill videotaped. And last year he ran for Ramsey County Board on a platform that went something like, “crime is bad.” Also he still wanted turnstiles. This year, he doesn’t mention turnstiles; his unreadable, inaccessible website (it’s entirely blurry graphics without alt-text) basically says things are bad and taxes are too high. Given his commitment to losing elections very badly, I’m surprised that he apparently hates ranked choice voting (or at least did in 2017) since without it, he’d get even fewer votes than he does already. He’s endorsed by Republicans, because in St. Paul, they’ll take what they can get. (ETA: the site with the recommended candidates for Republicans to vote for is not an official Republican site, so I have changed my statement to say he’s endorsed by Republicans, i.e. the people running that site, vs. the Republicans, i.e. the actual party.) Anyway, for so many reasons, as I noted in 2021, I would not want Bill as a City Council rep or for that matter as a neighbor.

Peter Butler

Peter Butler has an even weirder hobby than Bill’s, which is to organize petition drives to put stuff on the ballot in St. Paul, turn in his petition, and when it fails because a bunch of the signatures got declared invalid, he sues the city. (Should you want to fact-check this, pay attention to middle initials: there’s a Peter Butler who’s a drunk driver but it’s a different person.)

He did have one tantalizingly innovative proposal, which was to bring back boarding houses: “Many older residents have spare rooms and can remain in their homes by earning rental income and having someone to help with household chores.” He shows absolutely zero self-awareness of the fact that this idea clashes with his firm commitment to single-family zoning (“Should St. Paul allow at least three units of housing on any residential lot? Why or why not?” “No. I strongly support neighborhood preservation. Entry level homes (pricewise) will be demolished for the lot, removing affordable homes from first-time homebuyers.”) He’s another “absolutely not.”

Noval Noir

Noval Noir apparently didn’t fill out the questionnaires for either the East Metro Voter Guide or the MinnPost election guide; she was interviewed and was mostly pretty incoherent. Her main issue is the opioid crisis and she has a list of things she wants to do that are a mix of things that we’re already doing (collecting data, harm reduction, educating people on opiate risks, tracking prescriptions), things that would genuinely be a good idea and have broad support among Democrats (expand treatment facilities), and things that are extremely nonspecific (“Develop a long-term strategy to combat the opioid crisis, recognizing that it is a complex issue that will require sustained effort and resources.”) I guess if I really really hated Rebecca Noecker she’d be my pick. I guess.

Rebecca Noecker

Rebecca Noecker is a normal Democrat and I would vote for her if I lived in Ward 2. I feel like possibly I’m damning her with faint praise here, but I am trying to get through the last few races and all you really need to know here is, “she’s fine, and even if she made you mad in the last four years, you probably don’t want to vote for any of her opponents.”

Will Tell Stories For Food

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