Hot dish 09.09.24

By Josie Albertson-Grove

Good Monday morning. It was a busy weekend for the campaigns, after Gov. Tim Walz wrapped up a tour through Pennsylvania with reporter Rochelle Olson and photographer Glen Stubbe on the plane. Walz’s barnstorming continues this week but we will follow from a distance because, as Olson wrote in her Friday dispatch, these trips are expensive!

On Saturday, Walz spoke to a D.C. fundraiser for the Human Rights Campaign, to a crowd of 3,500 with a focus on LGBTQ rights and his now well-known story of being approached to act as faculty adviser for the Gay-Straight Alliance at Mankato West Hight.

Walz also touched on gun rights after the Wednesday shooting at a Georgia high school left four dead. National news outlets focused on his remarks about how school shootings do not have to be a “fact of life,” in a rebuke to Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance’s comments about the shooting.

National outlets called Walz’s words both “blunt” and “sharp.”

Republicans have pushed back against Democrats’ attacks on Vance, noting he specifically said in his answer regarding the shooting that he didn’t “like that this is a fact of life,” and that schools should have more security.

The AP also noted Walz’s appearance on a Michigan radio show last week, talking about Israel’s war in Gaza. Walz said the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves, and “we can’t allow what’s happened in Gaza to happen. The Palestinian people have every right to life and liberty themselves.”

The spouses are on tour too: Gwen Walz will be speaking with Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff in Raleigh, N.C. today, while Olson reported Harris herself was expected to stay behind in Pennsylvania for debate prep.

As Harris gears up for tomorrow’s TV matchup, the Minnesota arm of her campaign announced they will hold 50 watch parties across the state, with the biggest expected to be at the St. Anthony Main movie theater in St. Paul and the Democrats’ campaign office in Rochester.

And there are more debate prep events! Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and DFL chair Ken Martin will hold a press conference to talk about the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025″ again, as Democrats seek to tie former President Donald Trump and Vance to the proposals Trump has said he doesn’t know about.

POT: Some in rural Minnesota are still adjusting to the proliferation of the THC edibles and drinks that the state Legislature legalized in 2022, as Christopher Vondracek writes, with local moratoriums, confusion around the 2023 cannabis-legalization bill, and general stigma still prevalent.

For Crookston cannabis entrepreneur and former radio DJ John Reitmeier , it’s been tough to be accepted in northwestern Minnesota, Vondracek writes.

At public meetings, some insinuated his business was to blame for teenagers bringing THC vape pens to school. Others thought he sold illegal products. Then there was that day the police came in — officers he knows from church.

“They triangulated around me and demanded my ID,” Reitmeier said. “We’ve known each other for 40 years.”

Some in town worried the products would end up in the hands of teens, but Reitmeier said his typical customer is an older adult.

STREETCAR DESIRE DASHED: Ramsey County’s effort to get a “modern streetcar” line from Union Depot in downtown St. Paul out to the airport and Mall of America ended Friday not with a streetcar bell’s clang, but a whimper of a press release, Janet Moore reports.

In an announcement made on its website, the county said the “difficult” decision was based on feedback from community members, businesses and other partners along the route, which would have largely followed busy W. 7th Street in St. Paul.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission opposed the project, and their support is pretty key for a route that goes to the airport.

It’s not clear if the county will pursue a bus rapid transit project for the corridor, with an estimated cost of $121 million (about a twentieth of the $2.1 billion price tag for the streetcar) or just make the existing bus along West Seventh faster and more frequent.

OTHER FARM BILL: The lack of a state bonding bill this spring means the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute’s dream of an “urban farm” at the Roof Depot site near the Greenway in Minneapolis was put off. But last week, Susan Du reports, the Minneapolis City Council gave the neighborhood group another year to come up with the funding, as a deadline for the group to buy the city-owned property loomed.

Advocates for the farm hope the Legislature will come through for them in 2025, though that means the site will sit vacant another year.

State Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, said getting the remaining $5.7 million for the neighborhood group to buy the Roof Depot would be a priority for the Minneapolis delegation in 2025. Fateh faced some criticism in 2024 for his focus on pay minimums for Uber and Lyft drivers, though he and other DFLers have denied that bill stalled other legislation.

WHERE’S WALZ:

Gov. Tim Walz has no official events on his public schedule today, since he’ll be in the southwestern U.S. for the campaign today.

11:15 a.m.: Walz arrives at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and in the afternoon, he will deliver remarks at a campaign reception in Dallas, Texas on behalf of the Harris Victory Fund.

2:45 p.m. Walz will arrives at Reno-Tahoe International Airport and will visit Reno.

6 p.m.: Walz lands at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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