There are two main elections in Saint Paul today – for City Council, and to fill four seats on the School Board.

I’ll address them both today.

City Council

• Ward 1:  DFLer Dai Thao is running against another cookie-cutter DFLer Tahern Crews, a Green Party candidate (h/t Fred Melo for the correction).  Tomayto tomahto.
• Ward 2:  A bunch of cookie-cutter DFLers – no, I mean a bunch.  A gaggle.  if they were crows, they’d be a “Murder”, and they could actually divide into two Murders.  And Bob Hosko, who’s a fairly conservative Democrat and a Saint Paul businessman, but has no money.  If you live in 2, for Hosko.  Since Saint Paul uses Instant Runoff voting, if enough people got out and voted Hosko, there’d actually be a chance to make a difference.
• Ward 3:  DFLer Chris Tolbert is running without opposition.   It should tell you something that Tolbert is probably one of the least awful members of the council.
• Ward 4:  Incumbent DFL extremist Russ Stark is running against challenger DFL extremist Tom Goldstein.  This is my ward. I will be writing in my senior cat, Nosemarie Berg.  I urge you to do the same, as there will be absolutely no tangible difference between Goldstein and Stark if you’re a Saint Paul taxpayer; they’ll be functionally identical.
• Ward 5:  Incumbent DFLer Amy Brendemoen’s only mistake was that she used her position to muscle David Glass – a fellow DFL activist – out of his lease at Black Bear Crossing.   Glass – an utterly conventional DFLer in every way – is challenging.  Potayto Potahto.  There’s an independence party candidate in the race too, and like everything to do with the Independence Party I’m already bored writing about it, but I urge you to vote for the IP person, whoever it is.
• Ward 6:  Dan Bostrom – probably the closest thing to “moderate” on the City Council, which pisses the orthodox wing of the DFL off to no end – is running against a couple of people who will be forgotten to history in about 24 hours.  Vote for the moon for all it matters.
• Ward 7:  Jane Prince – a DFLer most famous as former Senator Ellen Anderson’s legislative assistant – is running unopposed.   While Prince, like Anderson, if far enough to the left to make the ghost of Paul Wellstone sit up in his grave and say “dial it back a notch, Janie”, she was actually superb at customer service when she was Anderson’s LA.  Since she’s unopposed, what the hell.  Vote for her.  Once.
• Ward 8:  There is technically no Ward 8 in Saint Paul.  It is kept in reserve, against a hypothetical future threat to DFL hegemony, when the ward and its thousands of DFL votes will be pulled out of a file box in a warehouse on Plato Boulevard.

Saint Paul School Board

Back in the eighties, Carl Sagan – who was sort of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson of the 1980s – referred to the nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR as “two bald men fighting over a comb”.  While Sagan was no more sage a political commentator than DeGrasse Tyson, the analogy is apt in this “race”.

This race will fill four open seats on the at-large school board.  While there are quite a few candidates, the actual race boils down to a donnybrook between…:

• Four formerly-DFL-and-Teachers Union endorsed candidates who have sided with current Superintendent Valeria Silva, and who have helped preside over the last five years of the wheels coming off in the Saint Paul Schools, versus:
• Four people now endorsed by the DFL and Teachers union, who want to change superintendents but otherwise keep the status quo.  A vote for the “challenger” is, in fact, a vote for complete, unfettered union control of the district and its money.

The outcome of the battle between last cycle’s DFLers and this cycle’s DFLers will mean precisely as much to the students and families of Saint Paul as the battle between Al Capone and Bugsy Moran meant to the poor immigrants of Chicago.

So in this election, I’ll be voting:

1. Aaron Benner – the one, single solitary person on the ballot who proposes any meaningful, worthwhile change.  He’s run an underfunded campaign, and I’m not even sure he’s more than a warm body on the ballot at the moment – but I’ll be voting for him.
2. Clu Berg, my golden retriever
3. Puff Berg, my junior cat
4. Greg Copeland

And I’m pretty convinced my votes will do more to further kids’ education than either of the major slates.

UPDATE:  Yep, Jane Prince worked for former St. Paul City councilman Jay Benanav, not former State Senator Ellen Anderson.

DFL pols in Saint Paul all sort of run together after a while.