December Newsletter
Dear Mom
by Alden Brown
(Editor’s Note- Alden Brown has changed the name of his column from The Resistance to Dear Mom because Joe Biden won the election. His mother lives in Oklahoma.)
Donald Trump really lost.
I know he says he didn’t, but the votes have been counted … over and over … and Joe Biden is President-Elect.
This may be hard for you to believe given all the folks in the assisted living center who argue he didn’t. No voter fraud has been found and Trump’s court cases have been thrown out. Joe Biden will take the oath of office on Jan. 20.
I’m sorry I can’t give you a more diplomatic answer as to why your guy keeps saying he won when he didn’t.
Trump lies.
I know you think all politicians lie, but Trump lies more than any other president in history. They’ve kept count. He is the Wayne Gretzky of liars. Historians of deception will look back on Trump as the great one.
And Trump needs money.
He’s raised about $170 million with his falls claims, according to the New York Times. It looks like he can spend that money on legal bills, bad debt, campaigns, new TV programs or just about anything he wants.
Trump lost, but I don’t think he is going away. He appears to be capable of lighting himself on fire as many times a day as we are willing to watch. Those of us who were an unwilling captive audience to the Trump Presidency will gladly turn elsewhere.
Others will remain loyal regardless of how ridiculous the claim or who is hurt.
Do you remember Aunt Ramona on Georgia’s side of the family? Tall with the beehive hairdo. The one who always sent the nice homemade fruitcake every Christmas. She taught civics and loved to volunteer when election time rolled around. Did it every year.
Those are the kind of people who are receiving death threats from Trump and his fanatic followers.
Can you imagine Ramona changing votes? Lord help us all.
While Trump and his conspiracy theorists are trying to destroy democracy, the pandemic he ignored is killing thousands a day.
Please keep wearing a mask even when you drive your friends to the Git-n-Go to get smokes. Please! I love you. I’d like to see you again next year when the pandemic is behind us. We’re so close.
I am so excited that Joe Biden is our president. He takes the pandemic seriously and will get the vaccine out as soon as possible.
I’ll probably drive down on I-35. It’s a bumpy road with all the years of neglect at different spots. It sure will be nice if President Biden can get some support for infrastructure, something both parties have been talking about for decades.
Shoot, I might even drive down there in an electric car before long. Wouldn’t that be something?
I love you,
Your democratic son
ELECTION RESULTS
It took a long time for Donald Trump’s administration to admit it, but Joe Biden will become our next President on January 20. There wasn’t much doubt about who won Minnesota. Despite the Trump campaign’s efforts to flip Minnesota, Biden carried Minnesota by 52.4% to 45.3%, the twelfth consecutive time the Democratic presidential candidate has carried Minnesota. This is a big improvement over 2016, when Hillary Clinton only beat Trump 46.4% to 44.9%. Closer to home, Biden carried Senate District 26 by almost 4700 votes, winning 53.5% to 44.1%. Trump had carried Senate District 26 in 2016 by 315 votes, winning 44.8% to 45.5%. Biden carried all but three of the Rochester precincts in Senate District 216 along with Haverhill and Rochester Townships. He received over 70% of the vote in four Rochester precincts. There was a dramatic difference in his performance between the two House districts. He won House District 26A 62.8% to 34.7%, but lost 26B 46.5% to 51.4%.
Tina Smith earned a six-year term in the U.S. Senate, getting 48.7% state-wide to 43.5% for Jason Lewis. In Senate District 26, she had 50.8% to 42.0% for Lewis. She carried the same precincts and townships Biden did. She won House District 26A 58.8% to 32.6%, but lost 26B 44.9% to 49.0%. In 2018 Smith had beaten Karen Housley in Senate District 26 51.9% to 44.4%, so she improved her margin a bit this year.
Dan Feehan lost his second run for Congress, again to Jim Hagedorn, by 11,344 votes, almost nine times the margin he lost by in 2018. Feehan’s percentage was 45.5% to Hagedorn’s 48.9%. The bigger loss wasn’t because of his performance in Senate District 26. While Tim Walz, in his last race for Congress, had beaten Hagedorn by 2783 votes in 2016 here, Feehan beat Hagedorn by 6251, an improvement of 3468 votes. While Hagedorn received about 500 more votes here than he had in 2016, Feehan had almost 4000 votes more than Walz. In Olmsted County, Hagedorn received 118 votes more than he had in 2016, while Feehan received 7107 votes more than Walz had. Unfortunately, Feehan did not have more votes than Walz did in 2016 in any of the other counties in the congressional district and Hagedorn received more votes in all but one of the counties than he did in 2016, giving Hagedorn the win. While Feehan ran ahead of Biden and Hagedorn ran behind Trump, the differences were not enough to give Feehan the win. Walz had run almost 15% ahead of Clinton in 2016, which was enough to give him a modest win. There was a marijuana party candidate, Bill Rood, in this race who received 5.8%, even though he barely campaigned. Though that’s bigger than Hagedorn’s margin of victory, it’s not clear that how many of Rood’s votes would have gone to Feehan if Rood hadn’t been in the race. Feehan would have had to win more than three-quarters of Rood’s votes to make up the difference.
Aleta Borrud ran hard to be our next senator from Senate District 26 and came quite close to winning. After a campaign where both sides were well-funded and there was lots of outside money spent, she came within 909 votes of winning. Carla Nelson ended up with 50.9% to 49.0% for Borrud. Borrud had unprecedented success in House District 26A, getting 58.9% to Nelson’s 40.9%, but Nelson received 58.4% to Borrud’s 41.5% in 26B. Since there were more votes cast on the B side, that was enough for Nelson to win. In 2012, Nelson beat Ken Moen 55.6% to 44.2% and she beat Rich Wright in 2016 56.0% to 43.9%, so this is by far her closest race in this district. Nelson ran 6.7% ahead of Trump in District 26A and 7% ahead in 26B to be the only Republican candidate to carry the Senate District.
Tina Liebling won her ninth term in the Minnesota House, winning District 26A by 24.9%. She had 63.9%, the highest percentage of any DFLer in the district, while Gary Melin got 39.0%. She carried every precinct in the district, getting over 75% of the vote in two precincts.
Randy Brock’s performance was the biggest surprise of the election. In a district where the best percentage a DFL House candidate had received was 46.2%, he received 49.3% of the vote, falling short of winning by just 347 votes. He carried every Rochester precinct in the district along with Haverhill and Rochester Townships.
Turnout was high. Turnout in the Senate District was 90.8% (88.2% in House District 26A and 92.9% in 26B). We don’t have district-specific numbers for Election Day registrants, but there were 5786 people who registered on Election Day in Olmsted County, which is about 5.5% of the number of people registered before Election Day.
There was more turnover in Rochester municipal and school board elections. The Rochester City Council will have a majority of members who are brand new next month. While Michael Wojcik lost his bid for his fourth term, the more progressive candidate won in the open-seat elections for Wards 4 and 6 and for the at-large member. Only one of three School Board incumbents were re-elected. Don Barlow was barely re-elected while Karen MacLaughlin, one of Senate District 26 DFL’s directors, and Jess Garcia were newly elected.
All four Olmsted County Board incumbents up for election were re-elected. None of the contests were particularly close.
SD 26 Executive Committee and Central Committee Meetings
The Executive Committee meeting will be Monday, December 14 from 7-8:30 PM. The Central Committee meeting will be Monday, January 11, 2021 from 7-9 PM. They will be virtual meetings on Zoom. DFL meetings are public, so if you want to “attend”, contact the Chair at mark.liebow@gmail.com. We’ll talk about fundraising for the non-election year, events in the first half of 2021, and building organizations in precincts/townships in anticipation of the 2022 election.
We are still looking for an Outreach and Inclusion Officer and a Communications Officer. There are also four open Director positions, which must be filled by people who live in House District 26B. Three of them must not identify as male. Please contact the Chair at mark.liebow@gmail.com if you’re interested.
ROCHESTER DFL OFFICE
The office at 1500 1st Ave, Suite A, in Rochester was open regularly before the election, especially once it became the DFL supply depot for southeastern Minnesota in the last few weeks of the campaign. However, since the election is over and there are even more COVID cases in the area, we have canceled scheduled office hours for now. If you want to return lawn signs to the office, leave them outside the front door. Someone will be checking daily for signs and bringing them into the office. We will also be monitoring telephone messages regularly. If you have a question or concern, call us at 507-536-9785 and we will get back to you.
DONATE TO SENATE DISTRICT 26 DFL
We know this is a tough time economically for many people in Senate District 26 because of the economic effects from the pandemic. Not everyone will be able to donate right now, but if you can, we need your help to make the DFL a bigger presence in Rochester. We have a year-round office, which is expensive, but is crucial in a battleground area like Rochester. While one-time donations are welcome, we especially need monthly donations. We don’t get money from the national Democratic Party. The state DFL only contributes $500 a month, less than 1/3 of our rent. We rely on our local supporters to keep us going and to get the DFL message out. We need the money and you want an active DFL. If you give, there will still be an office for DFL events and meetings when those are possible again, DFL participation in events and parades that require entry fees, technology that makes the DFL work better, and outreach into underrepresented communities. Donate to Senate District 26 DFL and you can get up to $50/person or $100 per married couple back from the state of Minnesota if you are eligible to vote in Minnesota. You can make a refundable donation in 2020 even if you made a contribution and got a refund in 2019. Do it now. Make your donation via ActBlue . If you would rather write a check, please make it payable to DFL SD26 and send it to:
P.O. Box 9044
Rochester, MN 55903-9044
Send us a donation and we’ll send you a receipt. Send the receipt and a form
(https://www.revenue.state.mn.us/media/59866) needed to claim the reimbursement to
Minnesota Revenue Political Contribution Refund
St. Paul, MN 55146-1800.
Make a donation, file a claim, and you’ll get a check back soon. If you send a check, please include whether you are retired, self-employed or employed. If employed, include the name of your employer and your job title. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board requires us to collect that information. If you use Act Blue, the appropriate information is collected.
NEW COVIDaware MN APP DEVELOPED BY SENATE DISTRICT 26 DFL DIRECTOR
Tom Kingsley, one of our directors, helped develop a new app to alert users to potential exposures to COVID-19. He is a hospitalist at Mayo Clinic with expertise in public health and informatics. He worked with the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota IT, PathCheck Foundation to be able to deliver this technology to Minnesota. They have been working on the app since March. The app utilizes Bluetooth technology developed by Apple and Google, which was made available free to states. It is available for free for Android and Apple phones and does not use any personal or location information.
Based on MPR’s November 23 story:
Governor Walz and other Minnesota leaders began pushing a new smartphone application last week that would alert users to potential exposure to COVID-19 based on technology that they say will also keep personal information private.
The COVIDaware MN application, similar to those in use in several other states, depends on people downloading the program and sending out an alert if they test positive for the virus.
"The app is entirely opt-in," said MN IT Services Commissioner Tarek Tomes. "The app does not track location nor does it use GPS. It doesn't share your identity.”
The program matches phone proximity information to daily lists of positive cases. There are safeguards built in to prevent people from falsely claiming a COVID-19 infection just to cause panic. To trigger a notification, a person who has tested positive must enter a verification code they receive from a public health authority.
The warnings will include health recommendations for people to take steps if exposed. It doesn't tell users precise times or locations where they might have been exposed.
For those concerned about medical privacy of themselves or others, the app is built on voluntary participation and a level of encryption that separates the identities of users from the data they supply.
“(Minnesota) never collects or processes any personally identifiable information from the COVIDaware MN app,” the privacy policy says. “Random codes are assigned to each device using the COVIDaware MN app.”
The random codes assigned to a person’s phone expire after 14 days.
According to the developers, it does not use location data or depend on connection to a WiFi or cellular connection, although some features require them. Instead, it’s based on Bluetooth functionality.
Connect with us!
This is a monthly newsletter. However, events often happen on short notice, so we may not be able to include them in the newsletter. Check our website and Facebook pages for the latest news on what is happening.
Email: sd26mn.dfl@gmail.com
Twitter: @sd26dfl
Instagram: dflsenatedistrict26.
Our office is unstaffed for now because of the safer-at-home order but you can leave a message for us at 507-536-9785. We are monitoring the messages.
