What Reinert’s 7B win means

With Roger Reinert’s victory in the DFL primary for House District 7B, Duluth’s political structure has officially gone from one generation to the next. The city council and mayor’s races of almost two years ago coupled with this race show that Duluth’s DFL majority is looking past the “old guard” for new leadership. That’s not to diminish the importance of the experienced party members, just a notable change. That turnover has yet to occur on the Iron Range, perhaps because there are so few in their 20s, 30s and even 40s stepping up to run for offices or get involved in the political process here. Changing this dynamic is the ongoing mission of my blog.

Incidentally, Councilor Reinert won by 20 points over experienced challenger Marsh Stenersen. I had predicted a 2-point Reinert win. I must have missed the zero when I gazed into the crystal ball. Actually, perhaps I was just experiencing some inner-turmoil as I watched the national polls show increasing polarization among older and younger voters and feared that the same would occur in West Duluth. Not so. Name recognition, grassroots organizing and aggressive fundraising carries the day. I think that bodes well for November.
Again, congratulations to Roger and kudos to Marsh for running a strong campaign.

Comments

  1. The demographics of West Duluth have changed significantly since I graduated from high school 11 years ago. It is quickly becoming the poorest part of Duluth. I know there was a study a while ago that put district 7B as the third most impoverished legislative district in the state. There are a few things that have caused this:

    1. The district isn’t quite the same geographically as it was previously. When redistricting came around in 2000, Duluth lost a legislative district and the West Duluth seat previously held by Willard Munger was basically combined with that of Mike Jaros who previously only represented Central Duluth. This put the entire Central Hillside into district 7B.

    2. The Harbor View Homes (the public housing projects in Duluth), which were located below Central High School, were demolished a few years ago to make room for a new development. Most of these residents were forced to move into rental housing in Duluth’s West End, which is the hillside area between about 18th Ave W and the oredocks at about 35th Ave W.

    3. There is a significantly higher percentage of rental properties throughout West Duluth than there were 11 years ago. Now obviously not everybody who rents instead of owns is bad, but they do tend to not take as good of care of the property as somebody who owns.

    Now West Duluth has always been a very tight community and still is. My guess is Reinert still would have won 10 years ago, but it would have been much, much closer. Stenerson has been in the area for a long time while Reinert has not. Reinert is originally from Mankato and started running for political office as soon as he moved to Duluth.

    On another note, did anybody notice how after the latest donation to the Greater Denfeld Foundation, the school now has between $16 and $17 million? From what I understand, the school uses the interest each year for student scholarships. Denfeld normally has about 220 graduates each year. If 60% of the grads go onto some sort of college or technical education, that is about 132 kids per year. If the foundation invests conservatively and gets a 5% return or so per year, 5% of $16 million is $800,000 per year. If you divide $800,000 by the 132 graduates, that is about $6,000 per student. What other school in a working class community can claim that?

  2. Thanks for the background, Todd. This is a great look at that 7B district that I hadn’t done the work to produce.

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