{"id":37464,"date":"2026-01-03T16:23:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T21:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37464"},"modified":"2026-01-04T23:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:06:45","slug":"i-am-a-candidate-for-the-8th-district-congressional-seat-as-of-yesterday-january-2-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37464","title":{"rendered":"I am a candidate for the 8th District Congressional seat as of yesterday January 2, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last post: <a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37456\">Ben and Me<\/a><br \/>\nNext post: <a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37470\">The Boy Scout Oaf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Friday the first day of our nation&#8217;s 250th year of existence I opened an email from one of several local groups tied in with the resistance to Donald Trump&#8217;s plowing under of our nation&#8217;s ethics, norms, history and fairness as a false friend of true fairness. <\/p>\n<p>The email from Zenith City Mobilization included this link: Thu, Jan 15 @ 6:30pm \u00b7 Zenith City Indivisible<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mobilize.us\/indivisible\/event\/878842\/?followup_modal_context=organization_newsletter_custom_recommendations\">MN Congressional District 8 Candidate Forum<\/a> \u203a<\/p>\n<p><strong>This link took me to a page with this explanation of the meeting announced at Denfeld High School on January 15th:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>About this event<\/strong><br \/>\nThe community is invited to meet candidates who are running for Minnesota&#8217;s Congressional District 8. The candidates will introduce themselves and respond to questions from participants at the forum.<\/p>\n<p>Emanuel Anastos, Cyle Cramer, John-Paul McBride and Trina Swanson have confirmed their attendance. Incumbent Rep. Stauber has been invited. Come with your questions!<\/p>\n<p>The following groups are proud to sponsor this event: Zenith City Indivisible-Duluth, MN NE DFL Senior Caucus, Duluth 50501 and area Indivisible partners.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Being unfamiliar with any of the mentioned candidates I couldn&#8217;t help noticing my names absence. I signed up to attend the meeting and then found a contact for questions. I sent them this email message:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Fri, Jan 2, 2026, 7:40?AM harrywelty <harrywelty@charter.net> wrote:<br \/>\nI have been on the 8th District ballot six previous times.  It&#8217;s likely I will be again. I will be in the audience.  Perhaps that&#8217;s the wrong place for me.<\/p>\n<p>Harry Welty<\/p>\n<p><strong>This is the response that was returned to me the next day Saturday January 2nd.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Good morning Harry, and thank you for your email. Our Candidate Forum planning team has invited individuals who have publicly announced their candidacy for CD8. Do you intend to be a candidate in CD 8?<\/p>\n<p><strong>and I replied:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>********.<br \/>\nAs I said, I am a likely candidate. If I appeared on Jan 15 and fell flat on my face it would discourage me. I don&#8217;t expect that to happen. I think you can take that as a yes for my candidacy. In fact, your putting a non-partisan candidate show on so early gives me more reason to start a campaign than has been possible in my previous filings.<br \/>\nSo yes. I  am a candidate.<br \/>\nDo you have any instructions for me as to my appearance?<br \/>\nHarry<\/p>\n<p><strong>That was me deciding for certain to be a congressional candidate for the seventh time. I decided between writing the first sentence and writing &#8220;So yes. I am a candidate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This had two salutary effects. First, I suddenly had a very strong compulsion to finally write a column for the Duluth Reader after hanging it up to run for the Republican Congressional primary in June of last year. I wrote and submitted it. I hope I got it in by the deadline. Second, I looked in my office storage rooms for materials that I would use to start my campaign. I have a lot of them and it could be hard not to be enthusiastic about my campaign if getting someone other than Pete Stauber was your top priority. I will make that case to the crowd on January 15th if I&#8217;m given a chance to make it. This is the last email sent to me. It certainly was no guarantee that I would be given a seat at the table:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Hi Harry,<br \/>\nI will provide your candidacy information to our Forum planning committee and get back to you as soon as possible.<br \/>\nRegards, ********<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last post: Ben and Me Next post: The Boy Scout Oaf On Friday the first day of our nation&#8217;s 250th year of existence I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,168],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37464"}],"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=37464"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37479,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37464\/revisions\/37479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}