I had quite an annealing experience on caucus night, February 6, 2018. Normally, Ward 6 Precinct 7 is a quiet backwater in the Phillips neighborhood. I was asked to be the DFL caucus convener that evening in my home precinct and I stepped forward with that objective in mind. The SD 62 DFL Chair stopped by on the afternoon in question and I had a warm and friendly chat with this young worthy and received a solid chunk of paperwork to take with me into the caucus.
I walked over to Andersen School that early evening and my goodness what a circus emerged!
There were three DFL precinct caucuses located in that handy location but sadly there were no "traffic cops" to explain to the literally hundreds of people where they should betake themselves in this sprawling elementary school. Precincts 6-7, 9-3, and 9-5 (I think) were all to be conducted somewhere in the building but no one seemed to know where those distinct locations were to be found.
Someone did direct me to a given room and I set up shop as one would - signs with arrows pointing the way to this 6-7 location posted with the help of a young translator who had been assigned by the DFL to assist with language challenges. There were no other helpers, experienced or otherwise, and this became quite an event where numerous persons of American/Somali extraction began arriving in groups of several individuals. I had had time to rearrange the chairs and tables in this classroom, so a table near the door displayed the sign-in sheets meant to be supervised by someone with credentials experience. None to be had, as it turned out. Nor any other volunteer cognizant of the usual practices at these events until somewhere in the midst of the eventual chaos, a white woman of middling years came forward to help with the chair's necessary obligations.
Ah, those sign-in sheets. A few young handlers representing some of the prospective candidates arrived and snapped up the sign-in sheets and circulated them with faulty instructions from "some white guy" in the main lobby who had instructed these determined advocates that it would not be necessary to have signatures nor even street addresses on the sign-in sheets. Well, we got past that after a good bit of pounding on the front table with a handy heavy plastic bowl I found in a nearby sink and a stern instruction from yours truly that a.) necessary information would have to be entered by every attendee, b.) that anyone not resident in this precinct would have to leave the room, and c.) that I would have to have all the sign-in sheets in order to establish what the denominator would be in any subsequent calculation of subcaucus strength.
We had nine delegates and nine alternates to send along to the legislative district convention but without firm numbers there could not be an actual event. Some fine articulate candidates made brief speeches in the Somali language and we managed to get adherents for a given candidate to create subcaucuses that could be assessed via headcount. There were 123 legitimate sign-ins once I ruled that an "x" could substitute for a signature where someone was otherwise incapable of written assurance of identity. There were three viable subcaucuses that eventually were awarded a proportionate share of the available convention slots.
I left it to the organizers to lead their respective subcaucuses in the delegate and alternate selection process because it was soon apparent to me that these worthies were indeed honest in their efforts and willing to cooperate across both language and cultural barriers. Hardly anyone in the room spoke English and it was manifestly apparent that the DFL convener's materials were so much incomprehensible boilerplate. Even if there had been verbal translations in detail, the complexity of the DFL's processes would have been incomprehensible to most of the people in the room.
I've previously worked in similar settings - once in a precinct caucus in the Hiawathas where no one was willing to participate until a translator they trusted arrived on the scene and on another occasion when the MHRC staff and I collaborated on a tutorial session with newly enfranchised senior citizens from the Horn of Africa who wanted to learn how to participate in the DFL's caucus and convention process in the 2005 city election. We 6-7 habitues worked together on the busy night in 2018 and in the end eighteen properly filled out orange delegate/alternate slips were turned in in exchange for blue convention passes.
State Senator Jeff Hayden made an appearance when many bees were buzzing and made a respectful speech in English that received polite applause. To him, whom I've known for many years, I made the remark "This is quite a test!" A speech even in English was helpful because his body language and the intensity of good intentions surpassed mere language.
And so it was. 123 people filled that classroom to overflowing. Please note there was no name-calling, no violence, no need to bring in enforcement personnel or rescue squads and we parted company quite more closely bound together than any objective observer would have found possible if the chaos in Ward 6 DFL processes in 2013 and 2017 had been the paradigm.
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This got me to thinking about the demographic wave that I forecast in a posting on Minneapolis Issues February 7th, 2018, fresh from the moments of truth the night before.
It is the case that I acquired my own copy of the SD 62A voter rosters from the Secretary of State in January of this year. I've looked through all 18,577 names listed on that roster as of January 4, 2018 and tied them to the second part of the SOS material, namely participation in actual voting.
I'll skip the visuals, but there are some salient characteristics worth mentioning.
This is a young electorate. I used the "persistent voter" as a term of art. In general, the district is bifurcated by the freeway and voter-wise split 60-40 with the larger portion west of the freeway in Loring Heights, Stevens Square, and all four precincts in Whittier. Phillips neighborhoods and a relatively small precinct (9-5) just south of Lake St. near Powderhorn Park claim the smaller percent.
More specifically, "persistent voters" defined as having voted in both the 2016 and 2017 elections are of interest. Fully 2/3 of these worthies west of the freeway were in their twenties or thirties going into these two elections and likely 90% or more are renters. Much the same population distribution obtains in my neck of the woods notwithstanding our enclave of seniors in the Ebenezer campus.
Property owners just don't have the numbers to compete meaningfully in this particular legislative district.
There are older voters of course, but their numbers are not nearly so impressive. And it will undoubtedly be the case that the 102 individuals who were newly registered between January 1 and January 4, 2018 (therefore not included in the persistent voter category) will have their numbers substantially increased in the forthcoming primary and general elections in 2018.
Primary, I think because there is no good reason for the four American/Somali candidates that I know of to stand aside for one of their number at the legislative district convention. To what benefit, I ask, because the DFL label is so insipid in practice.
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In fact I wrote a narrative in recent days that I include here as a courtesy to general readership.
Some repetition, alas, and there may be irritating minor typos for which I apologize.
Here it is:
Food for Thought
February 26, 2018
The national government is in chaos.
The DFL leadership in Minnesota lost "The Mandate of Heaven" when they ignored the preferences of many thousands of caucus attendees in 2016 and mulishly and opportunistically insisted on voting for Hillary in the Presidential campaign nationally and in our own mechanisms in this state.
Congressman Walz and State Representative Peggy Anderson clearly stand for cleaner and more transparent governance going into this off-year election in Minnesota.
More locally, bearing in mind that "all politics is local", the emergence of strong ethnic candidates for the Minnesota House of Representatives SD 62A is an eye-opener. Nonpareil in the history of this state IMHO.
The desire of the newly elected Mayor of Minneapolis to seek reappointment of a City Attorney who was slavishly attuned to the desires of private corporate interests in the recent stadium controversy shows how persistently these players continue to distort and deny public interest in good governance in our fair city.
It needs to be said that national academic research has concluded that splashy sports palaces do not carry their own financial weight whatever the agitprop that so demeaned due process in the Minnesota Legislature.
Returning to the "all politics is local" meme, a detailed look at the "persistent voters" in SD 62A - "persistent voters" being a term of art defined as those who voted in both 2016 and 2017 - there are some significant realities to be observed prior to the upcoming DFL endorsement convention on March 10th forthcoming.
On January 4, 2018, there were 18,577 current names on the Secretary of State's list of registered voters in this near-south Minneapolis district. It bears mentioning that a bit over 14,000 individuals voted in 2016, 83% of whom voted for now retiring Rep. Karen Clark. It's also the case that 4,000-odd voters of whatever frequency distribution voted via absentee ballot.
This district is bifurcated by 35W and the persistent voter population is split roughly 60-40 with the larger segment west of the freeway (Loring Heights, Stevens Square, and all of Whittier). The eastern portion includes all of Phillips and one eastern-most precinct just south of Lake St. near Powderhorn Park.Generically speaking, renters comprise 90% or so of all the population in SD 62A.
Another salient statistic - the age range of all the persistent voters west of the freeway is totally dominated by individuals born in 1980 or thereafter. A clean two-thirds, split evenly between those born in the 1980s and those born in the 1990s.
IMHO, these are the voters who will elect Karen's successor. Voters who were the same age as or younger at the turn of the century than the shooting survivors now making waves nationally about gun control and the toxic influence of money in the governing bodies of this country and its several states.
I've pegged this largely young electorate at about 6,000 district-wide. This segment also includes perhaps more than 2,000 first-arrival voters who have language and cultural attributes far from the mainstream of the Minnesota electorate writ large.
I'm not willing to do a specific screen of the names of these voters, but I can attest as the DFL caucus Chair in Ward 6 Precinct 7 on February 6, 2018 that there were123 persons of this extraction at my tiny caucus (bounded by 22nd St. E, Chicago Ave., 26th St. E and the freeway) and we had quite a circus on our hands. These were fierce and determined participants who represented their interest in three of the legislative candidates who were of like ethnic characteristics and I can also attest that language barriers fell by the wayside in due course. I have twice before chaired precinct caucuses and/or tutorial exercises where English was a poor runner-up. So I coped and we left in large measure content with the product of our mutual endeavor in sharp contrast to the mayhem that made mush of the West Bank DFL caucuses and conventions of recent memory.
These enthusiasts of all ages are demonstrative of what I believe to be a strong demographic wave that has left the Minnesota political parties astonished and essentially incompetent at finding ways to welcome this most recent wave of first arrivals and their second-generation offspring into our polyglot political midst as a city and region of first arrivals since the 1850s.
Another reality for SD 62A is that voters are primarily clustered in large multi-unit buildings across the entire district. The relative youth and clustered habitats suggests to me that traditional campaign methodology will not be particularly effective in persuasive target marketing in the remainder of this election year.
I postulate that there will not be a DFL endorsement coming from the March 10th convention. Why would the various contenders seek such an empty honor only to step aside in deference to a purported party unity that has no culturally salient arrows in their organizational quiver?
I postulate that there will be a very interesting campaign season where digital social media will be the name of any partisan game. Money buys political ads, billboards, paper products and expensive mailings - typically in the English language - and no more relevant than the English-language marching orders that lay before me on February 6 in an environment where such boilerplate was both linguistically incomprehensible and culturally beyond cognitive understanding without prior training.
We now live in the era of cell phones and visual imaging that could only be imagined as a distant goal in prior election cycles. This is the new environment where the persistent voters live or at least have access to as wide-spread educational tools. This is not a particularly unique insight by yours truly. Those aspirants who embrace this understanding will move past the usual structural barriers to persuasive marketing that depends on paper distributions and doorknocking. Lots of live video, perhaps.
I think it's safe to say that no one will be able to doorknock their way through 6,000+ households who have personal privacy as a primary interest in their access-restricted apartment settings. Particularly given the obvious language and cultural barriers that also obtain in many cases.
It struck me while going through the Whittier lists in particular that the handful of familiar names I ran across from my time n that neighborhood's leadership circles in the 1990s is not so much a "thing" now. We oldsters are all in our waning years - I turn 80 this summer myself and so do the few other familiar folks who may be even further along in the eighth and even ninth decades of life in this world.
As a class, we don't know many people who are in fact young enough to be our grandchildren. The generation gap is just simply too profound and daily habits in the much younger crowd seem to begin and end with a cell phone glued to their respective ears or to a tablet or some such in their respective hands. That is a common base that transcends other geographic barriers to broad-based communication strategies. And, I should add, doesn't require hugely expensive TV exposure that will inevitably dwarfed by state-wide contests and outside money. Major digital educational tools, for sure.
As an individual opinion as a gay man who survived many decades of hardship, I also think that issues of sexual and/or gender orientation are pretty much irrelevant in 2018. Of course there are antithetical forces to this very day, but they aren't calling the shots in SD 62A. In essence among the current crowd of the electorate hereabouts, "who cares?" there are also very few examples of man/woman same last name, same address, persistent voters. Perhaps some same-sex siblings, perhaps some same-sex households, but none near traditional significance in the large mass of the actual electorate.
Such matters simply don't boil down into statistical entities that can be counted. One can surmise all one wants, but these are examples of "last week's news" and I have my serious geographer's hat on when I make that statement.
Thanks for reading this if you've lasted to the end!
Fredric Markus
2523 Portland Ave., #1404
Ward 6, Precinct 7
Minneapolis, MN 55404
fredric.markus@gmail.com
