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If you ever get the urge to go into politics, but you're totally in it for the power and really not interested in the glory (because "glory" in the case of politics mostly just means people e-mailing you with complaints), run for County Board. At least around here, the County Board does an amazing array of stuff and yet people largely ignore it completely. How completely? Well, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson has been on the Hennepin County Board for years and yet even in the metro area, an awful lot of people don't even know who he is. (This excellent article talks about the problem in some detail, though it's focused on Hennepin County, not Ramsey.)
(For the non-Minnesotans who read these posts for the snark and weird stories, I'll just quickly note that Minneapolis and St. Paul are in different counties. Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; St. Paul is in Ramsey County. Both of these counties include a bunch of suburbs and Hennepin I think includes a little bit of rural land.)
In my part of St. Paul, here's who's on the ballot:
CHARLES S. BARKLIND - NONPARTISAN
RAFAEL E. ORTEGA - NONPARTISAN
Rafael Ortega is the incumbent. He has (1) the job, at the moment; (2) the DFL's endorsement; and (3) yard signs (I've seen them.)
He does not have a web site that can be found with Google.
Well, he has a job web site, but the complete lack of a campaign web site kind of makes me wonder where people got the yard signs. I mean, obviously people had their methods back in the era before the Internet -- heck, I pounded in yard signs for Ken Golden the first time he ran for Madison City Council -- but seriously, don't you want people to be able to get them easily? and more importantly, to donate money to you easily? He must not be very worried.
To clarify the DFL endorsement thing despite the fact that no party is listed: there are a bunch of offices that are officially non-partisan; the political parties in town can endorse candidates if they want and if they can agree on somebody. The DFL routinely does endorsements for the mayoral races, the city council races, the school board races, and the county board races. The Republicans in Minneapolis and St. Paul occasionally do endorsements but mostly just stay out of it because an endorsement from Republicans in Minneapolis isn't going to motivate people to vote for you, it's going to be the MARK OF CAIN that people point to and say "you can't vote for this guy; he's a REPUBLICAN." The smart Republicans, like Cam Winton, run as Independents.
( Read more... )
(For the non-Minnesotans who read these posts for the snark and weird stories, I'll just quickly note that Minneapolis and St. Paul are in different counties. Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; St. Paul is in Ramsey County. Both of these counties include a bunch of suburbs and Hennepin I think includes a little bit of rural land.)
In my part of St. Paul, here's who's on the ballot:
CHARLES S. BARKLIND - NONPARTISAN
RAFAEL E. ORTEGA - NONPARTISAN
Rafael Ortega is the incumbent. He has (1) the job, at the moment; (2) the DFL's endorsement; and (3) yard signs (I've seen them.)
He does not have a web site that can be found with Google.
Well, he has a job web site, but the complete lack of a campaign web site kind of makes me wonder where people got the yard signs. I mean, obviously people had their methods back in the era before the Internet -- heck, I pounded in yard signs for Ken Golden the first time he ran for Madison City Council -- but seriously, don't you want people to be able to get them easily? and more importantly, to donate money to you easily? He must not be very worried.
To clarify the DFL endorsement thing despite the fact that no party is listed: there are a bunch of offices that are officially non-partisan; the political parties in town can endorse candidates if they want and if they can agree on somebody. The DFL routinely does endorsements for the mayoral races, the city council races, the school board races, and the county board races. The Republicans in Minneapolis and St. Paul occasionally do endorsements but mostly just stay out of it because an endorsement from Republicans in Minneapolis isn't going to motivate people to vote for you, it's going to be the MARK OF CAIN that people point to and say "you can't vote for this guy; he's a REPUBLICAN." The smart Republicans, like Cam Winton, run as Independents.
( Read more... )
