BY DAVID TILSEN
It’s not a secret that the Mayor and the City Council do not work well together, but I would expect that they would respect the voters, and the offices (if not the people) and work together for the city. Unfortunately, that us not what we are experiencing.
There are no less than three PACs (Money raising Political Action Committees) created to support Mayor Frey´s re-election and they have been spewing misinformation and hateful rhetoric, blaming Socialists, the DSA, and anyone other than the Mayor for the sorry state of our city government.
On Aug. 18 there was a hearing before a committee of the state DFL to hear challenges to the convention that failed to endorse Frey for Mayor. At this hearing. Michael Erlandson, one of the challengers took it farther. He asked the State DFL to eliminate the Minneapolis DFL. Not just invalidate the endorsement of what they said was a flawed convention, but strip the Minneapolis DFL from holding caucuses, conventions or endorsing at all.
The state DFL did not go that far but they did decide to disallow the endorsement of Senator Omar Fateh. This is a slap in the face to the delegates.
Now I am not claiming the convention didn’t have problems. It most certainly did. We are an all volunteer group of activists that organized over 180 precinct caucuses in every neighborhood of the city, then had 13 ward conventions to endorse for city council, and then the huge city convention at the Target Center to endorse for Mayor, Park Board, and Board of Estimate and Taxation.
What Mr Elandson doesn´t like is who is getting elected in Minneapolis. His real quarrel is with the voters, not the DFL volunteers, not the DSA, not Pravda.
Well they can’t get new voters, as much as they might like to, so let’s just take away the organizing force that has elected 12 out of 13 city council members for years. This is the same group that eliminated the Library Board, giving away our libraries to the County. They keep proposing the elimination of other independent boards, and they also sponsored the charter amendment to give more power to the Mayor and less to the city council.
Without the DFL grassroots endorsements, these old-time guys can return to their smoke filled rooms, make deals with big donors, and return to running the city without this irritating democratic process.
Editor’s Note:
Are they crazy? Are they suicidal? The DFL can’t win a state-wide race without the votes of progressive DFLers in Minneapolis. There are two wings of the DFL: a right wing and a left wing–Democrats and Farmer-Laborites. This bird can’t fly without both wings working together.
