Left-leaning voters in Minnesota might want to steer clear of Ana Marie Cox’s deep dive on how an expected Blue Wave could fizzle in the Land of 10,000 tomorrow, but it’s a worthwhile read from an outside perspective (although Cox did used to live in St. Paul) on the back-and-forth between fraud concerns and federal government overreach during Operation Metro Surge.
In what comes as a surprise to precisely no one, this latest election cycle in Minnesota has featured a cornucopia of negative ads — in fact, a record high.
Republican-aligned groups have spent over $24 million on negative ads since the primaries, and around $5 million on positive ads, while Democratic-Farmer-Labor-aligned groups have spent over $12 million on negative ads and around $4 million on positive ads.
You’re likely reading this on a rainy election day, and it could actually matter. Political scientists studying elections between 1940 and 2000 found that rainfall an inch above the usual depressed turnout by less than 1%, but in certain circumstances, that can be enough to swing an election. Dr. Brad Gomez at Florida State University theorizes that had the Florida panhandle not been experiencing rain in 2000, Al Gore might have won the election outright.
When I was in high school, we only had options like Spanish, French and Latin for foreign languages, but this year, the Anoka-Hennepin School District is offering Ojibwe as a language option for the first time. The district has almost 1,200 students who identify as Indigenous, and the class offering is not just about the credits, but also about representation and the preservation of tradition.
“We have an identity that’s political, our whole culture, our spirituality, our languages are political, and then you build an institution where we are not thought of, and it’s kind of built against us,” said Ojibwe teacher Tayah Reyes. “It is really important that this is going towards them graduating and for them to get further in life.”
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan has ordered the federal government to bring Kenis Adalberto Lopez Gonzalez back from the Central African Republic where he was deported following his arrest in Shakopee last January. Lopez Gonzalez presented his Minnesota-issued ID and the paperwork that showed he had been granted withholding of removal, but ICE agents arrested him anyways and eventually sent him to Africa, where he has been more or less under house arrest since August.
Late last month, Xcel Energy proposed a rate freeze for two years, but Minnesota Power in northern Minnesota is going the opposite way and planning on raising rates by 17.4%. This would work out to customers paying an average of $24 a month more and mark the company’s first rate increase since 2023.
And finally in your Minnesota news roundup: Not so fast with that pumpkin heading for the trash can. Cities across Minnesota, including Burnsville, St. Louis Park, Eagan, Scandia, Moorhead, Apple Valley and Faribault have set up sites for pumpkin and Jack-o’-lantern dropoff, and many cities will also take them with other compostables.
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