{"id":37801,"date":"2026-02-03T23:55:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T04:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37801"},"modified":"2026-02-05T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T15:50:13","slug":"i-was-not-allowed-in-the-republican-precinct-caucuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=37801","title":{"rendered":"I was not allowed in the Republican Precinct caucuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Post: Disapproval and Harry the Baptist of the Party of Lincoln<\/a>
\nNext Post: Winning the Republican primary would help me clean up the King’s shit.<\/a><\/p>\n

I printed 100 flyers in advance of the caucuses to advertise me next challenge of Pete Stauber. Working on a snow sculpture of Pete took up the rest of my day. I piled up snow on the other half of my front lawn and made a clay model of what I intend to sculpt as Thursday grazes melting weather.<\/p>\n

I went with the intention of being John the Baptist but that was not to be. I reprinted one of my columns about the Furries<\/strong><\/a> which figured into the 1922 Congressional nominating convention that I discovered Art Johnston would not nominate me for lest it hurt his friendship with his new tribe. Art was the most hostile person. He bitterly accused me of calling Republicans “turds.” I didn’t doubt it so I typed “turd” a not very salty word into my search engine and found I had used it in numerous posts in the past. The first one that came up was something referring to gold leafed turd lickers.<\/p>\n

After his complaint about turds I one upped him by saying forty years ago I was called a “Baby Killer” at a GOP convention. Art stalked off.<\/p>\n

The Chair of the Eighth District Donna Bergson also was unnerved to see me arrive. She asked which precinct I was from. I told her Precinct 9 then I noticed there was no such precinct on the master list. She hastily typed my address into the Secretary of State’s precinct finder and came up with nothing. I pulled out my cellphone and did the same. I got Precinct 9.<\/p>\n

I told her I had some campaign literature and asked where I could put it. Both Donna and Art acting in solidarity with Donald Trump in his 2020 election defeat filed a suit alleging “irregularities in the conduct” of the general election and “in the canvass of absentee ballot votes.” I was appalled by their effort to cast doubt in Minnesota’s voting. They lost their suit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was told there was a table in the lunch room area of Lincoln Middle school with a precinct 9 sign and went out to set my flyers out. A couple old friends saw me and stepped over to be friendly. One, Tim Grover, teased me that I might not get such a warm welcome. I guffawed loudly and replied I’d already figured that out. I started filling out the Registration form but before I could do that Donna dropped by to tell me that I would likely be challenged. She was going to check with a sergeant of arms of something like that. I hurried to fill out the registration and realized I would not be let in when I read: Sign her only if you are 1.an eligible voter in yoru precinct, (Answer YES) 2. You are in general agreement with the principles of the Minnesota GOP, (I penciled in “I support Democracy, which I knew from watching Donald Trump was probably of little account”) and 3. have voted Republican in the last Presidential election or plan to vote Republican in the next election. I have voted for myself in the four recent Congressional primaries but for now Republicans in the General election for perhaps 20 years. <\/p>\n

Donna returned to double team me into leaving and I was agreeable about leaving without any fuss. She was grateful for that. She didn’t want a scene and thanked me for understanding. I had met her first accusation that I was against the Republicans by telling her I was very much a Lincoln Republican and that my family had been Republicans so that I considered myself to be one even if in recent years Republicans had molted several times. By now she had printed out several of my blog posts saying I was planning to run as a Democrat which I admitted to writing saying only that I had changed my mind. But the writing was on the wall.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get to present my dozen or so resolutions to get the party back on track so that a centrist like me could fit in. I had one saying no president should be able to use taxpayers money to bring suits against other Americans. I had one about honoring our treaties recognizing that Greenland was not ours. <\/p>\n

I left thinking that I ought to ratchet up my critiques of the Trumplican party. I will file as a candidate for the primary and I will actually try to sell my books this time around. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Post: Disapproval and Harry the Baptist of the Party of Lincoln Next Post: Winning the Republican primary would help me clean up the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,19,168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gods-own-party","category-harry-welty","category-welty-for-congress-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=37801"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37826,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37801\/revisions\/37826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}