{"id":4292,"date":"2009-02-27T12:59:02","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T17:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4292"},"modified":"2009-02-27T12:59:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T17:59:26","slug":"the-accidental-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4292","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Newinski: The Accidental Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been head-down on work and family stuff this past week, so I’m mortified to see that I didn’t catch this until today; Dennis Newinski passed away<\/a>\u00a0two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Former state legislator Dennis Newinski was a man who had strong beliefs, a positive outlook on life and a vision about what was important. He also had an inspiring personality, sincerity and common sense.<\/p>\n

As a blue-collar worker, Newinski had no political aspirations, but many felt he would be the perfect candidate and asked the longtime union machinist to run for office, said his wife of 43 years, Sharie.<\/p>\n

Newinski won a seat in the Minnesota House in 1990 and nearly made his way to Washington, D.C., in 1994 as a representative from the state’s Fourth Congressional District. That year he nearly beat incumbent Bruce Vento in a district that had long been held by Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a sad irony that Mesothelioma claimed both Mr. Newinski and\u00a0<\/em>Vento, the former CD4 congressman against whom he campaigned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I knew Dennis from CD4 politics for many years.\u00a0 Sharp and astute, a great conservative as well as Republican, Dennis was the last Republican to make a genuine go of it in the Fourth.\u00a0 For a guy who – as the Strib notes – was a\u00a0blue-collar working stiff who’d not <\/em>been grooming himself for politics his whole life, Dennis was both a refreshing change from the masses of canned DFL hacks that dominate the east metro, and, <\/em>despite all that, a sharp, impassioned, convincing speaker who had a natural knack for connecting with people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was also the kind of guy that I suspect the Fourth District GOP would have a very hard time recruiting to run at all, these days.<\/p>\n

The state, and especially the East Metro, need a lot more like him.\u00a0 He is sorely missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been head-down on work and family stuff this past week, so I’m mortified to see that I didn’t catch this until today; Dennis Newinski passed away\u00a0two weeks ago. Former state legislator Dennis Newinski was a man who had strong beliefs, a positive outlook on life and a vision about what was important. He also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}