Star Tribune
Are Rochester’s nonpartisan elections becoming a battleground for party politics?
In all three races, Faith in Minnesota is deploying not only volunteers but also financial resources. The group purports to have raised $21,000 in local money to pay for an organizer and other expenses, though Olivia Bergen, its paid staffer, declined to say whether the group is using any additional outside funds to support its efforts in Rochester. Last year the group spent $330,000 lobbying, according to state records.
Joe Powers,cq/ec a local businessman known for his political involvement, said his biggest concern is what kind of influence Faith in Minnesota will have over the candidates if they are elected. He said while it’s common for different interested groups to get behind candidates, he has never seen a bloc of city candidates lining up alongside an outside group with partisan ties.
“This hasn’t worked out good for either party,” Powers said. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or whatever, are we happy with where we are at? Why would you want to bring that to your city?
To push back against Faith in Minnesota’s mobilization, Powers held a meeting last month to warn other hospitality industry leaders about the “potential formation of a council that is unfavorable to business interests.” About 50 people attended the meeting, he said. Concerns were raised about wage increases, unionization and other policy considerations which the Rochester City Council has typically taken a hands-off approach.
“They are anti-growth,” Powers said. “And if they win the election, all three will be owned by an outside group.”
Organizers with Faith in Minnesota dispute those claims, saying the group’s Rochester agenda was adopted locally after interviews with more than 500 residents — without any partisan involvement. They also note other groups have sought to influence local elections without the same level of scrutiny. In the primaries, for instance, the GOP-aligned Minnesota Private Business Council spent $10,000 supporting candidates challenging the Faith in the Minnesota bloc.
Parts of Minnesota’s Arrowhead region woke up to a dusting of snow Sunday, likely Minnesota’s first of the season, according to a National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist.
Krystal Lynum, a meteorologist with the NWS in Duluth, said her office received reports of a dusting of snow in Brimson, about 30 miles northwest of Two Harbors. Facebook reports in a North Shore group also showed a dusting of snow in Isabella, west of Tofte.
Lynum said the snowfall seemed to be “a dusting at most,” as precipitation turned to snowflakes when the temperature dropped close to freezing, but that the same thing could happen overnight into Monday.
“Temperatures are supposed to get colder tonight than they were last night, so we might see some more widespread of at least, a mix of rain and snow, maybe all snow up in the Arrowhead,” she said.
Still, nothing measurable, and all likely to melt fast. Wait to pull out those skis.
Kathleen Fowke, a Republican candidate running for Minnesota State Senate District 45, places literature in a door handle as she campaigns in Long Lake on Wednesday. Olivia Osgerby, a volunteer with Fowke’s campaign, watches from the bottom of the steps. (Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
For a dozen years, Fowke has been married to Ben Fowke, the former CEO of Xcel Energy whose compensation exceeded $20 million in each of his final four years. Fowke said she remains connected to her modest roots as a working-class kid and a divorced single mom of two struggling to feed her kids and pay the heating bill.
She started her career as a cosmetologist before launching a landscaping business, then getting her license to sell real estate. She recalls the crash of 2008 as an especially tough time. She faces no such struggles now, having loaned her two campaigns $500,000 so far.
“Nobody owns me,” Fowke said. As for her ties to Xcel, Fowke said, the company has been a leader in green energy and that her husband is well aware she has a mind of her own. She notes that the election is for the remaining two years of Morrison’s term, not a full four years. “Put me in there for two years and let me see what I can do,” she said.
Johnson Stewart, 60, of Minnetonka, already served two years. She was elected to the Senate in 2020 and because of redistricting, she ended up paired with Morrison and didn’t seek re-election in 2022. She’s running to keep the status quo, a DFL Senate majority capable of pushing through a stream of progressive policies.
She talks about protecting reproductive rights and making college more affordability, noting that when she got her degree from the University of Wisconsin in Platteville, tuition was $600 a semester. “It changes people’s lives but they can’t do it if they can’t afford it,” Johnson Stewart said.
The 2023 DFL-controlled Legislature passed the North Star Promise program that provides free college tuition at state and tribal colleges and universities for families earning less than $80,000 in federally adjusted gross income, alleviating the stress for working-class kids. “We’re letting students be students,” Johnson Stewart said.
Myers was hired as a reporter at the Binghamton (N.Y.) Evening Press in 1971. He plunged into the work, covering the economic impact of Hurricane Agnes in 1972 on Elmira, N.Y., which was devastated by flooding. “He got hooked” on covering economics, said Dave Beal, the business editor at the newspaper.
Beal and his wife, Caroline, invited Meyers to their home for Thanksgiving his first year in Binghamton, and they became lifelong friends. “He was kind of crusty, a hard surface but soft inside,” Caroline Beal said.
The Newspaper Guild, the union that represents newspaper workers, attempted to organize the Evening Press, a newspaper in the Gannett chain in 1974. “Mike got very active, and the publisher of the Binghamton paper invited him into his office,” Beal said. After their chat, he recalled, Meyers agreed to go to work at the Gannett paper in Rochester, N.Y., which was already organized by the Guild.
In 1977, Meyers was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan fellowship at Princeton University; in 1984, the Star Tribune hired him as economics reporter. He was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1986. From 1987 to 1991 Meyers was the Star Tribune’s New York correspondent, covering the turbulent financial markets, and writing an occasional feature column called “Fun City Diary.”
In 1991, Meyers became the Star Tribune’s national economics correspondent. He traveled widely in the U.S. and a dozen countries to cover taxes, spending and monetary policy, Gov. Jesse Ventura’s trade mission to Mexico and former Vice President Walter Mondale’s stint as ambassador to Japan.
Although Meyers’ opinion pieces generally had a liberal tilt, he was more than willing to take on both political parties. In 2011, he wrote that President Barack Obama “has adopted some of the most atrocious economic ideas in generations.” He skewered President Donald Trump in 2020 for proposing a $500 billion package of loans and grants to business, comparing it to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, when “the rich were first to claim the lifeboats” and “the rest were on their own.”
