Knockoff Naomi

A few extra candidate commentaries for Minnesota. I'm no Kritzer, but I'll do what I can.

Statewide

Table of Contents

Tim Walz, Governor

link 1

Naomi Kritzer herself covered the statewides very well. As she says:

When I think about how Tim has done in the last four years, the main thing I think about is that he was sufficiently competent and non-destructive that I felt safe, for the most part, not paying super close attention to what he was up to.

...

I also want to note something I’ve been very happy with, which is that for the last two years, we’ve had some of the most functional, easy-to-access public COVID testing in the country. Every time I’ve wanted a PCR test I’ve gone over to the airport, walked in, gotten one. The only time I even had to wait was during the height of the Omicron surge; I think that’s also the only time it took more than a day to get a response. It’s a spit test rather than a brain poke. Parking is free. Over the summer they rolled out test-to-treat at the airport site so you could test and immediately get Paxlovid. Everything about this was so much easier than in many other states.

There’s so much COVID-related stuff that frankly comes down to, “it turns out that having a pandemic [stinks].” Distance learning was absolutely awful for my kid. I still think it was a reasonable decision to make. There’s a ton of stuff like this, where someone can easily say, “this thing that happened / that’s happening, it’s bad! it’s really bad!” and … yes, that’s true for a lot of stuff. Pandemics totally [stink]! WHO EVER WOULD HAVE PREDICTED.

Anyway, I am absolutely going to vote for Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan with no hesitation whatsoever.

Steve Simon, Secretary of State

Oversees voting rights.

link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5 (nerd! -- that's a compliment).

Julie Blaha, State Auditor

Money stuff

link 1, link 2, link 3 (nerd!)).

Keith Ellison, State Attorney General

Consumer protection, anti-fraud, prosecuting polluters & wage thieves

link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4 as a reminder of the power attorney generals can have to break apart families for the horrific act of ... loving their kids -- we don't want an attorney general who might do that!

Ellison wouldn't do that. And in fact would probably help protect people whose county attorneys would try to do that. Human & civil rights are so very important to me. Please vote for Ellison.

Also, he hired John Keller as his 2nd in command, who is, like, one of the smartest lawyers in the state. No wonder the department's been run in ship-shape for 4 years.

Charles Webber, 1st District Court seat 11 (southern suburbs)

(This area seems to run along the Minnesota River from at least Chaska to West St. Paul.)

Incumbent chosen by a really strict bipartisan board, seems to be very competent. Not sure why his challenger is putting up such a fight other than to stir up trouble.

This will be surrounded by other judge races on the back side of your ballot that have no challenger.

Please be sure to find this one and vote for Webber.

Misc. judges

If you feel like it, you can take the time to fill in dozens of other incumbent-judge bubbles to prevent underground write-in campaigns from winning, but it's less important than the Webber race.

Look for the Webber race in the middle of the back side of your ballot.

Judges are appointed by a bipartisan board of experienced lawyers before they come up for reelection, so incumbents are generally pretty well-screened unless you've been hearing horror stories in the news about them and have a great reason to vote them out.

Smaller races