Hot dish 04.29.24

By Josie Albertson-Grove

Good Monday morning. After Saturday’s Republican congressional endorsing conventions, we have a clearer picture of the GOP candidates vying for the November ballot. But if you were looking for some kind of overarching narrative about the Republican party in 2024, it got a lot murkier.

In the Second District, held by Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, the convention took only one ballot to endorse Tayler Rahm, a conservative attorney who has never held political office before, wrote Briana Bierschbach and Ryan Faircloth. Rahm’s competitor, Joe Teirab, said he will keep running despite losing the endorsement by a 3-1 margin at Saturday’s convention.

The outcome of that race is critical for Republicans, who are fighting this fall to maintain their narrow control of the U.S. House. The Second District, represented since 2018 by Craig, is one of a few remaining swing districts in the country that offer them a chance to pick up a seat. Some Republicans are worried that a potential primary battle will give them a disadvantage, while others have criticized the endorsing process for choosing candidates who don’t have broad appeal.

The endorsement for the open seat in the Third District went to Tad Jude, the former legislator, Hennepin County commissioner and district court judge. Jude was the top fundraiser out of four candidates who sought the endorsement, taking in more than $41,000 according to FEC filings, though two candidates did not file any fundraising records at all. Quentin Wittrock, who pitched himself as a non-Trump-supporting candidate who could win in a district that has never voted for Trump and went almost 60% for Phillips in 2022, was eliminated on the second ballot.

And the Seventh District picked no one at all. The generally-safe Republican seat held by Rep. Michelle Fischbach doesn’t have an endorsed candidate after several rounds of voting failed to produce the 60% needed for Fischbach or her challenger, business owner Steve Boyd.

Both candidates had signaled they plan to run through the August primary election regardless of Saturday’s results.

MNLEG: Bonding bill proposals dropped over the weekend, listing state agency projects. A release notes that local infrastructure projects will be added later. The biggest slice so far — more than $300 million — is for library construction grants. Also noted: $32 million for the Capitol complex, $15 million for a new animal hospital at the Minnesota Zoo and $16 million for the Minneapolis Veterans Home.

Big day in the House floor too. House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth’s bill to make it a felony to call a SWAT team on someone, an employee-misclassification bill that DFLers say will not have any bearing on the Uber debate and a trio of DFL-sponsored gun bills aiming to regulate gun storage, when you report a stolen gun and a bill inspired by the shooting of two police officers and a firefighter in Burnsville.

DFLers will have a press conference ahead of the session to talk about those gun bills.

As for the Senate? Well, a lot is up in the air for obvious reasons. Sen. Nicole Mitchell may be voting, but DFL leaders have removed her from committee duties, Greta Kaul reported yesterday.

UBER: Uber and Lyft have left cities before, and Janet Moore looked back at what happened when the apps left Austin, Texas in 2016.

“Our community did not suffer from them being gone,” said former Austin city council member Ann Kitchen, who led the background-check ordinance. “The community said no, they would not be bullied.”

Kitchen came under direct fire, Moore wrote. Uber launched a service that featured horse and buggy rides in downtown Austin called “Kitchen’s Uber.”

Uber and Lyft spent a reported $10 million to support a ballot initiative to overturn the fingerprint requirement, which failed with city voters.

Ultimately, the apps came back only after a state law preempted the local regulation. Sound familiar?

PENSIONS: The two-tiered teacher pension system is a perennial issue (and one I hope to delve into soon, so email me if you can help me understand how the tiers came about back in the day: josie.grove@startribune.com).

The prober, Edward Seidle, has done similar looks at other state pension systems, including in Ohio, where the state auditor looked back at his work and said there wasn’t any wrongdoing, but it might be worth asking how much private fund managers deserved in management fees and performance bonuses.

Seidle said he wants to see if there’s enough money in those management fees to shift more funding to pension benefits.

WHERE’S WALZ:

Governor Tim Walz is in Hollywood, Fla. to receive an award at the Native American Finance Officers Association Conference.

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