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.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under NARN, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.