February Newsletter
Dear Mom
by Alden Brown
The grandbaby and grandson just left. I’m exhausted.
The 8-year-old had a great hockey game and remembered both his masks. The five-month-old is so adorable. He is laughing out loud now and talking in the growls and jabbers that crack everyone up.
We are the same cloister of five that have been together since the pandemic as you know. Now, that you got your vaccine, your grandkids in Oklahoma should get to come over soon.
I’ll be so glad when we’ve all had the shots. I’ll bet you’re right, and we have to take these for a while. A lot like the flu, but it’s too early to tell.
Still, it will be so good to get back to some kind of normal whatever that is going to look like.
I’m afraid your Republican party may never get there, and I really wish they would. I’d take a good ole cussin’ and fussin’ over tax rates over arguing if Elvis is dead any day.
You’ve got a new Georgia Congresswoman who claims aliens start forest fires and the Pentagon wasn’t actually hit by a plane on 9/11. She also shares something in common with the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Both of them met with failed coup leader Donald Trump last week for a pep talk.
Trumpists clearly can’t run a country, but they tried to take one down. And they will try again.
President Biden made it clear he wants to work with Republicans. I think there are a number who want to work with him. It’s also clear Democrats better be prepared to go it alone while Republicans decide if they still want to be part of a democracy.
The 147 who voted to overturn the election results despite no evidence of fraud appear to be attempting to destroy those who actually read the Constitution. I wish I could say I was surprised. I’m really only surprised at how quickly the air went out of the orange blowhard when he couldn’t tweet.
One thing is clear. Twitter and Facebook are more influential now than Cronkite was when we watched him on the old Black and White TV. We shared Cronkite back then. We are what we eat in our social feed.
People only hear what they want to hear, and social media makes it easier by feeding them more of what they like. Pretty soon, it doesn’t look like there is another side to any issue or any other truth.
We’re going to have to decide how loudly Twitter and Facebook can yell, “Fire,” in a crowded silo before a Capitol policeman lies dead at a President’s invitation.
***
OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER
Gerald Ford said that when he was inaugurated as President in 1974 after Nixon resigned. It’s worth saying again after an even worse President than Nixon has left office. The Trump-inspired insurrection when his supporters briefly took over the Capitol and killed a policeman to try to keep Congress from certifying the electoral vote totals was a horrendous start to the month, but the votes were eventually certified 306-232 in favor of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many of us held our breath for the next two weeks for fear there would be more violence to keep Trump in office, but there wasn’t. Trump slunk off to Mar-a-Lago the morning of January 20th, classless to the end, so he wouldn’t have to participate in the inauguration of his successor.
The runoff elections in Georgia on January 5th were pleasant surprises to many as both Democrats (Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff) won, giving Democrats control of the U.S. Senate starting on January 20th, when both of them were sworn in and Vice-President Harris became President of the Senate. She will be the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate. Mitch McConnell was replaced as Majority Leader by New York’s Chuck Schumer and Amy Klobuchar became chair of the Senate’s Rules and Administration Committee. The U.S. House of Representatives continues to have a Democratic majority, though smaller than in 2019-2020, giving Democrats full control of the Executive and Legislative branches.
President Biden’s inaugural speech noted the four simultaneous crises his administration would address: ““The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the '60s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.” The Biden Administration has moved quickly to undo some of the worst aspects of the Trump administration by executive order, issuing many more executive orders than typical for the first days of a new President. His nominees for Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, and Director of National Intelligence have already been confirmed by the Senate and sworn in, while many other Cabinet nominees have or will soon have confirmation hearings. He has proposed a $1.9 trillion dollar package for fighting the pandemic and providing relief to those affected by the pandemic and announce that while he seeks bipartisanship as it goes through Congress he will seek to have it passed whether Republicans support it or not. He has also restored daily briefings for the press (including briefings three times a week on the pandemic). It is such a refreshing contrast.
The second Trump impeachment will be held this month. Early signs are that most Senate Republicans will not vote to convict the man who incited a mob to break into their workplace and perhaps kill many of them if the rioters had captured them. Amazing, but sad.
***
REDISTRICTING
Every ten years, once Census results become available, we redistrict Congressional districts, state legislative districts, and districts of any other governmental body that elects members by districts defined by population. For us, those other bodies are the Olmsted County Board and, for those who live in Rochester, the Rochester City Council.
We would normally know by now how many Congressional districts Minnesota will have in this decade because the Census Bureau would have released state-level population data and used its formula on those data to decide the number of districts per state. However, the pandemic has put the 2020 census well behind schedule, so we won’t know until mid-spring if Minnesota loses a district or keeps its current 8 districts.
It will be another several months after state-level data is available before the detailed data needed for redistricting is sent to the states. This will be a problem for Minnesota, where the Legislature is supposed to pass a bill (or bills) that redistrict Congressional and state legislative districts, because the Legislature must adjourn by May 17, well before the needed data is available. Each house of the Legislature has created a redistricting committee, which can define its principles for redistricting and take other preliminary steps while the legislature is in session and which can work unofficially after it adjourns, but Governor Walz will have to call a special session for the committees and then each House to try to pass a redistricting bill. If the House and Senate pass different bill, which is extremely likely, the two Houses can try to work out a compromise bill in conference committee. If they do, that bill will go to Walz to sign. It’s not clear if Walz will call that special session.
However, because the Minnesota House of Representatives and Senate are controlled by different parties (and we’re again the only state where that’s true), it’s very unlikely they will agree on a bill even if they get the chance to work on one, so the Minnesota courts will again do redistricting as they have for the last four times it’s been done. Once a case is brought asking a court to redistrict, the Minnesota Supreme Court will appoint a special redistricting panel to hear testimony and draw district maps. The DFL will be a participant in the case. The panel’s decision is due by February 15, 2012. After that, Olmsted County and Rochester will do their redistricting and precinct lines will be determined no later than March 29, 2012.
How redistricting is done is important to us, since Rochester is the only regional center that is split roughly in half between state Senate districts. This is the only reason we have two Republican Senators in Olmsted County even though almost 60% of voters in Rochester, which has almost 75% of the population of Olmsted County, voted for Biden. If Rochester, which has enough people for 1 ½ Senate districts, had one Senate district within the city, it would have a DFL Senator.
***
ELECTION RESULTS
Donald Trump never admitted he lost, but Joe Biden became our 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%. Biden carried Senate District 26 by almost 4700 votes, winning 53.5% to 44.1%, a big change from 2016 when Trump carried Senate District 26 by 315 votes, winning 45.5% to Clinton’s 44.8%. Biden carried all but three of the Rochester precincts in Senate District 26 along with Haverhill and Rochester Townships. He received over 70% of the vote in four Rochester precincts. There was a dramatic difference in Biden’s 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% of the votes 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 more votes were 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 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 was re-elected. Don Barlow was barely re-elected while challengers 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 three contested races were particularly close.
***
JIM HAGEDORN’S MISDEEDS
Jim Hagedorn did not end his first or start out his second term well. Late in 2020, he signed a friend of the court brief for the Texas case in the Supreme Court trying to overturn the electoral votes of four other states, all of which Biden won. The Court refused to hear the case, saying that Texas had no grounds to interfere in how other states ran their elections. On January 6, he was one of the Republicans who voted against certifying the electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania, even after the MAGA mob took over and ransacked the Capitol. He refused to acknowledge Biden was President-elect even after Congress certified the Electoral College vote. He voted against the impeachment of Trump the next week.
Unfortunately, he didn’t resign from Congress and follow Trump to Florida, so we’re stuck with him in Congress for a while. We’ll keep track of what he does wrong and let you know.
***
SENATE DISTRICT 26 DFL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETS FEBRUARY 8
The next Executive Committee meeting will be Monday, February 8 from 7-8:30 PM. It will be a virtual meeting 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, doing social media advertising against Jim Hagedorn and Carla Nelson, and building organizations in precincts/townships in anticipation of the 2022 election.
In January, the Central Committee elected Sara Kingsley as Communications Officer and Jonathan Gelber and Gayle Kall as Directors. Both are from District 26B. We accepted the resignation of Jen Verhagen from her Director position, as she is moving out of state. We heard from Attorney General Keith Ellison about his office’s activities and his goals.
We are still looking for an Outreach and Inclusion Officer and for three Directors, two of which must be filled by people who live in House District 26B. All Director positions must be filled by someone not identifying as male. Please contact the Chair at mark.liebow@gmail.com if you’re interested.
***
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 2021 even if you made a contribution and are eligible for (or already received) a refund in 2020. Do it now. Make your donation via ActBlue (https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/senate-district-26-dfl-party-1?refcode=sd2). 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.
***
GIVE DFL CANDIDATES SOME MONEY WITHOUT SPENDING ANY
If you’re doing your 2020 Minnesota taxes soon, you can increase how much our local candidates who participate in the Political Contribution Refund Program will get in 2022 without spending any of your own money, even temporarily.
Partway down the first page of the 2020 Minnesota Individual Income Tax Form (M1) is a section titled State Elections Campaign Fund, where you can designate $5 of your state income taxes to go to a political party. As the form says, “This will not increase your tax or reduce your refund.” Put the code 12 above where it says Your Code to direct the money to the DFL. It will go into a pool to be distributed to your DFL candidates in 2022. If you are filing a joint return, your spouse can also designate 5% for the DFL pool in that section. It’s a great way to help DFL candidates without costing you anything and to keep candidates from having to depend on big money donors.
***
SD26mn.dfl@gmail.com
AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA
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.
Official communications come from SD DFL (though the full address is above). Watch for them.
We tweet from @sd26dfl and have a website at www.senatedistrict26dfl.com
We have a closed Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/144866495637545/
We share an open Facebook page with Olmsted-25 DFL and Senate District 25 at
https://www.facebook.com/sd26sd25olm25/?fref=ts
Our Instagram account is: 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.
***
