Star Tribune
How one Minnesota county’s streak of picking the presidential winner ended Tuesday
The county serves as a microcosm of the United States, Moorhead Mayor Shelly Carlson said: urban and rural diversity, ethnic and economic diversity, and the rare commodity of bipartisanship as a border community between two states with very different politics and laws. Two-thirds of the county’s 66,000 people live in Moorhead, but go outside city limits and Clay County quickly turns rural. The next-largest town outside of Moorhead is Dilworth, with fewer than 5,000 people. After that is Barnesville, population 3,000 and known for its annual Potato Days Festival.
While allegiances have somewhat flipped from a generation ago — Moorhead businesspeople used to be the Republicans, farmers used to be the Democrats — the balance remains.
“If Democrats have enough votes to overcome the Republican base in our county, they usually have enough votes for the rest of the country,” said Markus Krueger, a local historian and the programming director at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. “If Republicans have enough votes to overcome the college students in Moorhead, they usually have enough votes to overcome the Democratic votes in the rest of the county.”
Without reading too much into a 156-vote Harris victory here not reflecting the national result, Nicholas Howard, an assistant professor of political science at Concordia College, said increasing urbanization of Clay County could change its swing-county status.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer swing counties,” Howard said. “The economic needs of Moorhead and the non-Moorhead areas in this county have gotten more divergent in the past 20 years. That’s led to some economic and political self-separation. Clay County is no longer the Minnesota bellwether.”
But the near-even split this election meant a stark divide this week in how residents digested what the results meant. And voters didn’t always fall neatly into a box.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Friday in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s presidential election.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed a contact this past September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.
If the man, identified as Farjad Shakeri, was unable to create a plan by then, the complaint said, the official told him Iran would pause its plan until after the presidential election because the official believed Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him then, the complaint said.
Shakeri told the FBI he didn’t plan to propose a plan to murder Trump within the seven days the official had requested, according to the complaint.
The plot, with the charges unsealed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target U.S. government officials, including Trump, on U.S. soil.
Star Tribune
Tiny amount of propane gas enough to ignite blast in near Bagley that critically burned man, his 5 boys
A “residual” amount of propane gas in a tank was all that was needed for a flicker from a cigarette lighter to ignite an explosion and fire that critically burned a man and his children in a northwestern Minnesota storage unit, state officials said Friday.
Emergency responders arrived to find the man and children ages 6 to 14 with burns, the Sheriff’s Office said. The boys’ sister said the brothers were with their father at the time of the incident.
The State Fire Marshal said in an update Friday that the six victims remain in critical but stable condition in HCMC in Minneapolis.
Kyra Frank identified the five children to the Star Tribune by their first names as her brothers, according to an online fundraising page that she started to help the family with expenses related to the explosion. They are Keegan, 6; Kaeto, 8; Braedynn, 10; Tannen, 12; and Zander, 14. She said their father, 55-year-old Randy Ritchie, was the man with them at the time.
State fire investigators determined that a 100-pound propane cylinder, “believed to be empty, contained enough residual gas to fill the storage container to dangerous levels,” a statement from the State Fire Marshal read.
Ritchie and his children entered the storage unit to retrieve toys, the statement continued. Unaware of the danger, the children entered first and did not recognize the distinct odor of mercaptan, the additive that gives propane its telltale “gas” smell. Moments later, a cigarette lighter’s sparked set off the explosion.
“This family faces a long road to recovery, but they are bravely sharing their story so that nobody else experiences such a devastating accident,” the statement quoted State Fire Marshal Dan Krier as saying. “We hope this family’s tragedy serves as a reminder to take precautions when storing and handling propane.”
ST. CLOUD – An updated vote count in the House 14B race has widened the gap between DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott and Republican challenger Sue Ek.
The updated totals come after Sherburne County election staff identified absentee ballots received by the U.S. Postal Service that weren’t included in the unofficial totals uploaded to the Minnesota Secretary of State website on election night, according to a statement issued Thursday night by Sherburne County Administrator Bruce Messelt.
Messelt said the delayed upload was limited to one ballot scanner and “involved an incomplete transfer of data from that scanner to the state election reporting system.”
“This is why election results are unofficial until all tabulations and totals are checked and double checked, and the Canvassing Board meets and certifies the election results,” Messelt said in the release. “This is also why procedures and multiple checks and balances are in place to identify and correct such challenges, should they arise, in the processing and counting of all cast ballots.”
On Wednesday morning, the Secretary of State’s office showed Wolgamott had a 28-vote lead over Ek. The updated results show a difference of 191 votes; Wolgamott now has 50.36% of the vote, with Ek having 49.4%.
For legislative races, taxpayer-funded recounts occur when the results are within 0.5% of the total votes cast.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
