If you live in Minnesota Senate District 60, there is a Special Election happening this month. There is a PRIMARY ELECTION on January 14th, and a general election on January 28th. This is a deeply blue district; the real election is the primary.

There’s also a special election happening in 40B on January 28th. That’s outside the area I write about, so I’ll just say, I sure hope the person running lives in the district this time, and please go vote for the DFLer on January 28th. This post is about SD 60, which is open because Senator Kari Dziedzic died really tragically of cancer at the end of December.

There are seven DFLers running in the primary (and a bonus person who remains on the ballot because it was too late to pull him off, more on that in a minute). Two people are running as Republicans. Residents of the district can vote in either primary, but only one of them.

Democrats running:
Doron Clark
Peter Wagenius
Iris Grace Altamirano
Monica Meyer
Joshua Preston
Amal Karim
Emilio César Rodríguez
* and still on the ballot but votes for him will not be counted: Mohamed Jama

Republicans:
Abigail Wolters
Christopher Robin Zimmerman

So I’ll tackle the Republican race first because it’s much more straightforward. Last fall, I e-mailed every Republican running in a Minneapolis or St. Paul district to ask who they thought had won the Presidential election of 2020. Abigail Wolters, who was running in 60B, didn’t respond. I e-mailed her again this time, and once again, she did not respond. CRZ, by contrast, promptly replied to my question on his Facebook to say that Biden won in 2020. It’s a low bar but it’s amazing how many Republicans don’t clear it! (I’m not sure CRZ even qualifies as a RINO — he’s a Republican only for the purpose of running — but he’d definitely be my pick for the Republican candidate in this race.)

On to the DFL. There are eight people on the ballot, seven in the race, and three who I think are genuinely viable candidates with enough support and momentum to potentially win. The three people I think are legitimately viable candidates are Doron, Peter, and Monica, if you want to skip straight to them (I’m going to talk about the others first, because I have less to say.)

The DFL Central Committee for SD60 sent out a questionnaire to all the DFLers who filed, and five of them returned it. You can find links to their questionnaires on the SD60 website. Doron, Peter, Monica, Amal, and Emilio filled it out; Iris, Joshua, and Mohamed did not. The League of Women Voters invited everyone to send in a three-minute video and posted the videos up on their website; Iris, Doron, Joshua, and Peter sent in videos. (Also CRZ and Abigail.) Finally, WedgeLive interviewed Doron, Monica, and Peter, and you can watch those interviews on YouTube (which I linked to) or download them as podcasts.

What’s Up With that Guy On the Ballot Who Isn’t Running

Mohamed Jama

I started this whole post last week and here’s what I noted about Mohamed Jama at the time: he’s a cofounder of the Cedar Riverside Youth Council and is a board member of various neighborhood organizations. He’s been involved in DFL politics for long enough to have been one of the people involved in a brawl at a caucus in 2014. That plus a lack of endorsements and an unimpressive website was a pretty big strike against him, but then former 60A candidate Sonia Neculescu turned up the fact that Mohamed had voted in another district on election day in November, thus attesting to being a resident of an entirely different district and thus ineligible to run in this one. To remind anyone who’s confused: according to Minnesota state law, you need to be a resident of a district for six months before you run to represent it. “Where do I live, really” can be a legitimately fuzzy question, but if you voted at a particular address you are legally attesting to the fact that you live at that address on that election day (which was less than six months ago). Anyway, he opted not to contest the residency challenge. Since it’s too late to reprint all the ballots, votes for Jama will not be counted. Do not vote for him.

Running But Unlikely to Win

Joshua Preston

Joshua Preston has a website, which I linked to, but it’s his personal website and makes no reference to his campaign. He also has a website of giraffe pictures drawn by people who probably shouldn’t be drawing giraffes (most of them public figures) which is very amusing.

He attended the SD 60 Central Committee meeting where they endorsed Doron Clark, where he gave a speech that talked about his reason for running. He thinks it’s problematic that with a single day for people to file, and a two-week campaign, the district is going to pick a State Senator who could hold that seat for decades, so he’s running on the promise that he will serve out the remainder of Kari’s term and not run for re-election in two years, and his focus will be on housing and homelessness (and in particular Native homelessness.) You can watch his speech on Twitter and also an exchange he had with Doron Clark where he made the rousing declaration, “the sidewalk doesn’t close! Third space exists wherever we are!” (I liked him.)

Emilio César Rodríguez

Emilio is running for Ward 3 City Council, and their website still says they are running for Ward 3 City Council. They filed a complaint asking to delay the State Senate election because the U of M students living in the district won’t be back yet when the primary happens; their social media commented that the complaint “hasn’t progressed.” They did fill out the SD60 questionnaire.

I will be really interested in reading about their campaign for Ward 3 City Council in a few months.

Iris Grace Altamirano

Iris ran for Minneapolis School Board in 2014 and was one of the DFL-endorsed candidates but opted to campaign with Don Samuels rather than the other DFL-endorsed candidate, Rebecca Gagnon. This created a huge stink at the time (I maintain it’s pretty weird that the DFL threw an absolute shit fit about her doing this and has now completely stopped caring about it, but whatever.) She has no endorsements and the main chitchat about her I’ve found on social media is someone retelling the saga of that school board race. She did not fill out the SD 60 questionnaire, but she did do a video for the LWV. Her website and her video focus overwhelmingly on her bio, pretty much nothing about policies or priorities.

Amal Karim

Amal has one endorsement (Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, 63A). If it seems like I’m putting a lot of emphasis on endorsements, it’s because they make a very straightforward proxy for so many other things that make you a contender in a (very, very short) race like this: allies, organizing capacity, fundraising capacity (most of the people in SD 60 do not know an election is happening and the ability to send people mailers saying “GUESS WHAT: YOU NEED TO GO TO THE POLLS AGAIN” is kind of irreplaceable).

Amal has served on the Hennepin County Library Board. Her most interesting biographical detail is that she’s been a Jeopardy! contestant.

When everyone initially filed and lots of people didn’t have any website up yet, I pulled up her LinkedIn. She worked for five years for the Constellation Fund, which provides philanthropic grants to a bunch of mostly very worthwhile community organizations. Prior to that, she worked for Educators for Excellence (an organization I feel deep suspicion towards) and she now works for the ECMC Foundation. Given her history with EfE I’d have questions about what she’d bring to education policy if I were considering voting for her (but I also don’t think she’s a real contender — my friends in Northeast have gotten mailers from Doron, Peter, and Monica, not from Amal.) She did fill out the SD60 Questionnaire.

The Three I Think Are Real Contenders

There are three people I think could actually win this seat: Doron Clark, Peter Wagenius, and Monica Meyer. They’ve all got a bunch of substantial big-name endorsements, and enough donations to print and send out mailers telling people in SD60 that an election is happening. (None of this is to say that you shouldn’t vote for one of the candidates I don’t think is likely to win. The only candidate you really shouldn’t vote for is Mohamed Jama, because he doesn’t live in the district and your vote won’t be counted.)

The good news is that I think all three of these people are genuinely pretty cool! What you’re choosing here is the person whose style and emphasis best aligns with what you want for your representative.

A note about the DFL endorsement: in a normal race, this is done at the Senate District Convention, and to some degree, what it’s measuring is the candidate’s ability to organize early enough to get supporters out to the caucuses, and to win over undecided convention delegates between the caucuses and the convention. Obviously there was not time to do this, this year, so instead the DFL Central Committee for Senate District (32 people, instead of a couple hundred) considered the candidates and endorsed one of them. Peter Wagenius unsuccessfully pushed for the committee to hold off on endorsement until the 15th (at which point they would presumably endorse the person who won the primary).

I have massive reservations about this endorsement process and I think anyone who hears “DFL endorsed” in this race should mentally append a little asterisk because 32 people is not what we normally mean by endorsement.

Doron Clark

Doron Clark is the former Senate District Chair for the SD 60 DFL. If you’re curious what the Senate District Chair does, the DFL actually has a nifty little manual that talks about it. Fundamentally what this says to me is that Doron is willing to do a time-consuming, unglamorous volunteer job that keeps the grassroots-level Democratic party work in Minnesota humming along.

Since he was endorsed by the SD 60 Central Committee (overwhelmingly, FYI — 23 out of 32 votes) I think it’s worth noting that all of these people saw him up close and saw how he worked. There are kind of two ways to spin this. You could say, “oh, of course they endorsed him; they’re his buddies.” Or you could say, “the people who have worked with him in a political context overwhelmingly think he’d be great at this.”

He has a lot of endorsements, including City Council reps Elliot Payne, Jason Chavez, Emily Koski, and Jamal Osman. (Looking at the Minneapolis Ward Map vs. the map of SD 60, I think SD 60 overlaps with parts of Ward 1 (Elliot Payne), Ward 3 (Michael Rainville), Ward 6 (Jamal Osman), and Ward 2 (Robin Wonsley). Elliot Payne was one of his very first endorsements, and one of the things that was striking early was how much enthusiastic and immediate support he got from within the district.

You can read his questionnaire here, watch his LWV video here, and watch his WedgeLive interview here. I sent him a question asking what he would want to try to make progress on this session, when the DFL does not have a trifecta. He replied to say that in general, he rejects a scarcity mindset (“and yet I know that the government is divided and that things will be difficult this year.”) He said he would start by pushing to eliminate or simplify the paperwork requirement for schools to get reimbursement for free lunches, which would bring a bunch of money to Minneapolis schools. He also noted that there were no Minneapolis Senators on the Education Finance or Policy committees; he wants to serve on Education Finance if he’s elected.

What strikes me about Doron: he’s ambitious (in the sense of wanting to pursue big sweeping changes), hard working, and well-liked by the people who work with him. The people endorsing him tend to highlight his connections to the district and the fact that he shows up; “he shows up” is a line that appears over and over in a range of contexts. He shows up to volunteer; he shows up to organize; he shows up to be supportive.

The two issues he hammers on the most are education and housing. One other note — he is still doing meet-and-greets (you can find the schedule here, interspersed with events where you can volunteer.)

Peter Wagenius

I have known Peter since college, and I reconnected with him the first time that Ed and I went to a Senate District Convention, in 2000, when our State Senator retired and there was a fairly intense endorsement fight. Peter was working for Julie Sabo’s campaign and talked me into supporting her, and then talked me into sticking around until after ten that night (we straight up do not do Senate District conventions like this any more) (thank GOD).

So honestly, if I lived in this district, I would absolutely vote for Peter, because he’s a long-time friend and one of the people who got me into local politics to begin with. I’ve also personally experienced his energy, organization, and ability to talk people into stuff (did I mention that when he talked me into staying at this convention until 10 p.m., I was pregnant?) all of which are great traits in politicians.

Peter currently works for the Sierra Club, but has done policy stuff for the legislature and the city in the past. He worked for Betsy Hodges, and before her, he worked for RT Rybak. He has a ton of noteworthy accomplishments in transit and environmental policy.

He is endorsed by Keith Ellison, Rep. Katie Jones, and (Ward 7) Council Rep Katie Cashman, among others. (I will note, he’s endorsed by a bunch of elected people I like, but I’m not sure any of them are from SD 60; I think Doron and Monica split the council reps who overlap the district, unless I’m reading the maps wrong, which is a possibility. The 60A rep endorsed Monica, and I think the 60B rep hasn’t endorsed anyone.) The people endorsing Peter tend to talk about his work, accomplishments (especially around transit), and effectiveness. The two issues he hammers on the most are education and the environment.

You can read his questionnaire here, watch his LWV video here, and watch his WedgeLive interview here.

I sent him a question asking what he would want to try to make progress on this session, when the DFL does not have a trifecta. He listed two things. First, the bonding bill: he would like to use it for solar on schools, electric school buses, and energy efficiency upgrades. “The second highest expense for our schools after teacher salaries is utility bills. The state can play a role in making sure we are sending less money to utilities and more money into the classroom.” Second is building more housing. He noted that this is one of three elements needed for affordable housing (the others being renter protections and government investments in affordable housing); he’s been working on land use reform with the Sierra Club, notes that this has been bipartisan in other states, and points to progress last year “including with the bill that I personally championed to protect cities from misinformed anti-housing litigation.”

The thing that really struck me about his style is that he is willing to be very blunt when talking about Republicans. In his WedgeLive interview he commented that when you’re on the Senate floor, there are decorum rules against questioning people’s motives, and that’s all very well and good when you’re actually on the Senate floor but Democrats should not feel remotely bound to pretend they think Republicans have good intentions when they’re anywhere else. A lot of policies that Republicans push, it’s straight up because they hate Minneapolis and want to do harm to Minneapolis residents, and it’s true and we should say it and not pretend they just have a lot of true and sincere concerns about whatever bullshit they’re pretending to be concerned about that day.

Monica Meyer

Monica Meyer was indirectly the person who first got me to become the sort of campaign volunteer that talked to voters: she was one of the two people who started Minnesotans United for All Families, in 2012, to fight against the Republican-sponsored ballot amendment that would have enshrined discrimination against same-sex marriage in our state constitution. I had dropped lit in prior years but I’d never doorknocked or phone banked prior to that campaign.

Monica’s background is in work for LGBTQ+ rights: she was the director of OutFront for decades, and more recently has worked for Gender Justice.

She is endorsed by Ilhan Omar, Rep. Sydney Jordan (60A), and Council Reps Robin Wonsley (Ward 2), Jeremiah Ellison (Ward 5), and Michael Rainville (Ward 3), among others. The Kari Dziedzic campaign did not explicitly endorse, but rolled over their campaign fund to Monica.

There was a fair amount of discussion on social media of the fact that she’s also endorsed by Jacob Frey. (A joint endorsement from Jacob Frey and Ilhan Omar, no less.) Does this make her the All of Mpls candidate, or does this indicate that she’s really good at building coalitions? (All of Mpls, to be clear, is the centrist “we love cops and parking” wing of the local DFL; I’m not a fan.) Having looked at what she’s said, who else she’s endorsed by (Take Action MN, for example), and a thread on Bluesky from a local politically-engaged person I follow, I think it is primarily that she’s someone who has, in her decades of public life, made a lot of connections from all over the DFL. There may also be a least a little bit of, she has less of a long-standing anti-car-culture track record than Peter or Doran. (It’s not that she has a pro-car-culture track record, either; she’s been working on other stuff.)

She’s also gotten some big donations from people I’m not wild about. (You can look at the large donations here — not just to her but to several other people running.) There was some speculation that some of this money is anti-Wagenius money from someone who hates Peter for bad reasons and thinks she’s a better bet than Doron. It is still a legitimate point of concern; there’s always pressure to dance with them what brung ya, as the saying goes.

You can read her responses to the SD60 DFL questionnaire here, and watch her WedgeLive interview here.

The people endorsing her talk about her compassion, her voice, and her vision. She’s someone who builds really big coalitions. (This article from 2012 about how Minnesotans United defeated the anti-marriage amendment goes into a ton of detail about the people that Monica brought in to that fight.)

In response to my question about what she’d work on this coming session (where a lot of bold progressive ambitions are just going to get stymied by the Republicans) she said, “I want to work on data privacy issues this session, which often have bipartisan support,” and went on to talk about how we needed to be sure that people’s information (especially people receiving gender-affirming care or getting abortions, as well as immigrant communities who had data collected for our Driver’s Licenses for All program) was not weaponized by the Trump administration.

So.

So yeah, honestly, I think all three of these people are great, and they’re great in different ways: style, experience, and focus. I would personally vote for Peter! but the reason that’s an easy call for me is because he’s a long-time friend. If I were coming into this cold, not knowing any of the candidates personally, I’d be torn. I like Peter’s track record of accomplishments and his effectiveness on transit and the environment; I also appreciate how confrontational he is about Republican bullshit. I like Doron for being the person that is almost universally described as someone who “shows up,” and I am struck by how much quick, enthusiastic support he got from people who’d worked with him in local politics. I like Monica for being someone who knows how to build big coalitions and who doesn’t write off anyone who might be willing to work with you on something you care about, and I am struck by the fact that she demonstrated that by getting a joint endorsement letter from Ilhan Omar and Jacob Frey.

They’re all progressive Democrats who agree on most issues of substance, but I think that Doron would bring more focus to education issues; I think Peter would bring more focus to transit and the environment; and I think Monica would bring more focus to LGBTQ+ civil rights and reproductive rights issues, including stuff that might slip by other representatives because it’s not something they’ve dealt with. (And to be clear, I think they would all vote the same way on any bills on any of these issues but I think they have different areas where they’d be showing leadership, authoring bills, and pushing for things to happen.)

Anyway. The primary is on Tuesday the 14th and you can find your polling place here. I know it’s frustrating when there isn’t an obvious choice, but “all these people are good in different ways” is a really good problem to have.

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