I was pulling out of the Rainbow parking lot on Universityi around 6:30 last night, and noticed a small clutch of Saint Paul cops pulled up at the corner of Pascal and University.

“Nothing new there”, I thought.  It’s not uncommon to see the cops pulling over drunk drivers, thieves, footpads and petty thugs up and down Uni after dark; it’s common enough in broad daylight in fact.  I started filing it away…

…until I heard a “THUMP THUMP THUMP” sound through my open window, along with the kind of aggressive barking that doesn’t come from taking Fido out for a walk.

I was waiting to pull onto northbound Pascal to get home when I heard it, and sensed more than saw some kind of frenzied activity through the brightly-lit windows of an office space upstairs – a “computer repair shop and mini-arcade” that always seemed to be in the exact wrong location for either business, above an auto garage and a vacant former clothing store.  Then I heard something new – a bright splintering sound.  I focused on the office, as the big picture window overlooking University shattered, and a black-clad figure tumbled out in a welter of glass, landing on the sidewalk ten feet below on  his side.  He was instantly surrounded by cops, although the cars between the scene and I, fifty yards away, obscured the action.

I pulled out onto Pascal, and noticed that my way home was blocked by a couple of big, black police vans – SWAT trucks.  I wheeled over onto University, parked in front of a vacant building, and walked over as close as I could get to the scene.  The jumper, not apparently bad-enough-for-wear to rate an ambulance, was being led away.  Two or three early twenty-something Afro-American men were sitting, sullen and uncomfortable-looking, in chairs visible through the window, surrounded by officers in kevlar “Fritz” helmets and flak jackets.

It appeared to be a drug raid, but of course nobody was talking.

Observation:  Don’t know if I want to hear anymore how “outgunned” the police are on the street these days.  Every single officer I saw was carrying an M4 carbine, not one degree behind the current special operations fashion curve;

Speaking of Instant Runoff Voting…

Who is it who actually “ranks” their choices, anyway?  Maybe my point of view is skewed because I am a guy who has – and my social circle is a lot of politically-aware people who also have – strong opinions who know who they’re voting for and why, but I can’t remember a single election where I had a second choice for any office.

I went back through the last several key, contested elections, and entered “ranked choices” for each race.

Saint Paul Mayoral Election, 2009
First Choice: Eva Ng
Second Choice: My dog, Clu.
Third Choice:  A jab in the eye with a sharp stick.

Minnesota US Senate Race, 2008
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: My cat, Nosemarie.
Third Choice: Getting ripped apart by mice.

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2008
First Choice: Ed Matthews
Second Choice: Being forced to sit in booth at Denny’s listening to Ken Weiner, Bill Pendergast and Eva Young frothing about Michele Bachmann for all eternity..
Third Choice: A “Spongebob Squarepants” marathon.

Minnesota Gubernatorial Race, 2006
First Choice: Tim Pawlenty
Second Choice: My other cat, Candy.
Third Choice: Gouging out my own eyes with a spork.  (This was almost a tie for third, by the way; Candy has this habit of biting my nose at 4AM that has her on my schvitz list today).

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2006
First Choice: Obi Sium
Second Choice: Drinking a fifth of my own fermented sweat .
Third Choice: Going to “Drinking Liberally” and drinking heavily.
Fourth Choice: Gargling with Drano
Fifth Choice:  Going to “Drinking Liberally” and not being allowed to drink at all.
Sixth Choice:  Any cast member from “The Hills”.
Seventh Choice: Betty McCollum.

US Presidential Race, 2004
First Choice: George W. Bush
Second Choice: Brussels Sprouts
Third Choice: Any random western European leader...

US Senate Race, 2002
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: One of those gas-station burritos, after it’s been sitting on my car seat on a hot day.
Third Choice: Rick Kahn’s speech, on eternal loop, forever.

US Presidential Race, 2000
First Choice: Steve Forbes
Second Choice: Jack Kemp.
Third Choice: Steve Forbes.

Now, like most people, I do believe most people are like me.  Or, rather, that most people who should be allowed to vote are like me.

Oh, that sounded so intolerant; what I mean is that I suspect most people who actually care enough about politics to care about their voting system at all, really don’t go into the polling place with any sort of “second choice” in mind.  We go into the polls wanting victory for the candidate who represents our beliefs the closest, and not a lot more.

Who actually has some notion of “ranking” choices in elections?  I’m curious.

So Eva Ng lost the Mayor’s race on Tuesday.  And she lost it by a big margin.

I wrote my initial takeaways the other night; I think it’s huge that we actually got a Republican on the ballot at all; Eva is the first we’ve had in the 22 years I’ve lived in this city.

But I’ve had people asking me – what do you think Eva Ng should do next?

Well, the obvious response is “Ask Eva!”  I mean, it’s totally her call – and she did a job well above and beyond the call of duty.  She charged into the maw of the St. Paul DFL machine (motto:  “Like Chicago, only more passive-aggressive”), and did a great job of articulating an opposition case.  She didn’t win, but not for lack of merit.

Still, I’m going to offer this as a set of suggestions to Ms. Ng:

1. Stay in public life.  For the next two years, set yourself up as a critic, as a part-time pundit. 
2. Do in Saint Paul what Sarah Palin is doing nationally; use your position as Saint Paul’s leading dissenting voice to keep the heat on the Mayor – to keep the issues on which you ran (and the new ones that’ll no doubt emerge in the next 1-4 years) on the front burner.
3. Start a blog.  And when you do, remember who your friends are; you have name-recognition, and a built-in place of honor among the Twin Cities’ conservative blogosphere, the most active political blog scene in the country.
4. Use your soapbox – your position, your blog if you start one, and any appearance you make in a political sense, and the attention it will get you – to help keep the pressure on Chris Coleman and his administration. 
5. Coleman wants to be mayor so bad?  He got his wish!  Now – when he raises taxes, be there showing the people a coherent alternative!  When the percent of vacant downtown space climbs above the Saint Paul Schools’ graduation rate, be there with another plan!  When hope values in the North End and Dayton’s Bluff drop down so low that Dominos offers a “Three Mediums For Your Deed” deal on Fridays, be there saying “I Told You So, And Here’s What We’d Be Doing About It If You’d Elected Some Grownups”.  When the budget jumps from crazy to lala-whoopdiedoo-out-of-our-freaking-mind deranged, be there with a better plan!    You had to cram a whole campaign against the entire DFL machine, and build name recognition, and build a platform, inside three months.  Now, you have four years.  
6. Keep shaking hands, meeting people, and listening.  Learn what it is that people in Saint Paul really want and need.  A friendly hint; it’s not knowing that their mayor isn’t going to run for governor.  It’s their home prices; it’s their jobs leaving Saint Paul; it’s the booming taxes and failing schools.  Circulate, circulate, circulate.
7. Because in 2013, the DFL will likely not field an incumbent.  It’ll be a level(er) playing field.  And the gray, lumpen masses who voted for incumbent Chris Coleman with no more thought than they expend on ordering a Number Three at McDonald’s might pull back the mental drapes and let some light in. 
8. And if you’re out there, meeting people and keeping people excited about the idea of changing Saint Paul for the better, people will know who you are; you could very well have better, more positive name recognition than whatever vapid hamster the DFL nominates next time around.
9. And having you out there building on what you started will put you in the best possible place to be a threat to win in four years; it’ll also give the Saint Paul GOP (and the Fourth District GOP, for that matter) something it’s needed for a long time; hope, a mission, a goal.

Take the rest of the year off.  You earned it.  But please think about it.

Think hard – but not too long.  This next year is going to be a great year to hit the ground running as a conservative, even in a place like Saint Paul.

This next four years is going to leave this city a cold Flint; I think the 2013 election is going to be a whole ‘nother party than this last one.

One of the biggest defeats in Saint Paul Tuesday night was the passage of Instant Runoff Voting.

“IRV” will bring endless resolutions, opaque unaccountable recounts, and – in the worst cases – elections where “Majorities” can only be reached by tossing ballots who don’t vote for any of the “finalists” in the byzantine counting processes – meaning winners will get “majorities” of ballots with preferences, but minorities of actual votes cast.

On the upside, “victory” parties will go on forever; Minneapolis likely won’t see official results from its various races until Christmas.

Christmas.

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius tries to explain last night’s Minneapolis election results.  And I do mean “tries”.  Jeff is a capable enough writer, and explains statistics as well as anyone in the Twin Cities’ ‘sphere.  (They’re often as not wrong and out of context, but they’re explained well!).

To wit:

There were no major surprises, and few chances to really see ranked-choice voting come into play in Minneapolis last night. Joe Bodell has the complete results at MN Progressive Project [Sometimes called “Minnesota “Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis” “Progressive” Project”]. There were a few races were 2nd-choice votes will be needed to officially put one candidate over 50 percent, but in all but one case the results are clear, with the leading candidate receiving 47 or 48 percent of the 1st-choice vote and the nearest challenger with under 40 percent. These races would all take miracles for the 2nd-place finisher on the 1st-choice votes to come from behind.

Which is a good thing, because recounts will be just plain hell.

There were two cases, though, where we’ll see ranked choice voting (i.e. Instant Runoff Voting) come into play, both involving the Park Board. In District 5, Carol Kummer and Jason Stone are nail-bitingly close. This one will be determined by 2nd-choice votes — in fact, it may even need to be decided by the 3rd-choice votes of those whose first choices were Barland and Looney.

Because Minneapolis voting machines could not be calibrated to tabulate anything other than the 1st-choice votes, the ballots will all need to be tabulated by hand, which means it will be some time before we know the winner of the Park Board race.

Is this reminding anyone of rotisserie league baseball yet?

I mean, that seems to be IRV’s main feature; it gives wonks stuff to chatter about.  Forever.

Congrats, Saint Paul.  You turned your electoral system into a friggin’ wonk’s parlor game.

I’m waiting for the first Saint Paul DFLer to chuckle and say “Hah!  We pwn this town!”

I’m ready.  I’ll respond (with a nod to School Board candidate Chris Conner), “Yep.  You own 42% tax increases, sclerotic services, the biggest public school achievement gap in the country, graduation rates south of 50-50, 4,200 vacant houses, rising crime and 30% vacancies downtown.”

“Congratufrigginlations!  The bad news is, you have to try to fix your own mess for the next four years.”

Some people see a 30+ point loss for Eva Ng last night.  I see something different.

In 2001, the Saint Paul GOP had to grit its teeth, say “Randy Kelly is a DFLer, but he’s as close as we’re gonna get to something who believes what we do”; compared to Jay Benanav, the longtime Eastside DFLer was the second coming of Reagan.  (Four years later, we had to do the same; the flood of anti-Bush derangement scuppered the campaign; Ng did better than Kelly did four years ago).

The Saint Paul City GOP could have probably fit on the dance floor at Fabulous Fern’s back then.

In 1997, we had a Republican – Norm Coleman.  He won – but the Republican Party in Saint Paul had as much to do with that as the “Reform Party” had to do with Jesse Ventura winning the governor’s office the next year; the DFL kicked Coleman out, and the incumbent came to, and pretty much was, the GOP in Saint Paul.

And four years before that, in 1993?  Norm Coleman was a DFLer.  Compared to Bob Long, he wasn’t nuts – quite the conservative, in fact.  But no GOP candidate got within a mile of the final election.

1989?  1985?  1981?  1977?  GOP?  What GOP?

We didn’t win.  But we got an actual Republican on the ballot for the first time that I can remember (other than Coleman, who got on through the back door, and thank God for it).  It’s the best this party’s done in the run for mayor.

And we didn’t capture any school board positions – but we got three guys on the ballot.  It’s a start.

From small things big things one day come!

I’m waiting to hear the Saint Paul election results today.  When you’re a Republican in Saint Paul, you learn to moderate your expectations, of course.

But there’s a sense out there that at least some people are starting to get it.  I drove down University the other day, and saw not a few Eva Ng signs posted in shop windows. 

Beyond that – I saw an awful lot of dark-red anti-light rail signs posted in the windows of businesses up and down University.  “Save Our Jobs and Businesses”, they read, and they are found in a lot of store windows – especially the visibly, identifiably Asian shops that have led the way in the Avenue’s rebirth over the past twenty years.  When I first moved to Saint Paul, University was a desiccated toilet of a street from Snelling all the way to the Capitol and beyond. 

And while the stretch between Snelling and Lexington is now dominated by big-box retailers like Target, Rainbow, Borders and WalMart, from Lex to the Capitol has become a haven for Saint Paul’s smallest, newest businesses, run largely by the Asian immigrants (and, lately, Hispanic and Somali and Eritrean ones as well) that have made lower Frogtown their home.  The stretch of street isn’t fodder for “Architectural Digest”, but it’s largely occupied, largely paying rent and taxes and creating jobs, and in many cases it’s thriving; some of the Vietnamese restaurants that started almost literally as holes in the wall have grown to thepoint where they’re building big, glossy new buildings of their own (Mai Village, on the decrepit old gas station site at Lexington) or taking over bigger buildings from failed enterprises (Trieu Chao and Saigon, both of which moved into bigger, nicer, upgraded facilities; by the way, Trieu Chao makes fabulous Pho, and the banh mi dac biet sandwiches at Saigon are the single best cheap lunch anywhere in the Twin Cities).

As we’ve noted in this space before, and will note over and over again in the future, the Central Corridor is going to crush these businesses.  And they know it.  Transit proponents poo-poo the notion – Charlie Quimby, who cops to having done some consulting for the ‘Central Corridor Funders Collaborative”, in particular seems to chalk it up to lazy peoples’ hysteria, based on a Google street photo in front of a hair salon:

Now ask yourself: how many customers does the business handle at one time? And how many people change their hair stylist because they can’t park right in front of the door?

Maybe customers who drive will have a hard time reaching this business for their hair styling during construction and after the train is running. But I’m not seeing the problem.

Quimby, like most transit proponents, misses the point; it’s not just that it’ll be hard to park in front of the store; it’s that the neighborhood as a whole will be hard to get to.  Coming from the South?  Get ready for years of sisyphean nightmares getting north of 94.  Coming from the north?  Sure, scuttle though Saint Paul’s narrow, crowded side streets to get to the business you want to get to!  Or take the path of lesser resistance and go to a business that’s actually easy and convenient to get to!

And if you do navigate Sherburne and Thomas and find your hair salon or Vietnamese sandiwch or used book?  Sure, you can park on the side streets – just as Quimby suggests.  Except that that part of Frogtown is still pretty crappy and blighted, and even I like to keep my car in pretty clear sight when patronizing stores in that part of town (have I mentioned the banh mi dac biet at Saigon?).  And have we forgotten what a wonderful place Fifth Street, or Hiawatha, were for pedestrians when the Ventura Trolley was being built (and for that matter, have you noticed what a boon for business the Trolley has been for businesses and pedestrian traffic up and down its corridor in downtown Minneapolis?  I’m being sarcastic, doncha know…).

And that doesn’t even address the ultimate insult; when the train is finally finished, the final goal is to have the areas around the train stops – the little islands at Rice, Dale, Lex, Snelling and Fairview – gentrify to the point where the businesses that do survive won’t be able to afford to stay there or do business anymore!

So yes, I’ll take the word of those whose lives’ savings are invested in these unglamous, workadaddy, hugamommy little shops up and down Uni over that of anyone from the Met Council or its’ sympathizers.  They have no skin in the game other than the day in 2014 they’ve marked off their calendar for a token ride through a city most of them don’t come to anyway (other than whisking in to a downtown parking ramp to the Ordway, the Fitz or the Wild a couple times a year).

So I’m happy to see those little red signs.

I’d have been a lot happier to have seen them five years ago, when the project could still have been derailed. 

Back when most of those shopkeepers were reliably voting for the same DFL hucksters that are shooting them in the back today.

Lesson learned?

Hopefully we’ll see some sign of that tonight.

…the polls in Saint Paul are open.  Find yours here, if you don’t know it already.

I don’t do endorsements – like, who cares who I endorse? – but I will be voting for Eva Ng for mayor (as I believe I’ve established).  I’m also voting for John Krenik, Pat Igo and Chris Conner for School Board (not Jean O’Connor, a stealth DFLer; pass the word!).

I will be voting against Instant Runoff Voting.  IRV is a deeply stupid idea – as Minneapolis will find out soon enough – and there’s no need for Saint Paul to follow down that particular rathole.

There is no judge race on this ballot, so I can not vote for any of my family pets (which I usually do to ensure that my vote was counted).

Get out and vote, Republicans!

Look – there’s no real suspense.  I’m voting for Eva Ng for Mayor of Saint Paul tomorrow.

Why?  Well, I have 100 reasons:

1. Because in the 22 years since I first moved to Saint Paul, things have gone way downhill…
2. …after going way way way uphill for a solid decade under Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly.  Lost progress is like no progress at all.
3. And it stinks to watch a lot of progress getting flushed down the drain.
4. Because Saint Paul’s school system is an unmitigated disaster…
5. …and the only way it’s going to change is if there’s an epic realignment in City Hall…
6. …and at 360 Colborn (which is also why I’m voting for John Krenik, Pat Igo and Chris Conner for School Board).
7. Because she scares the crap out of the status quo.  She’s female and she’s Asian – two constituencies that the DFL basically considers trained pets, best seen (at the polls) but not heard (if they disagree with the DFL line in any way).
8. And until these “hereditary DFL constituencies” show the DFL that they’re not just a bunch of sinecure voters they can count on no matter what kind of crap they throw out, there’ll never be any improvement.
9. And she will be seen and heard in office.  And that’s good for everyone…
10. …but the Saint Paul DFL.  Tough.
11. Because it can be done.  If Bret Schundler could win three terms as mayor of Jersey City, Eva Ng can win Saint Paul.
12. And Eva’s message – fiscal responsibility, jobs, business – aren’t that different from Schundler’s.
13. And while too many people in Saint Paul are immune to common sense, quite a few – in Frogtown, Dayton’s Bluff, the North End, Battle Creek – are all too well aware of how badly the Coleman Administration’ policies have failed them.
14. Because this is a city crammed with beautiful, solid, wonderfully-built homes that are just dying to have a bunch of new homeowners move in and invest “sweat equity” in…
15. …but the Saint Paul City Council has taken the nannystatist position that “since some remodelers are flippers, and others don’t know what they’re doing, we’ll make it impossible for all of them”.
16. (Or at least that’s their stated reason).
17. Anyway – what’s that doing to your property values?  Especially if you live on the North End, on Dayton’s Bluff, or in endlessly-besieged Frogtown?
18. Because Ng’s a businesswoman…
19. …and Saint Paul is in dire need of more business people and fewer party animals running the city.
20. And Chris Coleman, whatever else you can say about him, is mayor because he’s a DFLer who’s put in his time.  (I’ll give credit where it’s due; Coleman is a perfectly fine human being, and an excellent bagpiper.  See?  I’m a uniter, not a divider).
21. Indeed, electing Eva Ng would derail one of the most noxious aspects of Saint Paul’s one-party rule; the notion that being Mayor of Saint Paul is a perk that’s awarded to the DFLer that’s been plugging away for the party the longest.
22. Which is pretty much how the Saint Paul DFL sees things.  And we do deserve better.
23. But we’ll never get it if we keep enabling the practice.
24. And make no mistake about it; Saint Paul’s DFLers see it exactly that way.  One of the first things I saw a St. Paul DFLer write when Ng announced her campaign was “Oh, yeah?  What’s she done for Saint Paul so far?”  As if the only worthy background for governing is to be part of the machine that caused the problems to begin with.
25. Because Ng is not part of the machine.  Indeed, she’s pretty much the opposite; if there’s a political organization anywhere in the world that is not a “machine”, it’s the Saint Paul GOP.
26. Indeed, if you’re a Republican, having Eva Ng win – or even make a strong showing – would send a message to a big chunk of the CD4 GOP; “pay attention to what’s going on south of Larpenteur; it matters!”
27. And it’s important that it does – because Minnesota will never be more than a dingy, moldy blue shade of purple until the GOP makes a contest of it in the Cities.
28. Because she’s a political newcomer.  She’s no professional politician; indeed, you can tell, because…
29. …she doesn’t talk like a politician.  She talks like a human.
30. Ng is a turnaround specialist.  Her entire career involves taking companies that are floundering, and turning them into successes.
31. And if Saint Paul under Chris Coleman isn’t floundering, then the term truly has no meaning.
32. Because Ng’s business background has taught her how to succeed with limited resources…
33. …while the Saint Paul DFL and the Coleman Administration only know one thing; take whatever their agenda demands them to take, and screw the consequences.
34. Ng is a Republican.
35. Much more important than that, she’s a fiscal conservative.
36. And Saint Paul has suffered terribly over the years from the depredations of the tax-‘n-spend crowd.
37. Because when the mayor can say, with a straight face, that we need to lay off cops and firemen while we’re building indoor ice rinks, something is drastically wrong.
38. And when we’re paying for cops and firemen with LGA – money the city does not control – while paying for non-essentials with property taxes (the party they do legitimately control), that’s just irresponsible.
39. Because the mayor of a city of 275,000 does not need an executive staff with two dozen offices (and many  more employees than that).
40. Because the Saint Paul City Council’s hostility to business, especially small business, is killing this city.
41. No, seriously – when I say “hostility to business”, it’s not Republican hyperbole!
42. Because the City Council’s hostility to small landlords (that aren’t controlled by the city) in the name of “affordable housing” is making affordable housing (not controlled by the city) unavailable.
43. And because demonizing landlords – which is what the SPCC is doing – has worked so well for making housing affordable in New York, San Francisco and Portland.
44. Because Chris Coleman spoke seriously about closing the tiny little long-paid-for library two blocks from my house, the one my kids grew up going to…
45. …while he found the money to build indoor ice rinks.
46. Because an Ng win would show Saint Paul’s newest immigrants  – the H’mong, Somalis and others – that not only do you not have to be white and anglo to be Mayor, but you don’t have to be a DFLer if you’re not Caucasian.
47. And then we can have an “honest discussion” about what a disaster DFL rule is, has been for the past 45 years, and will forever more be for the city’s “minorities” (who are in fact, a decided majority in the school system).
48. And if we make inroads into the school board (go John, Pat and Chris!), we can talk about why the Saint Paul Public Schools are such a disastrous place – moreso than even the Philadelphia and Detroit systems – for minority kids.
49. And we can talk honestly about why the DFL wants so desperately to close the charter schools that have popped up all over Saint Paul…
50. …and which are the only real refuge for the thousands of those “Saint Paulites of Color” who’ve found that the SPPS was a waste of time and effort for their kids, and responded by voting with their feet.
51. Because the “light rail” may be a done deal and unavoidable, but it is going to gut the Midway.  Gut it.  And Ng is the only politician in Saint Paul who is being honest about that fact.
52. Because the City Council and the Mayor don’t want the Midway to know the world of hurt – traffic, economic dislocation, tearing down and rebuilding, and finally artificial gentrification – that await the neighborhood.
53. Because after a generation of patient, market-based rebuilding, Frogtown and its largely Asian people, especially it’s almost-entirely Asian business community up and down University, deserve better than what this light rail boondoggle is going to give them…
54. …which is “shred them like a lawnmower in a cabbage patch” in the short term, and try to gentrify the hell out of the parts of the street that aren’t turned into arid drive-through lands by the train.
55. Because the free market has helped turn the West End from a reeking, crime-ridden toilet into a decent, occasionally thriving neighborhood.
56. Because this city has been run by, for, and about the wishes and ideology of Merriam Park’s ofay DFL elitists – the people who were turning out to raise funds for Kathleen Soliah’s defense fund – for far too long.
57. Because the mayor and the city council have nothing but contempt for the beliefs of all those Latinos who live in Saint Paul’s most dynamic, fascinating neighborhood, the West Side.
58. And the Latino community still votes DFL. 
59. Because the North End has enough strikes against it, even without the City Council’s misguided vacant building ordinance.  The ordinance puts a boot on the throat of any chance the neighborhood has of recovering any time soon, making “sweat equity” virtually illegal…
60. …except for the City Council’s and the mayor’s friends in the non-profit community.
61. The same goes for Frogtown…
62. …and even more for Dayton’s Bluff, where the mortgage crisis has virtually emptied block after block…
63. …that will, by law, pretty much have to stay empty until the city gets around to doing something about it…
64. …which will be long, long after the market would do something about it. 
65. Because Battle Creek and the far East Side are watching to see if city and state tax policy drive the rest of 3M out of town, turning those neighborhoods into ghost-towns like so much of the Bluff and the North End…
66. …and the Administration – the Mayor and City Hall – can’t be bothered, since they’re busy making you happier and happier to pay for a “better” Saint Paul…
67. …where “better” equals more and more city jobs, programs and spending, as opposed to real jobs, real quality of life, real potential…
68. …and real reasons for anyone to move here, whether people or businesses.
69. Because I’ve lived in Saint Paul for most of the past 22 years, now.  And I love the place…
70. …but I hate what it’s turning into.  If I were a parent with a young family, I wouldn’t move to Saint Paul today.  I don’t know why anyone who didn’t have a vested interest in the current one-party system would.
71. Because single-party government is always bad.  Even if it’s your party.
72. Because “debate” over things like taxes and budgets in Saint Paul these days, with our one-party system, tends to devolve into acrimonious recriminations over who isn’t taxing or spending enough.
73. Because a city – really, any unit of government at any level – needs to have more than one viable party to keep those in power accountable.
74. And Saint Paul’s government, at this point in history, is accountable to nobody. 
75. Which means the future of this city is being planned pretty much by the un-tested, un-accountable whims of people who were elected to office out of force of habit…
76. …and those plans will become law…
77. …and affect the way this city will be for generations to come.  Think about it; Saint Paul is still paying for stupid decisions (“Urban Renewal”) made fifty years ago.  With the stakes as high as they are today, you think it’s going to get better?
78. Because Kathy Lantry needs someone to hold her accountable.
79. As does Dave Thune…
80. …and Lee Helgen…
81. …as well as Matt Stark…
82. …and Dan Bostrom.
83. Pat Harris too…
84. …not to mention Melvin Carter.  And while we can’t put any competitors on the City Council for another couple of years, you gotta start somewhere.
85. Because there are DFLers who respond to any dissent by chanting “we own this town!”
86. And that would irritate the piss out of me even if a Republican said it.  There’s a word for that – hubris.
87. And that kind of hubris needs to be brought back into line.
88. And keeping the status quo fat ‘n happy changes nothing.
89. Because when you put it all together – the hubris…
90. …the warped priorities (hockey rinks over firemen?)…
91. …the irresponsible policies…
92. …the scandalous peformormance and epic failure of our school system…
93. …and the sclerotic, bureaucratized, just-plain-dull agenda, and…
94. …boundless potential for corruption that attends any single-party government and bureaucracy, not to mention…
95. …a vision for the future that makes Cold-War era Berlin look positively scintillating…
96. …then the imperative to put John Krenik…
97. …Chris Conner…
98. …and Pat Igo on the school board…
99. and vote Eva Ng for mayor…
100. …is not just the only answer – but in fact it’s gotta be just the beginning.

See you at the polls tomorrow.  Bring a friend.  Have your friend bring a friend, too.

WELCOME “MERCURY RISING” “READER”(S):  Wow. “Phoenix” is still yapping about this?  Sheesh.  Even for an anonymous gutless leftyblogger, “she” is a dim little specimen, isn’t she?

Let me give you a little background, so you know know something – which is more than “Phoenix” can ever say:  In radio, you always plug the show after yours.  Hell, if “Phoenix” and “Avidor” (heh heh) bought time after my show, I’d give them a plug – and they’re “both” idiots!   Because that’s what you do when you do radio.

“Phoenix” thinks this is evidence of a “close tie between Bradlee Dean and the GOP”.  I have faith enough in people to know that most of you know that correlation doesn’t equal causation.

Hey, tell “Phoenix” I said I!  And tell her to go easy on the “thuddingly stupd”, or “she” might run out!

———-

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up from 1-3.  And it’s gonna be a huge show; we’ll have Bradlee Dean from the “Sons of Liberty” broadcast (3-5PM Saturdays on AM1280) to talk about their gala dinner with Michele Bachmann, coming up in the next week!  Then, Paul Scofield joins us – he’s the token conservative running for the Hopkins school board (and lordy, do they need him!).  Then we’ll be talking with Kyle McNary, author of Pitch Black, about Negro League baseball in the upper midwest.  You heard that right!
• The King Banaian Show! – That’s right, KB is back, doing the economic voodoo he do, Saturday mornings from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

There’s an election in Saint Paul on Tuesday.  It’s the biggest election in the state this year – Mayor of Saint Paul.

If you live in Saint Paul, you know what dire straits this city is in.  Taxes are booming, services are crumbling, and our school system is by any rational standard a complete failure, especially for the kids who need it the most – immigrants, the poor, and so on.

Saint Paul shows the sclerosis that happens when you have one-party rule; having competition in government brings accountabilty; if there’s anything Saint Paul needs, it’s a whole lot of exactly that.

So I’m gonna give a plug for Eva Ng. I’ve been writing about her ever since she announced her campaign.  She’s a businesswoman and a turnaround specialist – which Saint Paul needs.  Desperately.

So here’s the deal; if you are a conservative – by which I mean a Republican, sure, but also the vast throngs of union guys on the East Side who’ve seen your property values shrivel even as the City Council makes it impossible to buy vacant houses, the small landlords who have seen your prices dropping even as city regulations strangle you, the small businessperson who is hanging on by the skin of your teeth even as the government tries to destroy you – then you need to turn out to the polls on Tuesday.  And bring friends.  And family.  And tell ’em that this isn’t just another rubber-stamp mayoral election; this is a time for choosing.

And if you don’t live in Saint Paul?  Call your friends in Saint Paul who you think might be amenable, and who might yet be thinking of sitting this one out.  Change their minds. Get them out.

And if you’re able to?  Check out the website, and give Eva a hand. There is no more David v. Goliath battle in the world than a Republican running for mayor in Saint Paul.  She needs all the help she can get.
As far as Saint Paul is concerned, this really is for all the marbles – and this weekend is the two-minute warning.  With office vacancy rates up close to the school system’s minority graduation rate, this city – the place where I’ve raised my kids this past 18 years – stands a good chance of becoming a cold Flint.

So let’s get some turnout, shall we?

And it should go without saying that anyone voting for Eva Ng needs to vote as well for John Krenik, Pat Igo and Chris Conner for School Board.  If you are a Saint Paul resident, remember the names, and don’t vote for anyone else; everyone else on the ballot stands for the status quo, and it’s hard to describe how bad the status quo is.  And if you’re outside Saint Paul, but have friends here?  Call ’em, and tell ’em.  Quiz ’em on the names.  Hell, send them this article, if it helps.

People get the government they deserve.  Saint Paul deserves a hell of a lot better than it’s had this past four years.

Chris Conner, GOP-endorsed candidate for St. Paul School Board, is speaking tonight at the Twin Cities Republican Association:

The Twin Cities  Republican Association will be hosting a dinner at the Fort Snelling Officer’s Club on Tuesday, October 27th, beginning at 6:30 p.m..  The topic for the evening will be to explore how a conservative runs for the important position of school board member; challenges, obstacles and hopes.

I have a family engagement (blahl) but I hope you can make it.

If there’s a race that’s as important as the Saint Paul Mayor’s race this year, it’s the Saint Paul School Board.

Three endorsed Republicans – Pat Igo, John Krenik and Chris Conner – made it through the primaries, along with the usual pack of DFLers.

And one “independent”, Jean O’Connor.

Or…is she?

Jean was endorsed by the teachers union. They told John krenik they don’t endorse republicans.

That might be damning enough all by itself.  But there’s more:

She was endorsed by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. She’s stated that George Latimer recruited her  to run. He’s listed on her lit piece as the chair of her committee (www.occonnellforstpaulkids.org).

[Billy Mays] But wait! [/Billy Mays off]

Amy Filice is her treasurer. She’s Dr. Greg filice’s wife.
He was on the board for years, Ann Carroll was his protoge, then he lost in 99? but she won. He was on the Board of Health Start, the system of clinics in the schools and it was in 99 that they introduced the idea of condoms being handed out in the schools.
Now parents supposedly sign a form saying they do or don’t want that.

That doesn’t sound very “independent” – or “fresh”, “new” or much of a “change” – at all!

Of course, not all is well in the DFL camp:

Vallay Varro has a glossy taboid out. Latimer has a quote on p.3 supporting her and his picture. But in the back, p.4, there’s a sample ballot and it shows all the names but just the endorsed DFL’ers names filled in, Jean’s blank.

She’s upset because she’s  one of them, but Latimer has played a big trick on everyone. Now in St. Paul we have 3 political parties – DFL, Dfl-light, just call yourself an independent and you’re a fresh, new voice, and Republican.

And make no mistake about it – in Saint Paul, the DFL is no “fresh voice”.  The Saint Paul Public Schools spend more money than the city itself does.  But their graduation rates are well down under 50%, and for all the district’s barbering about diversity, the achievement gap is one of the worst in the country and heading south.

The district does, however, excel at spending lots and lots of money playing “pick the celebrity Superintendant“.

Anyway – don’t be fooled, Saint Paul voters.

If there’s one thing that encourages me, it’s that people on both sides of the aisle are working against “Instant Runoff Voting”, which is going to get its first, sure-to-be-disastrous workout in Minneapolis’ next election.  There are elements in Saint Paul that also wat to institute “IRV” in Minnesota’s capitol city.

Of course, the NARN has has spoken with Andy Cilek of the Minnesota Voters Alliance for many years now.  The MVA states a pretty convincing case; IRV is a lousy idea.

And if you need to be convinced, still?  There’s opposition on the left as well.  It was my pleasure to interview one of my longtime political sparring partners, Chuck Repke of Saint Paul, yesterday on the NARN.  Chuck is with No Bad Ballots.  He and I disagree on just about every subject imaginable – and I imagine it’s at least mutual between Repke and Cilek.

But IRV is such a terrible idea, it’s hard to even know where to start.

• While proponents say it’ll result in elections with true majorities, it’s patent rubbish; the experience in San Francisco shows that in the end, after all the “spoiled” ballots (ballots whose ranked choices never wind up including one of the finalists), the “Majority” can be south of 40% of voters.
• For all the lefties who were caterwauling about the evils of electronic voting machines between 2000 and 2006, it’ll be comforting to know that IRV counting machines will use a highly complex algorithm, leave no paper trail, centralize all vote counting (and thus make skullduggery that much easier to conceal) and rely entirely on the integrity of the vote-counting authorities.
• Oh, yeah – the machines don’t exist yet, so the Minneapolis election will be hand-counted, and not be certifiably until December.
• And as a usability guy, the just plain usability issues involved with the ballots and the procedure for filling them out are – I’ll be diplomatic – mind-boggling.

I don’t care what  side you’re on.  IRV is just plain stupid, and needs to be gassed.  Three of the cities that adopted it with much fanfare over the past decade – including Tacoma Washington – are dropping it with extreme prejudice.

Let’s be done with this lunacy.

A month ago, Chris Coleman – mayor of Saint Paul – was on a roll.  He was simultaneously running his 2009 mayoral campaign and a 2010 gubernatorial bid.

And then – he stopped.  He abruptly ended his goober bid five days ago.

Why?  In the horde of candidates stampeding for the bid at present, he’s certainly not the longest shot.

And yet he became the first to bail.

Why?

Because he’s nervous?

What happened to put a stop to all the DFL schmooze parties where Coleman and his gubernatorial competitors have been lining up to schmooze all the prospective DFL delegates and voters?Could it have anything to do with the fact that the one, lone candidate forum between Coleman and his opponent, Eva Ng, took place about 48 hours before on Tuesday October 6th- and that Eva Ng mopped the floor with Chris Coleman?

Answer after answer, Eva Ng answered with specifics; I will freeze property taxes at their current level and then I will cut them, I will set up business zones downtown to spur entrepreneurial growth, I will hold weekly ward meetings where citizens can speak with me as their mayor and their concerns WILL be addressed.

Chris Coleman’s answers?

Chris Coleman has been in politics long enough (Ward 2 City Councilman for 2 terms, ’97-’03) to know you NEVER have to answer the question which you’re asked, and in his case, maybe it’s better in a way that he didn’t. Then he would have had to talk about his property tax increases over the last 3 years in office- 9% in ’07, 15.1% in 08, 8.6% in ’09 and a proposed increase of 6% for ‘10, as well as fee increases. Oy!

I’m not going to say “he’s scared of losing”.  But Ng, by all rational accounts, trussed Coleman up like a  hog at the “Forum” (not a debate) and parted out the roast, ham and bacon.  She didn’t beat him, she crushed, stomped and napalmed him.

And the DFL smear machine is out in force.  And as Mike Huckabee said, in perhaps his greatest contribution to American politics, “when you’re taking flak, you’re over the target”.

Can Eva Ng win this thing?  Maybe.  If every single Republican in Saint Paul turns out.  And if each of them convinces a not-so-political neighbor that Chris Coleman and an all-DFL City Council is a screeching disaster, and that the Saint Paul School board has been so derelict in its duties that it deserves to be perp-walked out of 360 Colborne under a hail of spitballs?

Why, yes.  Yes, she can.

And I can’t think of a better reason that a DFL gubernatorial front-runner, or at least not-back-runner, would abruptly bail out on the race.

When you get a couple of drinks into some Saint Paul DFL activists, some of them like to get a poo-eating grin on their face and say, with the kind of force they don’t wind up putting into tooooooo much in their lives, “we own Saint Paul!”

As the new, excellent Saint Paul Republicans blog notes, it’s high time the rest of us agreed – and helped them realize exactly what that means:

And indeed they do. They own double digit percentage rates of unemployment and downtown vacancies, 2500 or so foreclosed homes, record deficits despite windfall tax profits from the housing boom, and a 40 point achievement gap between black students and white students in the public schools. They are completely and totally in charge- the lone republican in Saint Paul and Minneapolis resigned from the school board for greener pastures.

Let’s recall a little recent history:

1. When I moved to Saint Paul, George Latimer – a “liberal” in the two-generations-of-mildly-inbred-descent-from-Hubert-Humphrey model – was the mayor. The city was decaying slowly, a sleepy backwater that was feverishly investing in properties that, twenty-odd years later, are mostly white elephants on the city Port Authority’s books.
2. Jim Scheibel was next.  An idealistic noodler in the Jimmy Carter model, Saint Paul slipped further.
3. Then came two terms of Norm Coleman.  He started as a moderate DFLer – he even gave Paul Wellstone’s nomination speech at the 1996 DFL state convention! – but gradually the North Korean-influenced Saint Paul City DFL made his life such hell that he defected to the GOP in time for his second term.  Of course, this matters not an iota to an immigrant family with five kids trying to get by on three jobs; what matters to them (and me) is that taxes held steady, services improved, jobs came to the city (although we also got on the hook for projects like Rivercenter and the X; nobody said Norm was a movement conservative.  Just right on most of the issues).
4. Then followed Randy Kelly, a DFLer in the  model of Truman and JFK.  He continued Nahm’s line on taxes.  Between Norm Coleman and Kelly, Saint Paul had twelve great  years; lower taxes, the population held fairly steady…the place just felt like it was on the upswing.
5. And now, four years of Chris Coleman.  Taxes are up 42%.  The city bureaucracy isn’t just huge – it’s rapacious, seeking power like hungry tigers seek meat.  And the city feels like it’s dying; like it’s a Flint in the making.

Yep, DFL.  You own it.

They own the Coleman-Franken-ACORN recount disaster, the light rail boondoggle (they still insist that University and Snelling is not congested), the smoking ban that was the death of many many restaurants and bars, and they even own the over 300 million in debt-620 million in unfunded pension liability-and 380 million in deferred maintenance over at the Saint Paul Public Schools (with 608 million of regular revenue, not counting this years Stimulus Funds). The People of Saint Paul are literally crying for change- a new beginning- but on election days some strange compulsion sets in to vote for party, not for change and a better future.

There’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there, although not from the city’s dominant class, its’ phalanxes of public union employees, who seem to be perfectly fat ‘n happy. At the expense of the rest of us.
But if you’re a private sector homeowner, or a landlord, or a family?

What has the DFL’s “ownership” of this city done for you?

Saint Paul is a one-party town.  There is no more political diversity in Saint Paul government that there was in Ceaucescu’s Romania (although the Saint Paul DFL isn’t quite that bad.  Yet.  I’m kidding, of course.  I’m a kidder.  I kid).

Whatever your political beliefs – even if you’re a principled liberal, for that matter – a functioning multi-party system is essential if you want to ensure some sort of accountability, to say nothing of vigorous debate, in government (if you’re an unprincpled liberal, of course, you want Saint Paul to be a little Chicago.  But then, I’m not writing to you, if that’s what you are).  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as they say – and the Saint Paul DFL has absolute power.  Even if you are a DFLer, you have to realize that can’t end well.

Anyway – the Saint Paul Mayor’s race is the single biggest race in the state in 2009.  And the Saint Paul School Board race is a battle for “control” – and by control, I mean “complete, unfettered” – of the state’s second largest school district; Tom Conlon, the board’s only Republican and, as it happens, the only elected Republican official anywhere in any governmental body in Saint Paul, resigned to move out of state over the past winter.  Every single elected official in Saint Paul is a DFLer.

And it shows.  Saint Paul’s property taxes are up over 40% since Chris Coleman took office; services, I assure you, are not.  Either is crime – but after years of being one of America’s safest major cities, crime in Saint Paul is on the upswing even as it declines in Minneapolis.  There are entire office towers downtown that could collapse, and nobody would notice, because virtually nobody works there.  There are probably 4,000 vacant houses in the city, and property values are falling faster than Lorenzo Lamas’s career bell-curve, and neither shows any sign of slowing, much less reversing.

And the school system is a shambles.  After a decade of playing the “Celebrity Superintendant” game, and spending like they had their own currency press, the Saint Paul schools’ graduation rate is almost as low as the tax increases are high; around half of our students graduate; shameful as that is, the rate is much, much lower among minorities.

So I want you all – even if you don’t live in Saint Paul – to tune on Saturday.  Because we have an opportunity here.

It sometimes feels like being a Republican in Saint Paul is like being a Spartan at Thermopylae (“Our tax hikes shall blot out the sun!”  “Then we shall protest in the shade!”) – but there are quite a few of us out there.  Anywhere from 28% to 40% of the city votes Republican in Presidential and Congressional elections, when the turnout (largely among government union workers who can’t even read the “R” word, and bobbleheaded college kids whose only reflex on encountering cognitive dissonance is to “hiss” like a pearl-clutching Victorian) is huge.

But as the party showed us in Highland Park two years ago, if every Republican turns out, and makes sure every Republican turns out, we can shock the world city. 

So please tune in.  We’ll be talking with Mayoral candidate Eva Ng, as well as school board candidates Pat Igo, John Krenik and Chris Conner. 

And we’ll be talking about how each of you, no matter where you live, in or out of Saint Paul, can help push this thing over the top. 

Saint Paul needs your help.  We’ll show you how.

This will be on Saturday, from 1-3PM, on Volume 2 of the Northern Alliance Radio Network.

So over the weekend I was out on Snelling Avenue, down around Saint Clair street, along the east edge of the Macalester College campus.

For those of you not from the area, Mac is the standard by which other left-leaning Twin Cities’ post-secondary institutions measure their leftism.  It’s Berkeley (or at least Oberon) on the Mississippi.  It’s Kofi Annan’s alma mater, for crying out loud.

Anyway.

Mac was a hotbed of Obama support; Obama, according to Mark Ritchie’s office, got 225% of the vote on campus last November. [*]

Anyway – down by Saint Clair, someone hung a seven-foot-tall black and white “Change” poster with the iconic “Obama” image on it, on the side of an apartment building facing Snelling.

But when I caught it out of the corner of my eye, it looked less like Obama than…

…er, Peter Lorre.

And at second glance?  Yep.  Still Peter Lorre.

Just saying.

(more…)

Eva Ng, the independent businesswoman running as the GOP-endorsed candidate for Mayor of Saint Paul, faces an uphill battle.

By all accounts I’ve heard, she shredded Chris Coleman in their non-debate “forum” the other night.  This should surprise nobody; in a one-party city like Saint Paul, DFL politicians can go their entire careers without ever debating anyone about anything more substantive than “who was more sad when Paul Wellstone died”.  Conservatives debating Saint Paul DFLers is like the SEALs attacking Smurftown; people who’ve had to hone their information and skills over decades of being an oppressed minority going up against people whose only response is autonomic chanting (“Public Option Now!  Public Option Now!”) or ad-homina isn’t pretty. 

But Ng still has to face an entrenched bureaucracy and media that is in the bag for the status quo, as well as a population that is very heavily dependent on government, either as an employer, a benefactor, or a cornerstone of their worldview.

Still, she’s the first real conservative to get to the November election in forever.  And she needs your support.

The PiPress has a brief op-ed from Ng explaining her candidacy:

I am running for mayor of St. Paul because I believe that my experience over the past 30 years in turning around difficult situations, making the most out of every dollar, and influencing others to help “right the ship” is exactly what St. Paul needs right now in the mayor’s office.

We must pull St. Paul out of this downward spiral by first freezing property-tax and fee rates, followed by finding ways to reduce them. We’re operating on a budget that is $100 million more per year than four years ago. There is enough money to fully fund our essential needs first. Those essentials are fire, police, emergency medical services, and roads. Then, we’ll prioritize our “wants” and fully fund the most desirable of them based on input by the citizens. The lowest priority of the “wants” will have to take a back seat until funds become available.

The whole thing is worth a read.

And if you can possibly help Eva out, by all means do.

Is it more remarkable that the Twin Cities mainstream media is finally acknowledging that Chris Coleman has an opponent in the Saint Paul mayor race – Eva Ng?  The Cities’ media has been famously reticent to criticize the incumbent mayor – perhaps because he’s the little brother of one of their own, former Strib and PiPress columnist and ex-KSTP and Air America host Nick Coleman.  As we noted during the 2006 Senate campaign, being related to a former Twin Cities media eminemento (Senator Klobuchar is the daughter of former longtime Strib columnist and Studs-Terkel-wannabee Jim Klobuchar) guarantees almost as much selective amnesia as, well, being a DFLer does.

Or is it that they’re reporting that Ng is onto something?

MPR’s Tom Scheck, writing at Polinaut:

Coleman’s mayoral opponent, Eva Ng, is calling on Coleman to explain why his campaign committee is spending money on airline tickets, restaurants and hotels outside the city of St. Paul.

Bear in mind that Coleman is putatively running for Mayor of Saint Paul.  I don’t know what the laws are re spending money for one campaign on another race, but… 

Here’s the list compiled from Ng’s campaign:

Travel & Hotels

• 3/12/09 Midwest Airlines for $619.39
• 3/13/09 Orbitz.com for $107.88
• 7/23/09 Alexandria, MN Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center Deposit for $200.00
• 7/30/09 Rochester, MN Kahler Grand Hotel for $452.98
• 7/30/09 Northwest Airlines for $249.19
• 8/17/09 Alexandria, MN Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center Lodging Payment for $107.80

Meals & Restaurants

• 6/18/09 CD7 Dinner for $60.00
• 7/29/09 Rochester, MN Gilligan’s Cove restaurant for $13.00
• 7/30/09 Rochester, MN Kahler Grand Grill for $86.89
• 8/3/09 Granite City Brewery for $35.82 (There are no Granite City Brewery locations in St. Paul: http://www.gcfb.net/locations.cfm) [Although to be fair there is one at Rosedale, maybe a mile north of Saint Paul; not sure if “fairness” covers observing that Coleman should know the difference, whether it’s close enough for county work or not.  Rochester, naturally, is right out  – Ed. ]

Donations to Political Units Outside St. Paul

• 2/7/09 Senate District 32 DFL (includes Maple Grove, Osseo, Rogers) received $50.00
• 6/11/09 Rice County DFL received $200.00

I’m waiting for a response from the Coleman campaign and will post it when they comment.

Let’s try to be fair; maybe the Rice County DFL is going to send busloads of canvassers and door-knockers.

I’ll watch for the comment…

 Eva Ng advanced to the general election in Saint Paul last night, becoming the first Republican to make it to the final two since the French and Indian Wars of the 1760’s:

The municipal primary, a technically non-partisan affair, is designed to winnow the fields of candidates so that no more than two vie for each seat.

In the St. Paul mayoral race, Coleman was expected to be the top vote-getter. With 82 of 104 precincts reporting, he had nearly 68 percent of votes cast. Ng had about 26 percent. Perennial candidates Sharon Anderson (about 4 percent) and Bill Dahn (about 2 percent) appeared heading for elimination. 

It’s a shame the Obama campaign so cheapened the meaning of the term “change” last year – because if there was ever a city that needed change, it’s Saint Paul.   The city suffers from decades of one-party rule no more imaginative or responsive than that of, say, Burma; taxes and spending are rising out of control; crime is rising, after a few fairly placid decades; the city actively attacks business, especially small business owners; its housing policy is well on its way to denuding many neighborhoods of occupied homes to no tangible payback.

The city needs an alternative, an opposition party that can bring some accountability to the morass at Kellogg and Wabasha.  Eva Ng is the best chance this city has had in decades to do something useful.

So if you’re a conservative – or even a working DFLer who is tired of paying through the nose and treated as a human ATM by a one-party regime – then you need to come out to support Eva.  And if you’re a conservative outside Saint Paul, you need to help out – financially, or with shoe leather, or somehow, too.  This is the biggest race in Minnesota all year; an upset victory would really shock the world. 

The news isn’t all good:

Three incumbent St. Paul School Board members — Elona Street-Stewart, Tom Goldstein and John Brodrick — were leading a pack of seven vying for three four-year seats. Challengers Jean O’Connell, Chris Conner and John Krenik looked on their way to advancing as well for a general election contest.

The resignation of Tom Conlon left Saint Paul without any elected Republicans in any office anywhere; the Saint Paul School Board, as dismally, frantically, dementedly liberal as any body in the world, looks likely to remain on its current kamikaze ride to oblivion, leaving merely thankful that I got my kids the hell out of that festering plague ship.

Although there’s possibilities; in the race to replace Conlon…:

And, Vallay Moua Varro and Pat Igo were at the front of a foursome vying for a two-year seat on the school board.

Igo is a Republican, and would be a fantastic addition to the board; prayers for an outbreak of sanity among Saint Paul’s voters are actively solicited.

…that the first signs of democracy started breaking out among the lumpen, terrorized masses of Eastern Europe.  It was twenty years ago that people started casting off the shackles of one-party rule, of government that ruled for its own sake.

Twenty years later, we have the chance to do the same here in Saint Paul.  It’s primary day, and if you live in Saint Paul and are sick to the gills of ever-booming tax bills, bizarre spending priorities and a government that seeks only to perpetuate itself and its own power, today’s the day you can do something about it.

Get out to your polling station and vote for Eva Ng, the GOP-endorsed candidate in the “non-partisan” runoff poll.  The conventional wisdom says she might be the first GOP-endorsed candidate to get to the general election since Thermopylae was a Spartan suburb.  And when we get her through the primary, the real work begins; next, we have two months to get her elected.  And good lord, does this city need her.

Need to find a polling station?  Go to the SecState website.  Mark Ritchie has a list of all polling stations – although oddly, the station in my DFL-dominated neighborhood is listed three times…

(more…)

A couple of weeks back we noted Chef Lenny Russo’s urgent complaint about an impending Saint Paul city ordinance related to restaurants. Russo was so alarmed by the ordinance that he announced plans to move his restaurant out of the city.

This weekend, Russo posted an update.

A lot of people in both Minneapolis and St. Paul have been watching as those of us in the St. Paul hospitality industry have been working toward defeating a proposal by St. Paul City Council Person Melvin Carter III that would, among other things, require all restaurants and caterers to maintain and provide for their guests upon demand an allergen handbook listing all of the ingredients in each and every dish they serve.

Some weeks back, I blogged about this and about how such an ordinance would inevitably drive our restaurant, Heartland, from the environs of St. Paul. I also gave an interview on that topic to Patrick Reusse for his KSTP AM radio show. Soon thereafter, I received an email from Council Person Carter requesting a meeting. We had that meeting at Heartland last Tuesday.

Four or five years ago this might be spun as a “David versus Goliath” victory for the humble little blogosphere, what with a simple little blog post doing what the city’s paid media failed to do in bringing visibility and response to this issue. But we’re really past that point. Russo’s blog is part of the Star Tribune website, for gosh sake. David and Goliath are no longer so easy to distinguish.

In any case, the gist of the story is that they all sat down at a table and talked out Russo’s objection… at which point Councilman Carter had a metaphorical “D’oh!” moment a la Homer Simpson.

As our conversation progressed, I found him to be quite receptive to understanding how restaurants of Heartland’s ilk operate and how his proposal would stifle our ability to succeed in St. Paul while actually making people less safe. He expressed that his intention was not to do so. In addition, it rapidly became clear to him that an allergen handbook such as the one he put forth in his most recent draft was not the best way to address his concerns. … Consequently, it took Melvin about forty five minutes to declare that the idea of an allergen handbook is off the table.

Whether you own a restaurant in Saint Paul or eat in one (guilty! – ed.) that’s good news. And there’s a lot more about it in Russo’s post which I would encourage you to read – especially if you read his previous post on the topic.

One of the biggest whacks upside the head of the local blogging/trivia community this past year was the Met Council’s ruling that bars that’d established “smoking patios” outside their premises had to pay fees on that extra square footage as if it was indoor, year-round revenue-generating space.  This has forced Twin Cities’ bars to shut down the practice of having special patios for smokers, especially cigar buffs.

Of course, it’s been a bigger whack upside the head for the bar owners themselves.  Already on the ropes from the smoking ban, the extra smack to their summer revenue (summer is already a slow time for most bars) has pushed many Twin Cites establishments up to and in some cases over the edge.

And in a rare move for a bureaucracy, the Met Council seems to be considering responding to the pressure from bar owners and their patrons.  There’ll be a hearing this coming Tuesday afternoon to reconsider the fee structure.  I’m not sure if there’s time to salvage the summer (or if the provision will be lifted in time to set up a patio for the MOB party)…

…but I am sure that the region’s anti-smoking gestapo will take a break from whinging about the “orchestration” of town-hall meeting outrage over healthcare to organize plenty of people to come to the meeting to bitch about secondhand smoke.

This is where you come in.

Bureaucrats take phone calls seriously.  They – the smart ones, anyway – know that every phone call represents 100 people who didn’t call them.  One call represents 100 like-minded people; it’s public relations truism.

And so it’d be great if you could take a moment to contact the members of the Met Council.   Here they are.  Please take a moment and leave them polite, reasoned messages asking them to reconsider their policy; it’s killing bars, putting people out of work, and playing into the hands of chain restaurants and establishments.  Phone is better than email, but either is vastly better than letting the other guys have the stage to themselves.

Of course if you are free on Tuesday, here are the details:

Proposed Changes to the Service Availability Charge (SAC)Rules Regarding Outdoor Spaces Public Information Meeting: 1 p.m., Chambers

I might…just…be able to make it.  Fingers crossed.

Eva Ng officially files to run for mayor of Saint Paul today.

She’s having a bit of an event:

TUESDAY, JULY 21st

Time: 1:00 pm

(Please arrive about 12:30)

Ramsey County Elections Building,

90 West Plato Blvd., St. Paul

I’m going to try to make it there to cover it, although I’m probably a little under 50-50.  Work is pretty crazy.

Not as crazy as the state of government in Saint Paul, of course.  We need Eva Ng in City Hall.  If you can help out – whether you live in Saint Paul or not – we’d love to see you there.  This is the biggest race anywhere in Minnesota this year; this is the kind of thing conservatives statewide should see the obvious need to pitch in on.

Hope you can help.

…give a thought toward stopping over in Saint Paul as Eva Ng formally files her run for Mayor of Saint Paul!

TUESDAY, JULY 21st

Time: 1:00 pm

(Please arrive about 12:30)

Ramsey County Elections Building,

90 West Plato Blvd., St. Paul

Might just be worth a trip.  She could use the support – and Saint Paul could use her in charge at City Hall.