With four days to go before the 3rd ward primary, I thought it would be interesting to look back at last year's primary results to see if they might provide some insight, since two of the candidates from that race are running again.
One of the really interesting things I learned was when I look at precinct breakdowns for Shane Price and Valdis Rozentals. Most people would probably think that Valdis got most of his support from NE voters and they would be right as 87% of the 488 votes he received came from NE precincts. Conversely, most would probably think that most of Shane Price's support came from N voters. While that's technically true, it was interesting to see that only 52% of the 532 votes Shane received came from N voters. So almost half of Shane's support came from NE voters, a good sign for him given that the NE precincts generally have a better turnout from the voters. It makes me wonder now, with there being 20 candidates in this primary, eleven of whom are NE residents and seven who are N residents (the other 3 did not give specific addresses when they filed), how will all of this shake out? On one hand, we have Don Samuels, a DFLer whose supporters single him out as being an "authentic community voice" and who is praised for having made the choice to move back to one of the most poverty-stricken areas of Minneapolis after making it big for himself as a corporate VP and who has been a community activist in Jordan neighborhood. On another hand, we have a NE community activist who was endorsed by the Republican party in Valdis Rozentals whose parents immigrated to Minneapolis from Latvia and has lived in St. Anthony West for five years. Who has served on the St. Anthony West Neighborhood Assocation, the Minneapolis Committee for Urban Environment and the Mississippi Corridor Neighborhood Coalition. Or we have Margo Ashmore, a DFLer who has lived in NE Minneapolis for 13 years and has owned the Northeaster newspaper for 20 years and the North News newspaper for 10 years and is involved with more associations than I can bear to type, but most recently and perhaps most notably the NE CDC, which has raised questions about whether that leads to a conflict of interest with being a city council candidate. Or we have Olin Moore, who lives in Sheridan, but previously lived in North Minneapolis for five years and was a board member for whatever neighborhood he lived in during his years in North Minneapolis (the lit that I have doesn't say) and has worked for Martin Sabo for nine years and has the DFL endorsement and the support of Mike Erlandson, the state DFL chair. And then we have Shane Price, who grew up in North Minneapolis and still lives there today. Who has lived in his current home in Hawthorne neighborhood for the past nine years, who has served on the Hawthorne Area Community Council, during which time he helped organize a community rally against "Hooker's Row" back in 1994 to clean up the streets of the johns and prostitutes that were taking away the neighborhood. Who in 1995, decided to fight back against the drug dealers who were taking over Broadway Ave. and started the West Broadway March for Peace and Justice, which became an annual event and has expanded in scope to include such things as job fairs, voter registration drives and forums on peacemaking and racism. Who, as an employee for Hennepin County, developed an innovative peacemaking initiative to address child abuse and neglect that was the first of its kind in the nation and who now serves as project manager for the African American Men Project. And who is featured in a recently-published anthology of activists for social justice entitled "The Compassionate Rebel: Energized by Anger, Motivated by Love" which is co-published by Growing Communities for Peace of Scandia, MN (www.peacemaker.org) and Triangle Park Creative of Minneapolis (www.triangleparkcreative.com). [Whatever your feelings about Shane, this is a really amazing book and I strongly urge people on this list to check it out!] Plus we have fifteen other candidates about whom little has been said beyond nobody currently involved with JACC seems to remember there being a Matt Thoren involved with them. Will any of these candidates be factors? As I've said before, I do think Shane and Valdis have some advantage from having run in last year's campaign. Their names are still familiar to voters and if they can reconnect with the same voters who supported them last time, I think they'd have to be considered frontrunners, although I do wonder if Valdis will lose some votes because of his Republican endorsement this time around. I also think the DFL might find themselves with a problem given that they have three well-known candidates who claim affiliation with their party and the one that was actually endorsed appears to be the least well-known of the three. Personally, I'm hoping all of this, plus his strong showing last year and the tremendous efforts of great gardeners like Robert Yorga, will mean good news for Shane on Monday night and that 3rd Ward is finally ready for HOPE and CHANGE. Mark Snyder Windom Park _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
