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Vendors reflect on highs and lows of the 2024 Minnesota State Fair
“For what the first half of the fair was, the second half of the fair definitely made up for it,” said vendor Brandon McCannel of B Friendly.
FALCON HEIGHTS, Minnesota — The people make up the beauty of the Minnesota State Fair. Tameka Jones would know.
“I’m a lipstick company so I always have to go out and find new lips, right?” said Jones, founder of Lip Esteem.
The St. Paul-based cosmetic line is wrapping up its second year at the fair — located on the Grandstand’s second floor.
“A lot of vendors didn’t know if they would make their week because we were losing revenue the first couple of days, honestly,” Jones recalled.
Jones said sales started out strong but severe weather and extreme heat on the first Monday of the fair kept people away. Monday, August 26, attendance was 80,546 which marked the lowest attended Monday since the 1980s. With another round of severe weather, Thursday’s attendance also only reached 81,231.
The storms on Monday into Tuesday also caused water to come in, damaging some of Jones’ inventory.
“Last Sunday [Aug. 25] was a slower day. Because it started to get a little muggy and then Monday was probably our slowest day in 20 years. I mean awful,” said Charlie Torgerson of RC’s BBQ.
RC’s BBQ has been around at the State Fair for 27 years, first as Famous Dave’s and then RC’s since 2016.
“The only thing good thing is that we caught up. We cleaned things, got ready for a big day. Had a big day on Tuesday, had a big day on Wednesday, and then Thursday those storms kind of knocked that day out. But Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we literally made up for everything. I mean, there were so many people here and yesterday was the nuts. I’ve never seen that many people at this place. I don’t even know what the attendance was,” Torgerson said.
Sunday, Sept. 1 set a new record with 256,015 at the fair. It’s the fifth attendance record broken so far this year.
“Yeah, things have picked up,” Jones said. “We always kind of forecast that we’d be maybe 10% above last year. For a couple of days we were under and we were in the red. But lately we’ve been in the green. People have been coming out today. We’ve got 50% off for our last chance sale. So people are really taking advantage of that and we are grateful.”
Next door to Lip Esteem is B Friendly. The first-time vendor offers bar-quality cocktail mixes.
“I’m a 20-year, 25-year veteran of the service industry. We tend to be transient; we tend to be under-supported when it comes to healthcare and mental health issues; and we’re awful close to a vice. So we’re cocktails with a cause. We bring awareness to mental health within the service industry. We work with Serving Those Serving. They get employee assistance programs into restaurants at discounted rates. We help their general fund,” explained Brandon McCannel, owner, CEO and president of B Friendly.
As a first-time vendor, the business doesn’t have anything to compare this year’s fair to but McCannel said, “The Minnesotans that came out afterwards were just so kind and generous and wonderful… For what the first half of the fair was, the second half of the fair definitely made up for it.”
Jones said she is already preparing for next year’s fair. She said, “We all know we have to go to where the people are… And this is the biggest place. It’s the best get together… is at the State Fair.”
The organizations say many Asian Americans are planning to vote despite lack of candidate outreach.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Most people have been contacted in some way shape or form by a campaign in the last few weeks. And if the polls are right and the race for president is a dead heat, every vote will matter.
That’s why this is a head scratcher:
According to a September 2024 voter survey by Asian American Pacific Islander Data, 27% of Asian-American voters said they hadn’t been contacted by either political party trying to get their vote. Last spring, earlier in the voting season, it was even more – 42%.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the fastest growing racial or ethnic group nationwide.
Their voter participation levels are growing too, with 60% of eligible Asian-American voters turning out in 2020. And AAPI Data reports as many as 90% of Asian Americans they surveyed said they plan to vote this cycle.
“Candidates are not reaching out to Asian Americans, which is a huge mistake,” said ThaoMee Xiong, executive and networking director of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders.
She says even though there are more than 200,000 eligible Asian voters in Minnesota, the Asian vote is under-appreciated.
“Neither the Democratic or Republican parties have been reaching out in huge numbers,” Xiong said. “They’re sending general mailers to everyone but … they need it in their native language.”
That’s why CAAL is partnering with two more organizations to keep voter turnout high and reach anyone candidates or advocates missed.
Xor Xiong is from Asian American Organizing Project, which focuses on engaging metro-area teens and young adults.
“Many of our communities are still facing barriers to go to vote,” he said. “There’s been more times than I like to admit in terms of when I was having a conversation over the phones of voters being surprised that they can take time off to go and vote, or they can bring the kids to the polling locations, or they can even bring someone to translate for them.”
“In Ramsey County, because of the large Hmong American population there, the polls in Ramsey County are federally required to provide interpreters and translated materials,” ThaoMee added.
Their nonpartisan campaign, Get Out the Vote for Asian Minnesotans, aims to get people registered and well-informed.
“Throughout Covid, there was a lot of anti-hate around the AAPI community and we are still feeling the impact of that to this day,” said Amanda Xiong, a community organizer with a group known as CAPI USA. “Even if folks are afraid to go to the polls, due to that, we try our best to then educate them around absentee ballots, voting early.”
“And so yes, there is a huge increase in terms of voter turnout, but then why is it still 70% feel as though they don’t belong?”
In 2021, the FBI reported a 168% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes.
In Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, the groups knocked on at least 700 doors in one session alone while keeping safety top of mind.
“We make sure that there’s a car following all the door knockers,” ThaoMee said. “We put everyone on text chain … and we are putting a lot of precautionary measures in place for the day of voting.”
After the election, the CAAL plans to conduct surveys and send the results to county election officials. They’ve done this before and say it led to policy changes this year at the legislature including measures to ensure people have easier access to interpreters.
Minnesota groups work to encourage Latino voters to get to the polls and dispel misinformation.
MINNESOTA, USA — While the secretary of state publishes polling information in the Spanish Language, experts say there are still challenges when it comes to activating Latino voters. Minnesota groups have been hard at work getting voting information out and challenging misinformation.
Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL) says it is still working to inspire Latino voters to the polls days before the election.
Eva Peña is one of the volunteers who spent part of Wednesday at their headquarters on Lake Street, calling Latino voters and making sure questions are answered in either English or Spanish.
“I’ve been able to help people figure out if they’re registered or not to vote,” smiled Peña. “And that part has felt super fulfilling for me.”
About 6% of Minnesota’s population is Latino and COPAL’s organizing director Ryan Perez says language isn’t the only barrier. Fear is a hurdle, too.
“There’s some common myths that folks are still facing,” said Perez. “They think, is it unsafe for me to vote? If I vote, will that put my relative in jeopardy?”
Perez says a myth has spread on social media that if you exercise your right to vote as a citizen, it could put undocumented loved ones at risk of deportation.
The secretary of state’s office reaffirmed Wednesday that all eligible Minnesotans should vote without fear of repercussions.
“As much as we think social media seems deregulated and there’s a lot of false information for English speakers, it’s even more so for non-English speakers,” said Perez.
Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera is the Executive director of Common Cause Minnesota. Her organization runs an election protection program and has volunteers flagging misinformation on social media as part of its efforts.
“If I’m your cousin, or I’m the small business owner where you frequent with your family, and you see me reposting something, you’re gonna be more likely than not to believe that because it’s coming from me, right?” she pointed out.
Belladonna-Carrera says there’s an additional challenge in reaching voters with accurate information in rural areas as well.
“It’s that isolation,” Belladonna-Carrera said. “It’s not just geographic isolation, it’s linguistic isolation.”
But volunteers say it’s not just about showing up, but showing leaders that they need the Latino vote.
“They’ll be thinking about, well, how can I make the how can I make life better for our Latino community?” said Peña.
For more resources in Spanish on how to vote, go to the Secretary of State’s website.
In September 2021, the bodies of four friends were found in a cornfield in western Wisconsin.
MENOMONIE, Wis. — The man accused of helping his son hide the bodies of four people in a western Wisconsin cornfield has been found guilty Wednesday by a jury.
Darren L. Osborne was charged with four counts of hiding a corpse – party to a crime. His son, Antoine Suggs, was convicted of fatally shooting a group of friends in St. Paul.
According to the complaint filed in Ramsey County, on the morning of Sept. 12, 2021, Suggs told Osborne he “snapped and shot a couple of people” in a vehicle on Seventh Street in St. Paul. After Suggs told him what had occurred, Osborne followed Suggs to Wisconsin in a separate vehicle, leaving one of the vehicles with the bodies inside behind. Osborne and Suggs then returned to Minnesota.
The bodies of Nitosha Lee Flug-Presley, Loyace Foreman III, Matthew Isiah Pettus and Jasmine Christine Sturm were discovered inside an SUV left in a cornfield in rural Dunn County. Authorities say they all died from gunshot wounds.
Suggs was sentenced to more than 100 years behind bars for the killings.
In Dunn County court on Wednesday, a jury found Osborne guilty. The state had called Suggs to the stand but court records indicate he was not answering questions.
