Purple-er
By Mitch Berg
Why has the DFL been trying to portray itself, its candidates and its agenda as unstoppable and inevitable?
Because it’s neither, and it’s counting on finding lots of voters who can be convinced otherwise.
Duluth’s incumbent mayor – a woman right in the current DFL’s crypto-Maoist sweet spot – lost the city’s DFL mayoral primary.
And lost bad.
Now, this is just the primary. But it’s Duluth, where the DFL primary is in effect the election.
Former state lawmaker Roger Reinert made a bold statement in his return to local politics, easily outpacing incumbent Emily Larson in what was expected to be one of the most-competitive mayoral races the city has seen in the past 16 years.
Reinert was by far the top vote getter in Tuesday’s primary, winning 63% of ballots cast among the five-way field, according to complete but unofficial tallies. Larson also handily advanced to the Nov. 7 general election with 35%.
Now, Reinert is another DFLer.
But in a Duluth that’s kept its neo-Leninist patina even as the rest of CD8 has drifted toward center-right, he may as well be Jack Kemp:
But Reinert remains a well-known local political figure in his own right. The U.S. Naval Reserve officer was elected to the City Council in 2004 and went on to spend eight years in the state Legislature — first House of Representatives and then Senate — before stepping away in early 2017 to pursue a law degree.
Both candidates have been longtime members of the city’s DFL establishment, though Larson easily secured her party’s endorsement as Reinert opted not to participate in the process. In challenging the incumbent, he described himself as “more of a centrist” or “business Democrat.”
Larson has touted a progressive track record at the helm of the city, which includes overseeing development of some 1,700 new units of affordable housing and $19 million worth of renovations to existing units. She oversaw the creation of a dedicated street-repair fund, has pushed for sustainability and pollution-reduction measures and said crime has dropped 22% citywide since she first took office.
Reinert, in comparison, has pegged his campaign on “effective and efficient core city services” message. He has said property taxes and other proposed fees are proving to be a hardship on household budgets, promising to focus on improvements to streets and utilities, public safety, parks and libraries, tax-base development and housing.
I fully expect Ken Martin to take the DFL’s Rescue Wagon off Julie Blaha watch and deploy it, with bags of cash, to Duluth in the coming couple of months, to restore order and obedience.
But this is kind of huge.
August 11th, 2023 at 6:23 am
This may be the harbinger of a greater problem for the DemoCommies. Not sure how many of you still read the Red Star, but front page news was the state is losing young people to other states. A significant number of them have college degrees, but are leaving “the number 5 state to live in”.
I guess people are waking up to the fact that Herr Walz and his flying monkeys are destroying the state and are planning on them to pay for it.
August 11th, 2023 at 6:39 am
with 87k+/- population Duluth has a problem, they need to rapidly rampup their high density [affordable] housing to pull in 15-20k more of the parasite class and parasite underclass in order to once again dominate CD8 and NE MN politics – look for a bunch of grants from the most recent legislative spending spree to emerge with that goal in mind.
Gov Abbot of TX ought to start sending his excess illegal aliens north to Duluth
August 11th, 2023 at 6:40 am
I don’t know how “huge” this is for anyone but those who follow politics as a sports contest. Reinert may be much less Leninist or crypto-Maoist than his opponent, but he’s still a DemoCommie. He won’t be an instrument for “change”; just sensible policies that “we all” can agree on.
August 11th, 2023 at 6:42 am
boss, I don’t know why “losing young people to other states” would be considered a problem. Clearly, those people don’t appreciate the S@cialist Utopia under construction here in the Great State Of and as Gov (Psycho Eyes) Dayton pointed out years ago, they *should* leave.
August 11th, 2023 at 7:24 am
When human civilization shifted from hunter-gathers to crop raisers, they abandoned easily moveable shelters in favor of defensible structures which grew from hamlets to villages to castles to cities.
The core function of a city is safety for residents, clean drinking water, farm-to-market roads, and sanitary sewer to avoid disease.
Liberal-run cities like Flint cannot fulfill any of its core functions. St. Paul outsources water and sewer to other government entities which is why they work while nothing else does. I find it hilarious that Democrats in Duluth are forced to choose whether their local government should perform the core functions of a city or should throw money at pie-in-the-sky dreams while the core functions flounder. Five thousand years of history is not lesson enough for Liberals.
August 11th, 2023 at 8:28 am
Let’s not forget that the purpose of government is to shovel money to your supporters.
August 11th, 2023 at 10:24 am
My thought is that we should be praising God that Duluth is taking baby steps to sanity.
Regarding the population and needing to get back into six figures, I guess it’s possible, but my thought is that they ought to prioritize good government over growth, especially since you tend to get a bit of growth if you have sound government.
And, again, they’ve taken at least a little step towards that.
August 11th, 2023 at 10:55 am
By statute, Minnesota divides cities into classes. A City of the First Class has more than 100,000 residents and gets different rules from lesser entities.
Duluth annexed about half the county into the city to reach that goal which was a farce and everyone knew it, but got them their coveted status. Rochester pulled the same stunt.
Truth is Duluth is a regional center like St. Cloud or Mankato with a population roughly equal to Twin Cities suburbs like Bloomington or Brooklyn Park.
August 11th, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Forgot to point out that the article about fleeing utes was in last Sunday’s edition of the Red Star.
But today, there was an editorial from that pathetic dip stick Ryan Winkler, trashing Dean Phillips and spewing the left wing mantra for Pedo Pete’s “accomplishments”. He’s still living in a fantasy world.
August 11th, 2023 at 12:31 pm
💥🚨 BREAKING!! Leftist reprobate beats leftist degenerate; both move to general election 🚨💥
Merg: #Winning 💪🏻
August 11th, 2023 at 12:41 pm
Hmmm…. am I the only one who sees a parallel here with the Chicago mayoral election?
August 11th, 2023 at 12:41 pm
^ kinda my take too.
August 11th, 2023 at 12:45 pm
My intent was to agree with BN but I can’t say that I disagree with jpa either. 🤔
August 11th, 2023 at 1:01 pm
How long until the Reinert indictment?
August 11th, 2023 at 5:42 pm
man those bananas taste sweet in this banana republic! most fair and ethical election EVAH™. And that was just the beginning… Anyone who thinks vote harder™ will work this time around is a polya….ahh… you know what.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Thursday CONFIRMED that 8,000 to 10,000 suspected fraudulent registrations were delivered to Muskegon City Clerk prior to the 2020 election.The far-left Detroit News reported on this latest development on Thursday after reporting by The Gateway Pundit earlier this week. A redacted police report describes how Meisch encountered a woman dropping off 8,000 – 10,000 completed voter registration applications.
August 12th, 2023 at 11:35 am
I love Duluth and am not worried about liberals running it. I am worried about cluelessness (which Republicans are even more easily capable of).
And there’s nothing more clueless than a mayor publicly proposing to eliminate the titles of Chief of Police and Fire Chief as “offensive” to Native Americans. Which of course most Native Americans do not find to be the case.
August 12th, 2023 at 6:11 pm
^^Hi test blather.
Put the bastard out of his misery, MBerg. It’s just humiliation after humiliation for Emery at this point.
Community note:
The nut cases who proposed eliminating job titles with the word “chief” in them in Duluth are not Republicans, but extreme left wing DFL’rs, who seem to believe the the 60s TV series “F Troop” was a documentary.
I’ve seen this a lot on Twitter and other social media, people with a smidgeon of Indian blood modeling their personas after Chief Dan George or Iron Eyes Cody, or some some other Hollywood stereotype of Indians.
Look at that goofy lt governor in Minnesota. Her name is literally “Peggy Flanagan,” and she pawns herself off as some kind of Indian Kind of the poster child for sick identity politics.
August 12th, 2023 at 6:26 pm
Flanagan is PWT (I know my own), masquerading as some kind of Indian Princess. Jeebus, why can’t the elites see through this bullshit. Just ask her some uncomfortable questions and the charade will collapse. Why is her last name “Flanagan”? Why doesn’t she carry the last name of the man she says was her father? Who raised her?
She was raised in Golden Valley by her haole grandmother, not her mother or father, or so I’ve heard. Or maybe it was Hilltop.
August 12th, 2023 at 6:34 pm
Woolly’s brain cell, hardwired to his mouth misfiring again.
August 12th, 2023 at 6:48 pm
I graduated from West High School in the late 70s. West was about 30% NA students, 30% black, and 40% po’ white kids like me. West HS is gone now, but it was a block or two north of Lake & Hennepin.
AIM head quarters was a few block east from where I lived on Franklin Ave. The LSD that came into MN from the West Coast back then was pipelined by the black panthers using AIM HQ as a distribution point. The closer you got to AIM HQ, the better LSD or heroin you could get.
Don’t romanticize any race.
November 8th, 2023 at 11:00 am
[…] depending on what happens, be good? Duluth turned out Emily “Turbo-Karen” Larson for explicitly more moderate DFLer Roger Reinert. Will he be able to moderate the Duluth City Council – about whose results I know nothing. […]