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I almost wrote this article a week ago under the headline above absent the italicized \u201ctoo.\u201d It wasn\u2019t meant as an attack on Roger Reinert so much as a comment on the non sequitur spread around by unnamed Chamber of Commerce types who want – I don\u2019t know – to make more money with less city hassle. If I\u2019d sent it in to the Reader last week it would have been early enough to give Roger time to reply. I\u2019m sensitive about last minute attacks because in 2007 I got kicked in the teeth a few days before an election by a former State Senator who essentially said I sucked the blood of babies. But now, a week later, here I am being all last minute myself because I just read the dim-witted Duluth News Tribune endorsement of Mr. Reinert. Don\u2019t worry. Roger\u2019s not a bad guy. There will be no accusations of blood sucking. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the Trib\u2019s editorial begins:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all the good Mayor Emily Larson has done for Duluth and make no mistake, in her two terms, there has been a lot, including 1,700 new units of housing, finally finding dedicated funds to fix streets and then dramatically upping the number of miles repaired annually, and four straight years of record private development investments she nonetheless has seemed to have lost the backing of much of the city.<\/p>\n Look no further than the drubbing she took in the August primary, her 34.94% of the ballots cast far off the pace of challenger Roger Reinert\u2019s eye-popping 63%. \u201cIt’s time for something different\u201d apparently isn\u2019t just Reinert\u2019s campaign slogan this election. It was also the very clear message sent by Duluth voters.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n After the first paragraph what else was there to write? I can\u2019t imagine a mayor who wouldn\u2019t do cartwheels after 1700 new housing units, four straight years of record private investment and a dramatic uptick in street repair. Heck, I remember Duluth mayors as far back as John Fedo in the 1980\u2019s farting around with crumbling streets. I just got a letter from the City a week ago explaining that the pot holed monstrosity in front of my daughter\u2019s house is set to be repaired next year. Halleleujah! So why is the Trib throwing shade on such accomplishment? Is a low turnout primary where motivated minorities can run amok really a sign of the times? <\/p>\n Give me a break! ! Firstly, Duluth voters were asleep. It was Summer. Secondly, primaries can be a curse. Primaries are the reason why hot button voters have purged every single centrist out of the Republican Party over the last thirty years. They\u2019ve given us a Trumplican party of gun nuts, science deniers, and Christian ayatollahs. Over the past month the dregs of the Republican party have given us a Congressional meltdown as wars loom off our shores. It\u2019s a party built by uninformed people; deprived of good newspapers; bought and left bleeding by financiers who fired the reporters and picked the bones. It can\u2019t be easy for an Editorial board today to find endorsement worthy candidates. This year it shouldn\u2019t have been hard. Honestly, if Duluth is as hunky dory as the Trib says their endorsement should have ended, \u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke don\u2019t fix it!\u201d<\/p>\n I do have a grievance against Roger. It was big enough 13 years ago that I challenged him for the state Senate in the Democratic primary. Yes, Roger Reinert is a Democrat.<\/p>\n Locals with long memories will remember my three year fight for democracy and the right to vote on a massive school building referendum. Fighting for democracy is very fashionable now in the post Jan 6th 2021 world. Thirteen years ago our school board decided to shove a half billion dollar renovation down our throats by denying Duluth voters their statutory right to vote in a referendum. Called the Red Plan it provoked a civil war. Before it was settled I attended my first Democratic Convention as a Barack Obama supporter. I had just switched parties. Almost as thrilling as seeing Obama take the lead in Duluth was seeing Democrats all over Duluth bring resolutions demanding a referendum to caucuses. The same thing was happening in the caucuses of the Republican Party that I had just abandoned. But the movers and shakers got their way. The same Chamber of Commerce types who want low taxes with Roger Reinert today were thrilled with the \u201cRed Plan\u201d then. Play-it-safe legislator Reinert never said boo about it.<\/p>\n So when a State Senate seat opened up in 2010 and Roger went for it I decided to challenge him in the DFL primary. If I\u2019d gotten to the General election it might have been a different matter but even 13 years ago Democratic activists were paranoid about former Republicans. Roger bested me. Damned primaries.<\/p>\n So what drew my attention to the Mayoral race a week ago? I was driving by Lincoln Park off of West 3rd Street and pulled in. I hadn\u2019t seen it for years. It was dressed to the nines. It reminded me of the Lake-walk utterly destroyed a couple of storms ago which is now pristine. Then I thought about the shabby old West End business district that has begun to challenge Minnesota\u2019s top tourist draw Canal Park – all this under the gaze of Mayor Larson. Gee Willikers, I thought. I\u2019d love to run on this record. Somebody ought to say something. But I didn\u2019t. But now I have!<\/strong><\/p>\n And I\u2019ll be honest about one more thing. I run for public office an awful lot. If by some strange twist of fate it was only Pete Stauber and Harry Welty on the congressional ballot next year which of our Mayoral candidates might vote for me? I think Emily would.<\/p>\n Harry Welty judges Republicans according to all the right purity tests at: www.lincolndemocrat.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Occasionally I allow myself to introduce a new Reader column a little ahead of the Distribution of the Reader. With an election coming up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34356"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34371,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34356\/revisions\/34371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}