A friend who has been scouring the Internet found two recent references to my campaign on the Internet with somewhat different takes on my campaign.
The first reference she sent me was in the political junky’s paradise Minnesota Politics which dismissed my campaign for among other things having a “frequent” candidate. They also quite rightly twitted my “campaign website” which is as untended as a vacant lot and they said was hawking a hysterical sounding book “The Amazing Colossal Red Plan.” All true, although the news headlines about our public schools seem to bear out my hysteria.
This appraisal as I told the person who sent it to me was not surprising as it was written by people with little knowledge of the facts on the ground.
The other site was a much more nuanced analysis by Aaron Brown who has followed my career from a distance up in Hibbing. How could I argue with this sample?:
Welty is an experienced (out of respect, I’ll avoid the Ole Savoir “frequent” label) candidate for state and federal offices, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the guy even though some Duluthians keep calling him a crackpot. I think he’s more of a gadfly, a conscience for that netherworld between Democrat and Republican.
In that regard it’s notable that Welty is running, I believe, for the first time as a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. He started as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican and then gradually through his career became an independent and, now, as he describes a “Lincoln Democrat.”
And who are the Duluthians that are calling me a “crackpot?” Maybe they’re ones who thought making Duluth the only city in the state to allow its school board to impose a half billion school replacement plan without a public vote, on the eve of a national financial panic based on regressive property taxes was a smart thing to do. As they say…….”It takes one to know one.”
