I’m back from South Korea, super jet-lagged and foggy, but this is a very straightforward one so I should be okay, right?
On the ballot:
Kim Crockett (GOP)
Steve Simon (DFL)
Kim Crockett is frankly despicable. She’s a proponent of Trump’s big lie and has been completely open about her desire to make it harder for people to exercise their right to vote. On her website she says we should “protect vulnerable citizens” and says “the elderly, homeless, and non-English speaking citizens are being exploited for their votes. Why do election rules allow and encourage this?” — she’s previously questioned the right of disabled people and non-English-speakers to vote and I read this as more of the same.
On her Twitter feed, she retweeted an adulatory post about Giorgia Meloni, who is, at minimum, fascist-adjacent, and a tweet saying “Never Forget what they did to us” with a clip from Halloween 2020 suggesting safe ways for children to have fun during the pre-vaccine pandemic Halloween.
She’s whined about “ad hominem attacks” which is hilarious because she’s genuinely an incredibly terrible person. Why would I trust a really bad person, a liar and conspiracy theorist, a racist and ableist, someone who won’t even commit to accepting the results of the election she’s running in, to run elections? As I noted back in August, the Republican party has made it abundantly clear that they have complete contempt for the entire concept of government of, for, and by the people. No one should trust any Republican with elections, in Minnesota or any other state, but especially not Kim Crockett.
ETA: Also her husband is a huuuuuuuuuge fan of voter intimidation. He’s not the one running, but when you’re running for a job overseeing elections and you’re married to someone who goes to a Tea Party Patriots meeting to talk about how Republicans should round up family members who are “deputies or sheriffs” to be “part of a SWAT team” on election day, you get no benefit of the doubt from me. Kim Crockett should be allowed nowhere near this job!
Steve Simon has done an excellent job — in particular, he did a really good job in 2020 dealing with the complexities of elections in a pandemic. I would absolutely and without hesitation vote for Steve Simon even if his opponent were one of the handful of Republicans standing up against Trump; under the circumstance I would crawl over broken glass to vote for Steve, but fortunately, thanks to Steve, I’ll have lots of better options, including no-excuses in-person absentee voting. Vote for Steve, who will never make you crawl over broken glass to cast your ballot (okay, maybe I should have waited until I was less jet-lagged to write this post…?)
In addition to writing political commentary, I write science fiction and fantasy. My book that came out in April 2021, Chaos on CatNet, takes place in a future Minneapolis. It’s a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet and signed copies of both books are usually available from Dreamhaven and the NOW REOPENED Uncle Hugo’s (it’s at 2716 E 31st St in Minneapolis, in the former Glass Endeavors.)
I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, but you can make a donation to encourage my work! I get a lot of satisfaction watching fundraisers I highlight getting funded (or, in the case of the Movement Voter fundraiser, continuing to raise money past their goal). I explained back in May why I’m fundraising for the Movement Voter PAC and that fundraiser is still active.
I also went looking and found a cool DonorsChoose fundraiser for a classroom in Minneapolis: a science teacher at Sullivan STEAM magnet needs some better computers so his students can actually program the cool robots they got.
Will Tell Stories For Food 