Will Minnesota in 2018 be like Virginia in 2017?

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Virginia made election history on Tuesday when the Democratic Party flipped 15 seats to change control of the House of Delegates from 66 to 35 for the Republicans to 49 to 47 for the Democrats with four districts needing recounts. All 15 seats that the Republicans lost were held by men and 11 of the winning Democrats were women.

Should these results encourage the DFL to think they can flip 11 seats in 2018 to take control of the MN House of Representatives? Should it strike fear into the Minnesota GOP? Continue reading →

Why I Support Tim Walz

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the importance of the statewide races for the Minnesota House of Representatives. With work hard, Democrats can change 11 house seats so that we take control of the house.

In that post, I added that the most important race in 2018 is the governor race, because we are one race from becoming Wisconsin. I want to use this post to explain why I’m supporting Tim Walz as the next governor of Minnesota. Continue reading →

Winner’s Chapel vs Dignity Center

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I live in Brooklyn Park so I spend a lot of time driving east and west on 85th Avenue North. When I do this, I pass by a large abandoned church building. Apparently, it was one of those mega-churches which become not-mega.

A couple of weeks ago, I nearly slammed on the brakes when I drove by the building, because it had a brand new sign on the front saying “Winner’s Chapel.” Starting a chapel only for winners did not seem very Jesus-like to me. Continue reading →

MN House Races in CD3

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The 2018 elections in Minnesota are going to be very interesting for Democrats in CD3. Probably the most important election is for governor. As more than one person has said, Minnesota is only one governor race away from becoming Wisconsin. Another priority is getting rid of the despicable Erik Paulsen and having a Democrat represent this district for the first time since 1961.

I’d like to suggest that equally important is electing more Democrats to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Right now, there are 77 Republicans and 57 Democrats in the House. The Republicans control the Senate by one vote 34-33. The senators do not run again until 2020, so unless one Republican decides he or she can no longer be a member of the Trump party, the GOP will control one branch of the government for three more years. Continue reading →

White Working Class (WWC) vs Get Out The Vote (GOTV)

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Now that I’m retired, I have more time to listen to podcasts. Actually, I’m finding that it is a great era to be retired. I can listen to podcasts, binge-watch TV shows, watch YouTube videos, listen to Audible books on my iPhone, google random topics which leads to more googling, and read internet blogs (like this one!).  

Getting back to podcasts: last week I listened to two podcasts back-to-back that offered contradictory advice to the Democratic party. After the first podcast, I said to myself, “That makes sense.” An hour later, I listened to the other podcast and said to myself, “I’m not sure what makes sense now.” Continue reading →

Optimism

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As mentioned last week, I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday getting campaign training at Camp Wellstone at the University of Minnesota.  www.wellstone.org @wellstoneaction #cwminnesota

I learned a lot about operating a campaign, but my biggest takeaway from this weekend is a sense of optimism even as we endure these dark days of the Trump Presidency. I met many amazing people at the training who decided to get involved in politics after November 8th. Continue reading →

Preparing for Camp Wellstone

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I’m excited to be attending Camp Wellstone which starts on Friday July 14th in Minneapolis. It’s a three-day training class for progressives who are interested in running for office, working on a campaign, and/or organizing for progressive change. It’s sponsored by Wellstone Action in St. Paul, MN. www.wellstone.org @wellstoneaction

To prepare for Camp Wellstone, I did some research during the past few days on what I believe is the most critical issue for progressives right now: What is the Democratic message for 2018? It was not hard to find articles to read; I just googled “2018 Democratic Message” and found 32,300,000 results. Continue reading →

Donating Blood

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I’m a five-gallon blood donor. Every time a gallon donation is achieved, a pin is given to the donor marking the occasion. I have kept all five of my gallon milestone pins, which you can see in the picture below. It takes eight blood donations to reach a gallon, unless you are giving platelets or plasma which counts double. I’ve never taken the quick route to reach a gallon – it’s one pint at a time for me. When I donated blood on Tuesday this week, it marked 42 times at the Memorial Blood Center http://www.mbc.org/Home . Continue reading →