Bill Holm passed away from complications of pneumonia on November 1, on the eve of an Election Day in Bloomington that had been the focus of his life for the last several months.

In late September, Bill experienced severe chest pains, shortness of breath, coughing, fever and chills. After testing three times for COVID, with negative results, his doctors diagnosed severe pneumonia and told him to stay in the hospital for three weeks.

“However,” he wrote to his friends and colleagues on October 2, “after three days of being chained up to machines and not being able to move, I walked out of the hospital …I am resting comfortably at home and taking all of my medication. Overall, my spirits are great and I intend to beat this thing by the end of next week.”

None of those of us who had worked with Bill were aware of how serious his illness was. He never wanted to trouble anyone. It was only after Beth Beebe initiated a well check that we learned that we would no longer be recipients of the email advice sent from “captbilly007”.

Tribute to Bill Holm
By Beth Beebe, SD49

Bill Holm was a willing and tireless volunteer in the GOP Senate District 49. He was often “boots on the ground” for behind the scenes work and physical set up for meetings and events. He was dedicated to do his part in trying to “form a more perfect union.” Having been in the military, he treasured this nation. It troubled him to see the direction things were headed.

After missing 2020 due to Covid restrictions, this year’s Fall Conversation proved once again to be a very successful format for a fundraiser.  Almost 80 people came to the Edina Country Club on Thursday, November 4, to gain some insight into “What We Need to Do to Win in the Suburbs.”

Three distinguished commentators came at this question from different backgrounds and perspectives.  Moderated by Kyle Hooten of Alpha News, the panelists were MN Sen. Mark Koran, life coach and community activist Sheila Qualls, and political observer and campaign advisor Lonny Leitner.

The cocktail hour ahead of the panel discussion provided an opportunity to meet and talk with some recent candidates in the local school board elections as well as declared and future candidates for Congress in the 3^rd Congressional District and for MN Attorney General.  Republican National Committeewoman Barb Sutter and 3^rd Congressional District Chair Patti Meier also spoke personally with friends and attendees. Former MN Rep. Dario Anselmo stopped in for a brief appearance.

Senate District 49 Co-Chair Pam Tucholke kicked off the main event with a call out to special guests and an introduction of the moderator.  Kyle Hooten in turn introduced the panel members.  Mixing humor with statistics and quotes, the panelists spoke and answered questions for close to 90 minutes. 

While impossible to capture in a short article all of the points made by the panelists, a few highlights give a sense of the lively discussion

The consensus on the top issues for the 2022 elections:

- Safety and security

- Education

- Jobs

- Economy

City, county and state Boards and Commissions in MN rely on volunteers for expertise and community input / viewpoints. The experience of serving on these boards and commissions can be rewarding. It also gives future candidates for public office the ability to cite their background of government service.

A November 5 Op-Ed in the Sun Current described the importance of 254 state boards, commissions, work groups and task forces, that involve more than 3600 state residents. It mentioned the 1978 Minnesota Open Appointments Act and quoted Secretary of State Steve Simon as encouraging more members of diverse communities to apply: “We need everyone at the table.”

Unfortunately, true diversity on the boards and commissions in the metropolitan area is not always achieved. Those who apply are reviewed / screened / appointed by current elected office-holders and their administrative appointees – mayor, appointed city managers, city councils, Secretary of State, Governor, current commission chairs – who are, for the most part, Democrats. Even for roles that are theoretically non-partisan, the resulting Boards and Commissions are skewed to Democrat members.

Further, since the DFL definition of “diverse communities” involves “skin color” and “sexual orientation” rather than “underlying core approach to government”, this supposed outreach to all fails to result in true diversity of viewpoint. Reports issued by the Boards/Commissions about their deliberations and actions can leave the misleading impression that their policy decisions are approved (or opposed) by almost all Minnesotans.

How do we change the balance? By:
1) applying in large enough numbers that failure to appoint Conservatives/Republicans becomes obvious;
2) voicing our views when seated on a Board or Commission, even though in the minority;
3) contacting the members to express our views on items they’re discussing; and
4) attending the meetings, noting/reporting the proceedings.

Current state openings are listed at the Secretary of State website which also has more detailed information about the application and appointment process.

If you’ve applied / served on a Board/Commission and are willing to coach future applicants on the process, please let us know by emailing [email protected]

Many of the city council races in Bloomington and Minnetonka were decided by the end of Election Day. The first use of Ranked Choice Voting in those cities will delay the outcome in at least two races. The outcomes will not be known until Thursday, at the earliest, but most likely later.

In Bloomington, Nathan Coulter received 47% of the first-choice votes, short of a majority of the 15,196 votes cast in the At-Large City Council race. Thursday morning, the 3,394 ballots cast for Ric Oliva will be examined to identify how many second-choice votes were cast and for whom they were cast. Those second-choice votes will be added to the tallies for Nathan Coulter and Paul King. The candidate that has the highest resulting total will take the At-Large seat.

In Minnetonka, the Seat B on the City Council may or may not be decided after one elimination round. Kimberley Wilburn was the highest 41% of the first-choice votes, but would need at least 941 second-choice votes to take the seat. Daniel Krall’s 1130 ballots will be examined to identify to whom any second-choice votes were cast. It is conceivable that it might require Ash Patel’s ballots to be similarly reviewed before the Seat B race is concluded. The schedule for this process is not clear.

Back in Bloomington, the District IV City Council race was extremely close. The incumbent, Patrick Martin, tallied 50.02% of the first-choice ballots. If he had received one vote less than the 1,228 credited to him, this race would have gone to an elimination round. The interest in this race clearly led to a 37% greater voter turn-out over the 2017 contest for that district.

Many voters expressed frustration with the complexity of Ranked Choice Voting. Given the number of races in which there was a first-choice winner, the true impact of RCV is still to be determined. Not all elections in which RCV was used led to a decisive increase in turn-out. The number of voters participating in Bloomington’s 2021 At-Large race was only 88% of those of 2019, when a Mayoral contest was also on the ballot.

Minnesota Voter’s Alliance (MVA) sued the city of Minneapolis last year when the city decided to appoint 102 “deputy city clerks”, the “…vast majority of which were from one political party…”  to the absentee ballot counting board in Minneapolis.

MVA argued in court that this violates state statutes that require ballot counting boards to be no more than half from each of the major parties. In an email to Republican election judges, the city of Minneapolis stripped their authority to reject ballots and instead said that only ‘deputy city clerks’ would be allowed to do so.

The lower court ruled against the MVA suit on purely technical legal grounds. The court never considered whether Minneapolis’ appointing 102 “deputy city clerks” (mostly employees of the city, the vast majority of whom were of one party) actually raised the specter of ballots being accepted or rejected based on partisan considerations.  Preventing that was the Legislature’s purpose in requiring such boards to have equal numbers from each major party. MVA has appealed the ruling.

The outcome of the appeal could have a serious impact on our elections. If any city can “stack” absentee ballot counting boards with dozens of “deputy city clerks” appointed by the existing city councils from among the council’s own employees, the self-interest of the incumbent politicians makes the potential for bias in elections clear. Even if no shenanigans take place, the mere appearance of bias will shake public confidence in the election.

Both sides have filed legal briefs in the appeal and oral arguments on the case take place on November 9th at 9:30. The Appeals court website explains how the public can "attend" the electronic meeting - the link for the session will be available next week. SD49 newsletter will report the outcome of the case when a decision is handed down, which could be up to ninety days after oral argument.

For those of you who hosted candidate lawn signs, we thank you for providing visible support for some worthy candidates.  Now that the municipal and school board elections are over, it’s time to collect those signs and store them for another time.

We will be forming sign collection teams to sweep Bloomington this week and collect the signs and their mounting hardware. We could use help in covering all of the neighborhoods.  If you could donate a couple of hours, your time would be appreciated.  Please email us at [email protected] to let us know that you want to help.  We can give you more details when you contact us.

If you hosted signs and they are not collected by Sunday evening (Nov. 7), please let us know.  Write us at [email protected] and give us your address and the sign location (if you have moved it off of your lawn).  We would be happy to come by and pick up the signs and hardware.

We hope that you will be willing to display signs for our candidates again in the future.

On October 23, thirteen high school girls from around the state participated in the Speaking Proudly oratory competition at the Minnesota State Capitol. The theme of the competition this year was “Toward a More Perfect Union.”

You can view all of the competitors and the winning speeches at the competition website CLICK HERE.

A Chisago City teenager, Lillian Rae Imm, took first place. A student at Liberty Classical Academy in White Bear Lake, she received a trophy and $2,000 prize for her eight-minute speech titled “Conservatives Silenced on College Campuses.”

Nova Tseng, an Orono High School student from Long Lake, won the second prize of $1,500 for her speech, “Polarization Is Hurting Our Nation.” Third place and a $1,000 prize went to Emily Paige Lawrence of Woodbury, a student at East Ridge High School, whose speech was titled, “The Fear Factor.”

A non-partisan, non-profit project of Metro Republican Women, Speaking Proudly is a biennial event. The next competition will be in 2023.

As reported in July by Minn Post’s Adam Platt and more broadly publicized last week in an article by Janet Moore in the Star Tribune, the Met Council’s project to extend light rail 14.5 miles from Minneapolis downtown to Eden Prairie now has an unknown total cost and unknown delivery date.  Costs have blown past the initial budget and contingency budget dollars, and the rail will not be operational by 2023. 

The Met Council’s public website for the project continues to lie about total costs and expected first-passengers delivery date in the “Project Facts” and “Project Timeline” sections. 

The total costs may well be “$150 million to $200 million a mile” per Southwest project director Jim Alexander, quoted in the Star Tribune article.

To put this in context, adding a city freeway lane costs $15 million per lane-mile and repaving an asphalt street in our cities costs just under $1 million per lane-mile.   For every adult in Hennepin county, the LRT construction cost is $2900, just over 2-years-worth of round-trip fares for a daily bus rider and more than 3-years-worth of commute costs for a car driver on that route. If we divided the $2.9 Billion construction cost by the 17,000 daily rides, we could have just handed each of those expected commuters $170,000 and encouraged  them to hire a private driver.

By Erik Paulsen, former Congressman for CD3

The future of the Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending bill could come down to an intra-party showdown on a single issue: drug pricing.

On September 15, the House Energy & Commerce Committee, deferring to moderate Democrats, rejected a plan to let the government interfere in the price of drugs purchased through Medicare. Later that day, in an exercise of progressive political muscle, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a nearly identical measure.

Some on the progressive side are portraying the Democratic moderates as callous toward patients who need relief from high prescription costs. The criticism is misplaced.

This proposal would save Americans little at the pharmacy counter. It would, however, hugely damage the American system of drug innovation, depriving patients of breakthrough cures and vaccines for years to come.

At the center of this controversy is a collection of prescription drug reforms that would authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate with drug makers on the price of medications purchased by the government through Medicare.

In this context, however, "negotiate" is a misleading word at best. The proposed reform would create a system of prescription drug price controls under which the government would cap the tab for hundreds of brand-name drugs. Medicare would pay no more than 120 percent of the average of the prices paid in six other developed countries.

Pharmaceutical firms that refused to sell their wares at this artificially low rate would be subject to a massive tax penalty, equivalent to 95 cents for every dollar of sales. What's more, the bill would make these lower prices available to private insurers as well.

The attempt to shoe-horn this major policy change into the budget bill has met with fierce opposition from moderates in the House, as well as Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Some might wonder why these holdouts are standing in the way of reforms that force pharmaceutical companies to cut prices. After all, roughly 80 percent of the country believes that drug prices are too high, and one in four Americans struggles to afford their medications.

The reason is that the proposed tax on innovation would not address the financial challenges facing patients. Instead, it would free up money to help fund other spending priorities having nothing to do with healthcare.

Max Rymer announced his resignation as Minnesota’s National Committeeman in an email to State Central Committee delegates and alternates on October 28. He wrote:

“It’s been an honor, albeit a short one, to be your National Committeeman. It’s been my goal for roughly the past decade to help elect Republicans in MN. At this time, I feel I can best do this by stepping down as National Committeeman and working with causes outside of the party and candidates directly.

“I have full confidence in David Hann to lead the party forward and have committed to assisting him in his transition to the best of my ability. I will still see you all at conventions and knocking doors, etc… I won’t be your Committeeman, but I certainly won’t be a stranger.

“I look forward to electing someone who can step in and do a great job as Committeeman during our State Central Meeting in December.”

All state parties have three representatives to the Republican National Committee. They are the state party chair (David Hann), the National Committeewoman (Barb Sutter), and the National Committeeman. These three are members of the state party Executive Committee, which meets at least monthly. In addition, they are expected to attend meetings of the Republican National Committee and regional meetings as required. Currently, travel expenses incurred by the National Committeewoman and National Committeeman for these meetings are not reimbursed.

In Minnesota, the National Committeewoman and National Committeeman are elected by the State Central Committee for four-year terms. Sutter and Rymer were elected in May 2020.

Republicans interested in running for the open National Committeeman position should identify their intent in the near future so that they may be interviewed by the state party Nominating Committee before the December 11 State Central Committee meeting. The individual that is elected at the State Central Committee meeting in December will serve out the remainder of the current term, through April 2024.