Tag Archives: Ying Vang-Pao

Elections 2022: Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, District 6

Posted on by
1

This is an open seat and a competitive race. On the ballot:

Ying Vang-Pao
Mai Chong Xiong

During the primary, I was pretty sure that these were the two candidates who would advance and said I’d take a closer look in the general. At the time, their priorities sounded pretty similar and while Mai Chong had more endorsements that impressed me, I thought Ying might be worth a second look.

So in the intervening months they have differentiated themselves a lot more significantly. Ying’s endorsements are a lot more conservative: she has Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher (who I do not like at all) and Dino Guerin. She also lists an endorsement from Alexander Bourne, which is sure a choice a person can make.

Mai Chong’s endorsements include the somewhat more centrist Jane Prince, but they also include Nelsie Yang, former mayor Chris Coleman (not to be confused with former mayor and overall slimeball Republican Norm Coleman — Chris is an actual Democrat, don’t get him mixed up with Norm!), current mayor Melvin Carter, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, and the DSA.

I took a look at Ying’s Priorities section, which she’s expanded a lot since the summer. Her second item is “more resources for law enforcement” (and she’s entirely vague about what she means there — more officers? higher wages? more military-grade weaponry?) Then I got to this one:

Finish the Yellow and Purple light rail lines, connecting the East Side to the light rail system, which will provide for higher density development, leading to more jobs and business opportunities and make the East Side more attractive to residents, business, and visitors. 

…and thought, wait, there are more light rail lines in progress for St. Paul? and looked this up. Both of these proposed lines are BRT, Bus Rapid Transit (here’s the Metro Transit page on Purple Line plans), and it’s the Gold Line not the Yellow Line. These are weird details to get wrong on your website.

Mai Chong talks about BRT on her Vision and Values page (“Ensure that Bus Rapid Transit Lines are fully funded and stops are accessible for those that need them most; Invest in electric buses and cut down diesel pollution through our neighborhoods.”) Though she doesn’t call for “finishing” the Gold and Purple lines, possibly because they’re scheduled and thus in the category of “stuff that’s going to happen, we just need to focus on making sure they’re done properly.”

One of the other places that their differences are really clear is on housing. They both talk about affordable housing:

Ying says, “More affordable housing by making Ramsey County more attractive for private investment in housing, thus increasing housing supply and keeping rents down. Rent is too high, but the resulting homelessness is caused by an acute shortage of homes, so by providing conditions that make it easier to build more homes where people of all income levels want to live – such as making more real estate available for housing, reducing regulations, making it faster to obtain required permits, and providing transportation options for new developments, we can end homelessness.”

Mai Chong says, “We need to decommodify housing. We need to build a system in which every single person in our community has dignified housing. As your County Commissioner, I will fight for all of us and ensure that we build deeply affordable housing at and below 30% AMI; fully fund and push for low-interest loan programs that rehabilitate & repair homes and businesses to remove lead, improve energy efficiency, and install solar panels; build a pipeline for people who are homeless to obtain long-term, sustainable, and dignified housing.”

I will note that I feel like both of these answers on housing are problematic because I’m very much in the both/and/all school on “should we be addressing the housing shortage with public housing or with private development.” We need both, as much as possible, as quickly as possible. (It’s interesting that neither talks about the rent control ordinance, although Mai Chong talks about tenant’s rights further down in her housing section, and Ying does not.)

Anyway — at this point, this is a fairly straightforward decision for me. While there are things about Ying’s approach that I appreciate, I don’t like her “more resources for police” stance and I actively dislike some of her endorsements. I would absolutely vote for Mai Chong Xiong if I lived in District 6.

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 for a DonorsChoose fundraiser for a classroom in St. Paul and found an English teacher at Harding Senior High who would like snacks for her students. In her project intro, she notes, “With a new schedule this year, some students have to wait a very long time to eat lunch everyday. When students are hungry, they cannot focus and most students can’t afford to buy their own snacks.” This made me curious about their schedule. Some students at Harding don’t get to eat lunch until 1 p.m. School starts at 8:30. When I eat breakfast at 7:30 I’m ravenous by noon, never mind 1 p.m. Feeding kids is an absolute no-brainer, seriously.

Advertisement

Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, District 6

Posted on by
Reply

This is an open seat and a bunch of people are running, some more seriously than others.

Greg Copeland
Foua-Choua Khang
Clara O. Ware
Dino Guerin
Nick Muhammad
Ying Vang-Pao
Mai Chong Xiong (DFL-endorsed)

Greg Copeland

Greg Copeland is a Republican from the “let me tell you how much I love guns” wing of the party. He filed in Ward 6 because he was in Ward 6 before redistricting, and was dismayed to find out that he now lives in Ward 3. Given this, he would have preferred to run in Ward 3, and has no interest in moving (especially as he’s not going to win). Anyway, don’t vote for him.

Foua-Choua Khang

Foua-Choua Khang’s website was so hard to find, I didn’t run across it until I was researching Dino Guerin and turned it up in a Yahoo News article about the candidates. She works for Blue Cross/Blue Shield as a “Community and County Liaison,” which seems like a relevant position, and she’s worked on health disparities (specifically diabetes) in the Hmong community. She did respond to the East Metro Voter Guide questionnaire and I liked some of her answers: it’s a very business-centric questionnaire but in response to a question about what “employment-related proposals” she’d support and whether she understands that sick time rules are extremely inconvenient for employers (“What steps would you take to understand the impact of a policy on the many types of businesses in Ramsey County and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?”) she notes that her 16-year-old son was required to return to work making sandwiches before his quarantine was finished.

But she has no endorsements and doesn’t seem to be running a particularly active campaign. She looks like she’d probably be good in a lot of jobs, but I would not vote for her.

Clara O. Ware

Clara Ware’s campaign website is a Facebook page that was last updated in March to say that a fundraiser had been cancelled. You can read her responses to the East Metro Voter Guide here. Again, she looks like someone who’d probably be good in a lot of jobs, but I would not vote for her.

Dino Guerin

Dino Guerin was a City Council rep and a County Commissioner back in the 1990s, then crashed and burned with a criminal conviction over bad checks due to gambling debts in 2000. He opted for jail time over a conviction that would keep him from running again, and he’s been trying to make a political comeback on a regular basis ever since. His lone endorsement is Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who I don’t like, and his top issue is crime. I would not vote for Dino.

Nick Muhammad

Nick Muhammed runs a group called Black Civic Network. He has no endorsements listed on his website although this article about the six candidates lists Black Women Rising as an endorsement.

His website uses the term ADOS a lot. This stands for “American Descendent of Slavery,” and it’s a controversial term within the group it purports to describe, since it deliberately separates Black people whose ancestors were brought specifically to the US or future US and sold into slavery from Black people who came here as immigrants (some of whom are also descended from kidnapping victims, especially if they came from the Caribbean.) The Wiki article has a roundup.

Ying Vang-Pao

Ying Vang-Pao and Mai Chong Xiong are the two candidates I think are solid, qualified, and I might want to vote for. Ying Vang-Pao is a daughter of General Vang Pao, a major figure in the Hmong community until his death in 2011. (He had about 25 kids, I discovered as I tried to figure out a comparison to “daughter of General Vang Pao” that non-Hmong readers would grasp, and basically failed.) Ying is endorsed by retiring County Commissioner Jim McDonough along with a number of other notable local political figures. Her background includes political activism, volunteer work, and working with county resources to get needed help for her disabled child. She lists her top three issues as affordable housing, the environment, and public safety.

Mai Chong Xiong (DFL-endorsed)

Mai Chong Xiong is endorsed by the DFL and a wide range of other groups and individuals (most striking to me is that she’s endorsed by both the DSA and by Council Member Jane Prince — typically endorsements tend to sort themselves out by “this person got the lefties, that person got the centrists,” that’s not the case here.) Her background includes working as Council Member Dai Thao’s legislative aide. She lists her top three issues as affordable housing, the environment, and living wage jobs.

I am running out of time because the primary is TUESDAY. I think odds are really high it’ll be Mai Chong Xiong vs. Ying Vang-Pao in the general election and they both look like strong candidates. If I were voting in this race, I think I would cast my ballot for Mai Chong, although when the general rolls around I might take a closer look at Ying. I like the fact that Mai Chong has experience as a legislative assistant (that can be very helpful in terms of knowing how you get things done) and has such a wide range of endorsements (that suggests that a lot of people just think she’d be good at the job.)

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. You will also be able to get them from Uncle Hugo’s when it reopens at 2716 E 31st St! (and maybe by mail order now? I’m not sure how much mail order Don is doing while getting ready to re-open.)

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. (Also, I owe some embarrassing readings of my juvenalia to the Internet.)

I also went looking and found two DonorsChoose fundraisers for classrooms at Bethune Community School in North Minneapolis: math manipulatives for pre-K students (this is such a good idea) and a nice book organizer for a first-grade classroom where the shelving is coming apart.