I wrote my Hill & Lake Press opinion on caucuses for the December issue. (also on RCV and PAC's) The case for caucuses used to be that you didn't have to have money to mount a primary campaign, anyone could throw their hat in the ring and win.
We moved to Mpls 50 years ago, and we loved the caucuses. We liked the neighborliness of it, and once the Vietnam war had been ended, there were very few contentious issues. The Humphrey forces were strong in MN, and we were McCarthy/McGovern people. (Plus, we could afford to pay babysitters and didn't have full time jobs.)
Stating the obvious, that's all changed, and very few states (and Guam!) still use caucuses. (and you can read all about it when the HLP comes out! Hillandlakepress.org)
I vote for going back to a primary system, but hold them in April or May, not in the dog days of August. The winners campaign against each other until the general election in November.
And no Instant Runoff/RCV. I think the idealistic pros of RCV are outweighed by the cons. Whether running as a bloc against one other candidate, or doing a 'bullet ballot' and not ranking at all, the system is easily manipulated, doesn't promote civility, and requires a breadth of information most people lack.
This election there were 16 candidates for mayor on the ballot, and despite Fateh being a member of the DSA, and having had the DFL nomination rescinded, he and four other candidates had DFL after their names. Very hard for the average voter to know how to cast an informed vote.
I've read the findings of the Constitution et al committee of the state DFL, and we should all be grateful to the people who took the time to challenge that farcical nomination, but agree that it threw the park board candidates under the bus. My hunch is that they had little time to put together the hundreds of pages of sworn testimony that they did, and felt that doing the same for park board candidates would complicate and slow the case. But it's going to be a rocky few years for our parks.
The exchange here in the comments between Ms. Thompson and Mr. Shulman is telling. I'm probably in the minority here, but I can REALLY understand BOTH of their points of view. I have been a supporter of Ms. Musich since her first run for the office, AND yet I am aware of how many decisions she has made that were very unpopular among ever-shifting groups of her constituents, including myself sometimes. I won't list them here, because it is not my point in writing to re-litigate all - or even any - of them.
What's important here is the electoral dynamic that applies to down-ballot offices things like Park Board. In serving, a member builds up opponents over time, via single issues. But once we get to an election, there is never anything LIKE enough attention, campaigning, etc., etc., for the median "low-information" voter to have anything like "the big picture". For many, many voters, a race like Park Board is between an incumbent one does not like because of one or two big decisions they made, and challengers one does not really know, right up to election day. Can you "do your own research" and learn? Yeah, you can. DO people? No - they are too busy "living their lives". In the end, Musich had too few friends left in the community who were willing to stand unconditionally with and for her, AND it is probably also true that many of these friends-turned-opponents voted for someone they will like even LESS over the coming term - regardless of WHICH Musich position/vote they were "punishing" her for.
I wish I had a brilliant "solution" to suggest for this problem, but I do not. The best I can do is this: Perhaps more people should run for these offices even when there is an entrenched incumbent who they more-or-less like. With RCV, Musich would likely have benefitted from having more non-DSA-ish candidates on the ballot... or perhaps one such candidate would have ended up benefitting (and winning) from having HER on the ballot.
As I mentioned at happy hour, I've had one direct exposure to the park board--the dog park fence--and they were the poster child for authoritarianism and lack-of-transparency. Several members were complicit. My impression was that Musich and Abene were driving.
The Park Board explicitly refused to engage their key stakeholder, the dog park users themselves. After multiple contacts by many users requesting engagement, they put up an FAQ on the project website explaining why they wouldn't engage in discussion: "Previous public engagement efforts have not led to changes in the behavior of some park users, and more communication would not change the issue of off-leash dogs going onto adjacent property or Park Board property requiring leashing of dogs." It's interesting in the 18 years of using that park, I had never received any communication whatsoever about the issues they claimed to be engaging us with.
We were gaslit by the Park Board and PM multiple times. We were first informed of the fence the morning of 9/24/24.
Initially, they told us the fence was going to be an improvement for the dog park users. They were making the dog park bigger (de facto, completely false).
They told us that adjacent landowners didn't want off-leash dogs, but wouldn't provide info beyond that. Susan Du from the Strib interviewed spokespeople from both the National Park Service and Veterans Administration. NPS land is not adjacent, but they were the ones supplying funding for the project. From the article: NPS Planning Program Manager Forest Eidbo indicates that “NPS manages only the territory around Mni Owe Sni, or Coldwater Spring, a Dakota heritage site in the historic Fort Snelling territory about 1,400 feet inland from the south point of the dog park.” Du also interviewed VA spokesperson Melanie Nelson, who indicated that the VA had fences where they needed fences. Otherwise, they had "no dog in the fight."
After throwing these two pieces of spaghetti at the wall and neither sticking, on 10/24/24 Musich sent out a note indicating that NPS had "stewardship responsibilities" for the actual adjacent land owners, and that "off-leash dogs are prohibited on all National Park Service property." To my knowledge, at least one request was made to the Park Board for copies of any stewardship agreements, but none were provided.
Musich also indicated that "areas adjacent to the Minnehaha Off-leash Dog Park are a sacred site to Tribes." She provided no indication where these specific lands were, why they were sacred, which tribe(s) believed them to be sacred, and why the tribe(s) were ok with dogs on leash but not ok with off-leash. Again, the communication was one way. No attempt to engage in discussion.
I was eventually able to obtain the NPS grant for the fence. It was approved to start on 8/8/23, more than a full year before dog park users were informed of the project plan. Dog park users were given exactly one week notice before the October '24 Board Meeting, and the project was slated to be complete before winter. At the meeting, we in the "public" were allowed 1 minute to give our comments, but were not allowed to ask questions or engage with either the PM or Board. Just more evidence of the Minneapolis Park Board trying to ram an unpopular project down our throats.
Seriously, I have more. But I will spare the reader.
Mr. Shulman, I will try to state plainly that I hear your frustration, AND there is a new DSA style ideology that would do away with the dog park completely. It was not campaigned upon but those of us behind the scenes knew it. The fence was and remains an attempt at supporting different stake holders. I know sometimes we are all 'one issue voters' (I myself have become one until it is fixed and that is our financial picture), but the loss of VP Musich is, in my opinion, truly awful. You will not get more dog park without her, you will get less. She was supremely gifted at finding compromises from disparate parties. Oftentimes communications would become clunky because being a commissioner is a part time job, and we didn't have any supporting staff our personal coms dept. We would rely on the organization which didn't always have district sensitive messaging. I am not making an 'excuse' so much as trying to clarify the structural challenges. A good legislator knows how to compromise to be able to get things done. By stark contrast, look at 38th and Chicago- even though millions of dollars, and countless man-hours, were spent trying to find a compromise the 'my way or the highway' ideologues said 'no' and are hijacking the process still five years later. CM Musich was a master of problem solving and was a true listener for district 5. Two cents, completely mine, but she and I started out on opposite sides of a major issue - Hiawatha - and we could have been institutional adversaries, yet we ended up getting along very well due to her ability to communicate, compromise and find solutions. She will be missed.
Becka, it's telling that in your defense of Musich, you ignored my complaints--authoritarianism, lack of transparency, lack of engagement. Perhaps because there is no defense? I believe it was Commissioner Olsen who rightly stated his reason for opposing the fence: voters were his constituency, not some faceless bureaucrat that the Park Board kept behind the curtain.
If the Park Board had even attempted to discuss with the dog park community (4,097 signed the petition opposing the fence!), they would have learned that the vast majority of us opposed your solution. You imply that things would be worse with the "DSA style ideology." I don't think that's possible. If the fence project goes through as described, most of us--myself included--will stop going to that dog park. Whether the dog park exists or not at that point, therefore, is a completely irrelevant question.
I shouldn't have to explain to a politician that a well-functioning democracy entails engaging constituents and being transparent. Musich clearly didn't get it, and I strongly suspect you don't either. You can't say lack of engagement was because she didn't have time or resources. I personally asked Musich, Abene, and the entire Park Board to engage with us. Via email and in person. Six times! And that's just me! Eventually, the Park Board explicitly told us they had zero interest in engaging the dog park community. Read the FAQ from the project website. It's still up.
Re. The Fraud Train Speeds Ahead. This is an excellent take on our government's dysfunctional co-dependent relationship with the nonprofit industrial complex. You called it: "It’s a convoluted system that rewards fraud and inefficiency." The myriad of tasks contracted to nonprofits should be performed by government workers themselves, directly and efficiently, not be farmed out to a tangled web of redundant nonprofits whom retain (almost always) overpaid Executive Directors, an insulated network of self aggrandizing blowhards.
I know this because I worked in the sector (affordable housing and energy conservation) for years. There is so much more I could say on this subject. My taxes just went up 13%, I live in a very old house in NE Mpls., and am on a fixed income. I know we are subject to these increases in part due to the fraud the governor has ignored. I hope there will be an ethical independent or third party alternative on the ballot. I'm way left of center and defend everyone's human rights, so no way would I ever vote for the Trump party. Again, thank you for a spot on analysis on this important topic.
Thanks, Terry and Becka, for more info on the chicanery at the park board level during the convention. Disgusting. I remain mystified why the DFL did not also retract all park board endorsements. To the loyal DFLers who loudly proclaim, "We're a big tent party," that tent should not include people or groups who game the system. There is no place in the DFL for the DSA--not when they engage in rigging caucuses and conventions. They need to establish their own party and leave the DFL.
I attend the state DFL dinners and always come away feeling cheered that we really are the big tent party. (My cheer this year was crushed by the murder of the Hortmans a few hours later.) On the other hand, the Mpls DFL has become the dysfunctional DSA tent, which clearly the Constitution committee recognized when it banned it from running caucuses in the next cycle. (Anyone know what this means for the upcoming state et al caucuses in February? State DFLruns them? Does the MPls DFL only run the caucuses for the municipal elections?)
I wrote my Hill & Lake Press opinion on caucuses for the December issue. (also on RCV and PAC's) The case for caucuses used to be that you didn't have to have money to mount a primary campaign, anyone could throw their hat in the ring and win.
We moved to Mpls 50 years ago, and we loved the caucuses. We liked the neighborliness of it, and once the Vietnam war had been ended, there were very few contentious issues. The Humphrey forces were strong in MN, and we were McCarthy/McGovern people. (Plus, we could afford to pay babysitters and didn't have full time jobs.)
Stating the obvious, that's all changed, and very few states (and Guam!) still use caucuses. (and you can read all about it when the HLP comes out! Hillandlakepress.org)
I vote for going back to a primary system, but hold them in April or May, not in the dog days of August. The winners campaign against each other until the general election in November.
And no Instant Runoff/RCV. I think the idealistic pros of RCV are outweighed by the cons. Whether running as a bloc against one other candidate, or doing a 'bullet ballot' and not ranking at all, the system is easily manipulated, doesn't promote civility, and requires a breadth of information most people lack.
This election there were 16 candidates for mayor on the ballot, and despite Fateh being a member of the DSA, and having had the DFL nomination rescinded, he and four other candidates had DFL after their names. Very hard for the average voter to know how to cast an informed vote.
I've read the findings of the Constitution et al committee of the state DFL, and we should all be grateful to the people who took the time to challenge that farcical nomination, but agree that it threw the park board candidates under the bus. My hunch is that they had little time to put together the hundreds of pages of sworn testimony that they did, and felt that doing the same for park board candidates would complicate and slow the case. But it's going to be a rocky few years for our parks.
The exchange here in the comments between Ms. Thompson and Mr. Shulman is telling. I'm probably in the minority here, but I can REALLY understand BOTH of their points of view. I have been a supporter of Ms. Musich since her first run for the office, AND yet I am aware of how many decisions she has made that were very unpopular among ever-shifting groups of her constituents, including myself sometimes. I won't list them here, because it is not my point in writing to re-litigate all - or even any - of them.
What's important here is the electoral dynamic that applies to down-ballot offices things like Park Board. In serving, a member builds up opponents over time, via single issues. But once we get to an election, there is never anything LIKE enough attention, campaigning, etc., etc., for the median "low-information" voter to have anything like "the big picture". For many, many voters, a race like Park Board is between an incumbent one does not like because of one or two big decisions they made, and challengers one does not really know, right up to election day. Can you "do your own research" and learn? Yeah, you can. DO people? No - they are too busy "living their lives". In the end, Musich had too few friends left in the community who were willing to stand unconditionally with and for her, AND it is probably also true that many of these friends-turned-opponents voted for someone they will like even LESS over the coming term - regardless of WHICH Musich position/vote they were "punishing" her for.
I wish I had a brilliant "solution" to suggest for this problem, but I do not. The best I can do is this: Perhaps more people should run for these offices even when there is an entrenched incumbent who they more-or-less like. With RCV, Musich would likely have benefitted from having more non-DSA-ish candidates on the ballot... or perhaps one such candidate would have ended up benefitting (and winning) from having HER on the ballot.
Don’t know anything about Moran, but I’m happy to see Musich gone. The only thing that would’ve made me happier is if Abene got canned too.
What actions did Musich take that you disagreed with?
As I mentioned at happy hour, I've had one direct exposure to the park board--the dog park fence--and they were the poster child for authoritarianism and lack-of-transparency. Several members were complicit. My impression was that Musich and Abene were driving.
The Park Board explicitly refused to engage their key stakeholder, the dog park users themselves. After multiple contacts by many users requesting engagement, they put up an FAQ on the project website explaining why they wouldn't engage in discussion: "Previous public engagement efforts have not led to changes in the behavior of some park users, and more communication would not change the issue of off-leash dogs going onto adjacent property or Park Board property requiring leashing of dogs." It's interesting in the 18 years of using that park, I had never received any communication whatsoever about the issues they claimed to be engaging us with.
We were gaslit by the Park Board and PM multiple times. We were first informed of the fence the morning of 9/24/24.
Initially, they told us the fence was going to be an improvement for the dog park users. They were making the dog park bigger (de facto, completely false).
They told us that adjacent landowners didn't want off-leash dogs, but wouldn't provide info beyond that. Susan Du from the Strib interviewed spokespeople from both the National Park Service and Veterans Administration. NPS land is not adjacent, but they were the ones supplying funding for the project. From the article: NPS Planning Program Manager Forest Eidbo indicates that “NPS manages only the territory around Mni Owe Sni, or Coldwater Spring, a Dakota heritage site in the historic Fort Snelling territory about 1,400 feet inland from the south point of the dog park.” Du also interviewed VA spokesperson Melanie Nelson, who indicated that the VA had fences where they needed fences. Otherwise, they had "no dog in the fight."
After throwing these two pieces of spaghetti at the wall and neither sticking, on 10/24/24 Musich sent out a note indicating that NPS had "stewardship responsibilities" for the actual adjacent land owners, and that "off-leash dogs are prohibited on all National Park Service property." To my knowledge, at least one request was made to the Park Board for copies of any stewardship agreements, but none were provided.
Musich also indicated that "areas adjacent to the Minnehaha Off-leash Dog Park are a sacred site to Tribes." She provided no indication where these specific lands were, why they were sacred, which tribe(s) believed them to be sacred, and why the tribe(s) were ok with dogs on leash but not ok with off-leash. Again, the communication was one way. No attempt to engage in discussion.
I was eventually able to obtain the NPS grant for the fence. It was approved to start on 8/8/23, more than a full year before dog park users were informed of the project plan. Dog park users were given exactly one week notice before the October '24 Board Meeting, and the project was slated to be complete before winter. At the meeting, we in the "public" were allowed 1 minute to give our comments, but were not allowed to ask questions or engage with either the PM or Board. Just more evidence of the Minneapolis Park Board trying to ram an unpopular project down our throats.
Seriously, I have more. But I will spare the reader.
These details are extremely helpful, thank you. I know how important the dog park is to you. Same here. As it is to a lot of people.
Mr. Shulman, I will try to state plainly that I hear your frustration, AND there is a new DSA style ideology that would do away with the dog park completely. It was not campaigned upon but those of us behind the scenes knew it. The fence was and remains an attempt at supporting different stake holders. I know sometimes we are all 'one issue voters' (I myself have become one until it is fixed and that is our financial picture), but the loss of VP Musich is, in my opinion, truly awful. You will not get more dog park without her, you will get less. She was supremely gifted at finding compromises from disparate parties. Oftentimes communications would become clunky because being a commissioner is a part time job, and we didn't have any supporting staff our personal coms dept. We would rely on the organization which didn't always have district sensitive messaging. I am not making an 'excuse' so much as trying to clarify the structural challenges. A good legislator knows how to compromise to be able to get things done. By stark contrast, look at 38th and Chicago- even though millions of dollars, and countless man-hours, were spent trying to find a compromise the 'my way or the highway' ideologues said 'no' and are hijacking the process still five years later. CM Musich was a master of problem solving and was a true listener for district 5. Two cents, completely mine, but she and I started out on opposite sides of a major issue - Hiawatha - and we could have been institutional adversaries, yet we ended up getting along very well due to her ability to communicate, compromise and find solutions. She will be missed.
Becka, it's telling that in your defense of Musich, you ignored my complaints--authoritarianism, lack of transparency, lack of engagement. Perhaps because there is no defense? I believe it was Commissioner Olsen who rightly stated his reason for opposing the fence: voters were his constituency, not some faceless bureaucrat that the Park Board kept behind the curtain.
If the Park Board had even attempted to discuss with the dog park community (4,097 signed the petition opposing the fence!), they would have learned that the vast majority of us opposed your solution. You imply that things would be worse with the "DSA style ideology." I don't think that's possible. If the fence project goes through as described, most of us--myself included--will stop going to that dog park. Whether the dog park exists or not at that point, therefore, is a completely irrelevant question.
I shouldn't have to explain to a politician that a well-functioning democracy entails engaging constituents and being transparent. Musich clearly didn't get it, and I strongly suspect you don't either. You can't say lack of engagement was because she didn't have time or resources. I personally asked Musich, Abene, and the entire Park Board to engage with us. Via email and in person. Six times! And that's just me! Eventually, the Park Board explicitly told us they had zero interest in engaging the dog park community. Read the FAQ from the project website. It's still up.
Re. The Fraud Train Speeds Ahead. This is an excellent take on our government's dysfunctional co-dependent relationship with the nonprofit industrial complex. You called it: "It’s a convoluted system that rewards fraud and inefficiency." The myriad of tasks contracted to nonprofits should be performed by government workers themselves, directly and efficiently, not be farmed out to a tangled web of redundant nonprofits whom retain (almost always) overpaid Executive Directors, an insulated network of self aggrandizing blowhards.
I know this because I worked in the sector (affordable housing and energy conservation) for years. There is so much more I could say on this subject. My taxes just went up 13%, I live in a very old house in NE Mpls., and am on a fixed income. I know we are subject to these increases in part due to the fraud the governor has ignored. I hope there will be an ethical independent or third party alternative on the ballot. I'm way left of center and defend everyone's human rights, so no way would I ever vote for the Trump party. Again, thank you for a spot on analysis on this important topic.
Thanks, Terry and Becka, for more info on the chicanery at the park board level during the convention. Disgusting. I remain mystified why the DFL did not also retract all park board endorsements. To the loyal DFLers who loudly proclaim, "We're a big tent party," that tent should not include people or groups who game the system. There is no place in the DFL for the DSA--not when they engage in rigging caucuses and conventions. They need to establish their own party and leave the DFL.
I attend the state DFL dinners and always come away feeling cheered that we really are the big tent party. (My cheer this year was crushed by the murder of the Hortmans a few hours later.) On the other hand, the Mpls DFL has become the dysfunctional DSA tent, which clearly the Constitution committee recognized when it banned it from running caucuses in the next cycle. (Anyone know what this means for the upcoming state et al caucuses in February? State DFLruns them? Does the MPls DFL only run the caucuses for the municipal elections?)