Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/elections/page/17/)
House District 48B primary challenger Sheila Kihne and her allies like to claim her bid to topple incumbent Republican state representative Jenifer Loon isn’t about Loon’s 2013 vote for marriage equality. Continue Reading
KSTP TV decided to shock its viewers with the news that 140 Somali voters registered to vote at the same address. OMG, massive organized voter fraud, finally proven! Just like all those other times it was finally proven except, oops, the allegation proved groundless. This are pretty easy to debunk too, at least for anyone who thinks accusations should be accompanied by evidence. KSTP is owned by a major GOP donor, Stanley Hubbard, which often leads to suspicion about its reporting. I’ve usually not seen anything in their reporting that looks like a Fox News wannabe. This looks to me less like partisan bias and more like reporting that is sloppy and sensationalist. Of course, for the people who worked on this story, being sloppy and sensationalist should be pretty embarrassing. I do get how these stories slip through, given the general shoddiness of local TV news that has been the norm pretty much since its invention. Continue Reading
There are a total of 7 candidates for Minneapolis School Board, citywide, who will be on the ballot in the primary election, to be held on the 2nd Tuesday in August. I am a candidate for the MInneapolis School Board because I believe that education is a right, not a privilege, and that a quality education should be available to all on an equal basis. CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP In my opinion, the superintendent and board of directors of the Minneapolis Public Schools are on the wrong track. The district is promoting and sponsoring charter schools, maintaining a large pool of probationary teachers who are concentrated in high poverty schools, and pushing a scripted, test-prep curriculum that is marketed as managed instruction. I reject the idea that the chief source of inequity in the school district is bad teachers who can’t be fired because of seniority, tenure, and due process rights, and that the solution is to eliminate those job protections for teachers. On the whole, I believe that teacher job protections are beneficial to students in the district’s schools. There are states where teachers unions are illegal and teachers are employed at will and very easy to fire, and yet there is no evidence to suggest that public schools in those states are more equitably governed than in states like Minnesota where teachers are unionized, have seniority, tenure, and due process rights. The chief sources of inequity in the district are actions by the board and administration that have disparate effects on high poverty schools and on the majority of students of color and poor whites. Keeping teacher turnover high in high poverty schools is a result of actions by the Board and administration, such as firing a large proportion of teachers before they finish their 3 year, post-hire probationary period, and by not providing teachers in high poverty schools the support necessary to make their jobs endurable. Gaps in test scores and other outcomes along income and racial lines are both a reflection of the impact of poverty on children and their families, and of policies and practices by the district that have a disparate impact on students of color and poor whites. Continue Reading
Unbelievable and yet still true! There are many reasons why the Minnesota Republican endorsement of Michelle MacDonald, Minnesota Supreme Court justice is just very wrong. Continue Reading
After giving up his Minneapolis city council seat, which he had held since 2003, to run for mayor last year with an ambitious education platform, Don Samuels now throws his name into the ring for at-large school board member. He hopes to bring his deep connections within local and state government to support the superintendent’s agenda in fighting the achievement gap. “I’ve been staring this monster in the face forever with two hands tied behind me,” Samuels said of education issues. “I’ve been on the sidelines of this thing for a long time, and I just want to be in the middle of it.”Samuels ran for city council over a decade ago when former city councilmember Joe Biernat stepped down after receiving five felony charges. Samuels had just finished seminary in 2001, and was planning to start a ministry on his street in North Minneapolis for kids living in poverty. Continue Reading
There are voter’s rights advocacy groups in Minnesota and around the country working hard to further restore felons’ rights to vote, but less of a push to reinstate those presently incarcerated for felony convictions, and even misdemeanor convictions in eight states. There are some that believe rights should only be restored after release. This supposes it is harder to advocate for us while we are still in a cell, than when the cell is opened.
In an effort to win the Republican primary in Minnesota’s First Congressional District on August 12, challenger Jim Hagedorn has delved into immigrant bashing about the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. Mexican border, as thousands of unaccompanied children fleeing poverty and violence enter the United States without proper documentation. Continue Reading
Bluestem is beginning to wonder about the Republican Party’s commitment to be more inclusive interms of demographics, in that some of the candidates in the governor’s race–and their running mates–aren’t exactly star graduates of human relations seminars. Continue Reading
Minnesota Supreme Court Justice candidate Michelle MacDonald has more than a DWI charge hanging over her head — she also has a bible. With it, she apparently supports a practice that dates back hundreds of years to England when the bible was considered the law itself.
An uncontested race is one of the best circumstances that a candidate can have. While almost all legislative and state races are contested, many local races are not contested. So all over the state, people who had no one file against them were refreshing the candidate filing web page over and over again on the last filing day. Some people received discreet spotter phone calls. Groans and condolences would be expressed for any discovered new filing. Suddenly a casual campaign would become an intensive campaign taking up every weekend. Continue Reading