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Green Party candidate could complicate MN-8 race
MPR’s Catharine Richert filed a story this week about Ray Sandman, Green Party candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s Eighth District. Sandman, a Duluth Vietnam veteran and community advocate who grew up on the Fond du Lac reservation, has run a mostly quiet campaign (he didn’t return calls to be in Richert’s story). Nevertheless, he is generally…
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Bad news, good news about demographic changes in rural MN
Recently we’ve explored the idea that while population has declined over the past 30 years in places like Northern Minnesota and other rural locations, not all the trends are negative. Young professionals have gradually returned to rural Minnesota in numbers significant enough to merit discussion about how we do economic development, generally. That’s why this…
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Pipelines ‘pipe in’ hot debate in Minnesota
We’ve spent a lot of time here at the blog talking about mining as it relates to Minnesota politics, but I haven’t spent as much time on another environmental/devlopment issue that will be at least as contentious in upcoming debates, if not more so: pipelines. As evidenced by the recent dustup between labor DFLers and…
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Otto, Entenza and the isolation of Range mining politics
I was out of town last week when the Primary Election results came in. I’m back, and today I’ll be offering my thoughts on the DFL State Auditor race from a new angle: What the Iron Range “Dump Otto” movement did and didn’t accomplish, and what it means for the divided DFL party in MN-8.…
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Rukavina, Hujanen face off in marquee local race
I was out of town when last week’s Primary Election results came rolling in. I’m back and it’s time to analyze some of the more interesting races. I’ll start with the race for St. Louis County District 6 Commissioner, where longtime Iron Range State Rep. Tom Rukavina of Pike Township seeks a return to elected office.…
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Discovering new attitude, new hope for Northern Minnesota
What if the economic prospects in Northern Minnesota aren’t nearly as bad as people make them out to be, but will get much worse if we don’t act soon? What if a working plan for a better future will require an entirely different way of thinking, but there is a solution if we’re willing to…
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Rowdy auditor race, GOP intrigue highlight MN primary
Primary election polls in Minnesota are open and will remain so until 8 p.m. tonight. I wrote about the election last Sunday, although in a fairly obtuse, Mark Twain sort of way. I’m on the road right now and won’t be able to provide much in the way of live blogging tonight. Rest assured, I’ll…
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Some Minnesotans eligible for property tax rebate
Americans tend to have the deadline for income tax return applications engrained in their minds. (Though, if you’re doing it right, you should break even every year). Because property taxes are managed by local governments, we tend to accept them at face value. Well, by act of the legislature, Minnesota residents will have the ability…
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Foreign steel dustup shows challenge of GOP Range strategy
As the fall of another Election Year approaches, I’m often asked if this is the year that the quirky Iron Range DFL coalition falls apart, sending pro-mining Democrats running to the Republicans in order to, as the well-worn saying goes, “protect our way of life.” This is certainly a big part of Republican campaign strategy…
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Franken & foes in first MN-SEN debate (via @TheUptake)
This morning at 10:30, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Republicans Mike McFadden, Jim Abeler and David Carlson, and presumptive Independence Party nominee Kevin Terrell will participate in Election 2014’s first full MN-SEN debate at Farm Fest. Next week, McFadden, Abeler and Carlson will compete in a Tuesday, Aug. 12, primary election in which the endorsed…
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CenturyLink drops the Big Gig in Twin Cities
For some continued perspective on the drive to improve broadband infrastructure in rural Minnesota, note that cable giant CenturyLink is rolling out a 1-gigabit per second service in the Twin Cities over the next few months. CenturyLink announced its plans this week. That’s roughly similar to the speeds touted by Google Fiber, which has garnered huge attention…
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MN-8 ‘toss-up’ is more than just politics
Last week, the non-partisan Cook Political Report moved the race for Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District between Democratic incumbent Rick Nolan and Republican Stewart Mills from “Lean Democratic” to “Toss-Up.” This news has already attracted attention from most of the state’s political writers, so I’m not here to rehash the day-to-day politics. Roll Call still says Nolan is slightly…
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Beware Iron Range hyperbole in Election 2014
Last week I was called into town to do another “Iron Range political pundit” interview with Northland’s NewsCenter’s Nick Minock. The story was about something presumptive Minnesota GOP U.S. Senate nominee Mike McFadden had said about nonferrous mining projects in Northern Minnesota. McFadden had suggested that projects like PolyMet and Twin Metals, which have been mired in environmental…
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Rural Minnesota needs Chattanooga internet solution
Lately I’ve been reading and writing about the concept of “Brain Gain” for rural Minnesota and Iron Range communities. This is the idea that rural areas, particularly in Minnesota, may lose their high school graduates, but have been steadily and quietly attracting young professionals back through reverse migration. Our central challenge is in engaging this population…
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Mills vs. Nolan in MN-8 tilts back toward swing status
Forgive residents of Northern Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District some sense of disorientation. Since 2010, the district elected as many new congressmen as it had in the previous six decades. After former Rep. Chip Cravaack scored the region’s biggest Republican upset in three generations, defeating longtime Rep. Jim Oberstar, Cravaack lost by 9 points to current Rep.…