This race just has no good option, I’m sorry. I’m not sure there’s even a “least bad” option. There’s possibly a “least bad on [specific issue]” case to be made for Linea and maybe a similar case for Kate.

On the ballot:

Linea Palmisano (DFL-endorsed, incumbent)
Kate Mortenson (DFL)
Zach Metzger (DFL)
Bob “Again” Carney Jr (Republican)

Bob “Again” Carney Jr (Republican)

All you really need to know about BobAgain is that his website still says he’s running for governor, and when he participated in the Ward 13 LWV forum he said that if he won the election, he would refuse to take office, thus (according to his theories) allowing Linea to stay in office. If you want Linea to stay in office, vote for Linea, not Bob “Clown and Waste of Everyone’s Time” Carney.

Zach Metzger (DFL)

Zach Metzger presents himself as the most progressive option but has zero endorsements, which always gives me pause. When I asked about him on Twitter two weeks ago, I found out he’s also known as Lavish Mack and is a piece of work. (From a conversation I can no longer see all of: “He screamed at a Jewish girl in one of these meetings and called her a colonizer and some other antisemitic shit too. She was like 15.”) There was more, but in the intervening two weeks he participated in a protest and is now the focus of a right-wing-two-minutes-hate and you know what, he has no chance of winning anyway, so even if I can find it all again I’m probably not going to put it here. I’m just going to say, I wouldn’t vote for him even though the other options are also all terrible, because while his politics are more left-wing, what I heard indicates strongly that he’s a bad person.

Kate Mortenson and Linea Palmisano

It’s the face-off of centrist white ladies! How do you even begin to choose? Local DFL guy Mike Norton resigned from his DFL post so he could endorse Kate, and I talked to him about why; for him, it clearly came down to policing and accountability and the hope that Kate will be less terrible on this than Linea.

Linea, to be clear, is absolutely terrible on police accountability! Back in 2022, the City Council voted on creating a Police Oversight Committee, and you can read the minutes here. There was a proposal brought forward, and then a bunch of amendments proposed and voted on. Linea: voted against a proposal to make it so committee members can’t be removed at the pleasure of the mayor; voted against a proposal to make it a committee of citizens who are not police officers, vs. a makeup that includes police officers; voted against allowing the oversight committee to recommend discipline; voted against requiring the police department to act with reasonable promptness regarding discipline for misconduct; voted against whistleblower protections; voted against requiring that vacancies on the committee be promptly filled. That was all in one meeting.

But Kate, okay, on her website she talks about using police buyback to provide extra patrols in Ward 13 (I am really not convinced this is a great option) and about implemeningt a surveillance state. (“Flock Safety is a company that uses sophisticated software-camera technology to capture license plate data and make that available for investigatory purposes ONLY. As car crime moves through the neighborhood, Flock Safety can map and match plate data, supporting prosecutorial outcomes with facts and evidence.  I’m eager to fund a pilot for this program that a former Police Chief from Minneapolis has collaborated with and also endorses.”) (The ACLU is not a fan.)

I e-mailed both of them, to ask Kate to clarify her stance on buyback (she said, among other things, “Overall — my point is that we need new ideas and new approaches to address our pressing problems. If one doesn’t have ideas, I suppose they won’t ever have a bad idea, but they also won’t have any good ones. I have a track record of innovating for a better result,” which is not that far off from the case Mike made for her — she’ll at least have new bad ideas? maybe some of them will be less bad?) and to ask Linea if she had a stance on Flock Safety because for all I know, she thinks it’s a great idea, too. Linea did not reply. And, I mean, I am not one of her constituents — she’s under no obligation to reply to me.

Former Park Board guy Chris Meyer wrote a thoughtful thread making his case for Linea basically due to transit. Regarding policing, he thinks that it fundamentally won’t matter which one is elected — there will be zero cases where the Ward 13 rep is the deciding vote. And he thinks Linea is significantly better on transit, and that does matter because the council doesn’t like to overrule someone on transit routes in their ward: “the election could be very consequential for, say, the implementation of the E-line Bus Rapid Transit line, or whatever the next bike lane controversy is.” Kate’s website says she wants to “retain and restore parking” and does not mention transit anywhere on the site that I could find. The only comment I could find her making about transit anywhere was a reply to Chris on Twitter where she said “After 10 years with the representation we’ve had— and with the problems we have, monumentally bigger than: bike today, take the bus, walk or drive..c’mon. Try something new. We’ll get there, whole, not in parts. I got you.” Which, I will be honest: I have no idea what she’s trying to say here. Linea’s website, to give her credit where it’s due, talks about transit a fair amount, including BRT.

Ward 13 residents should absolutely be thinking about transit, because in addition to being wealthy, this ward is old. There’s this belief that you’ll see pretty regularly from the Senior DFL Caucus that the elderly require parking spaces, but in fact, one of the two things that I’ve most often seen force an older person into a move they didn’t want to make was the loss of the ability to drive, which can happen extremely suddenly. (The other one: stairs. But that’s actually a lot easier to solve in most houses than car dependency.) A robust public transit network that reaches every neighborhood in the city — paired with nice, clear, safe sidewalks — is one of the most crucial things to have if you want to age in place!

Anyway. I mentioned earlier that Linea Palmisano did not e-mail me back, and that she’s allowed to blow me off. If I were a constituent and I’d gotten no response to an e-mail: for that reason alone, I would vote for Kate Mortenson. But I have to figure that if she were not reasonably responsive to her constituents, Linea would have been voted out years ago. If you’re a constituent and have been blown off by Linea when you’ve reached out to her with questions or concerns, definitely vote for Kate.

If I lived in Ward 13 and had found Linea responsive when I’d had problems, I am still disgusted by her stance on policing so I would write in a friend who lived in Ward 13 as my #1, and probably grudgingly vote for Linea as my #2, because I agree with Chris, she’s very unlikely to be the decisive vote on a policing issue but could have a significant impact on transit. (Meanwhile, one of my friends commented on Chris’s thread that, and I quote, “I would personally eat my own uterus before I would vote for [either] candidate.” Which: also valid. As I said at the top: this is one of those frustrating races where your vote actually matters, and yet none of your choices are particularly good ones.

ETA: late last night, I got a long, detailed e-mail from Linea answering my questions about her stance on police buyback and Flock Safety. Regarding buyback, a couple of points she made: Buyback patrols “have a place, and reasonable minds can disagree about it’s philosophy, but they “make the most sense as a tactic to flood a certain area with police to suppress intense spurts of violent crime or to protect a particular place at a particular time, such as a sporting event or community event” — she thinks that Kate’s theory, that more cops should be in Ward 13 just because people like seeing cops, “would be the worst way to use our very limited law enforcement resources.” Since buyback depends on overtime work, and since MPD is “operating at a severe deficit of staffing,” the resources are just limited and Ward 13 is just not a sensible place to run extra patrols, based on the data.

She also doesn’t like Flock. First, because of privacy and surveillance concerns; second, because lots of other privacy-invading surveillance options are cheaper and better, so if people do want their privacy invaded, it’s still a bad option. (She noted Ring cameras and also something called FUSUS — “In an active situation, like a burglary in progress, [FUSUS] allows MPD to ‘see’ what is going on so that they can see firsthand and know what kind of first responders to send and what they are walking into, realtime. [Also, it’s intended for] more of a downtown nightlife kind of use.”)

Anyway, I appreciate her getting back to me on this.

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