Only a Pawn in Their Game: Yet another 2020 third-party candidate has come forward to say they were recruited to do so by Republicans. The latest is Kevin Shores, who ran for the 7th District last year under the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party banner. Shores — who lost the party primary — said the man who encouraged him to run, turned in his affidavit of candidacy and paid his filing fee was Kip Christianson, who he later discovered is a Republican operative. Christianson didn't deny his role to FOX 9's Tom Lyden. He doesn't appear to have ever lied about his affiliation to Shores, but didn't disclose he was a Republican, and left Shores under the impression he was with the pro-marijuana party. [ Read more from FOX 9's Tom Lyden]
If Not For You: Two pro-marijuana candidates were on the November ballot in the 7th District, pulling in a combined 6.66 percent of the vote. That ended up not impacting the result, with Republican challenger Michelle Fischbach winning an outright majority, but if Fischbach had done about 4 percentage points worse, the pot-party candidates could have made the difference. It's impossible to prove exactly where third-party voters would have gone in the absence of their candidates, but the pot-party candidates tended to do better in 7th District precincts where Biden did well. (For the nerds, the relationship is small — an adjusted R-squared of around 0.15 — but statistically significant.)
It Ain't Me Babe: Shores is just the latest third-party candidate with links to the Republican Party. Adam Weeks, the Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate in the 2nd Congressional district before his untimely pre-election death, left a voicemail claiming he had been recruited by "Republicans" to "run as a third-party liberal candidate." Plenty of pot-party candidates for legislative races have much stronger ties to the GOP than they do cannabis activism. [ Read more from Max Nesterak in the Minnesota Reformer]
Tomorrow Is a Long Time: Legislative Republicans have been staunchly against legalizing marijuana, at the same time as party operatives have played a role in recruiting pro-legalization third-party candidates. But cannabis advocates are hopeful that support for legalization is growing, with the DFL-controlled House voting this year for legal marijuana, and the GOP-run Senate allowing an expansion of Minnesota's medical marijuana program. [ Read more from the Star Tribune's Patrick Condon and Briana Bierschbach]
Blowin' in the Wind: Activists gathered Sunday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, and to press for new laws overhauling policing in Minnesota and the U.S. Attendees including prominent DFL politicians such as Gov. Tim Walz, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, and mayors Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter. [Read more]
Tangled Up in Blue: Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo secretly coordinated with a nominally independent group that advocated on behalf of the Minneapolis Police Department, new emails released via a public records request show. [Read more from the Minnesota Reformer's Logan Carroll]
You Ain't Goin' Nowhere: The eastern European nation of Belarus forced a Ryanair passenger jet flying over its territory to land, using a bomb threat and a fighter jet, and arrested an opposition journalist who was on board. The dramatic action is drawing widespread condemnation and calls for sanctions from Western countries; Britain has ordered airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace. [ Read more from NPR's Kat Lonsdorf]
Forever Young: Minnesota Sen. Julia Coleman gave given to identical twins over the weekend. Both were born prematurely and are currently stable in the NICU. Coleman joked on Twitter that she "promised them cars if they could wait until session was over, so I guess I have 16 years to save up." [Read more from Coleman]
Pledging My Time: How does President Joe Biden spend his day? The Washington Post breaks down the president's typical schedule, from weightlifting and informal chats with aides to spontaneous calls with friend and family to salt water taffy and "Car and Driver." [Read more from the Washington Post's Ashley Parker]
Something completely different: Hibbing, Minnesota has a conflicted relationship with its most famous son, though just this weekend the Hibbing Dylan Project broke ground on a an art installation in Dylan's honor. [Read more from Dan Kraker]
Listen: Today we're going to go with a great track from U2, called — no, of course it's gonna be Dylan, who turned 80 today. It's hard to choose a single favorite Dylan track, but one of my favorites is a deep cut from Dylan's third album. "Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a disturbing, bleak tale of rural poverty and violence. [Listen]
