Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Alpha News (Again) Sounds Alarm Over DFL-Aligned Mini Donuts at State Fair
If you're a member of the great American consumer class, you unwittingly or begrudgingly support all sorts of heinous shit. Hell, I love shopping at Menards even though the Wisconsin-based home improvement store doesn't go out of its way to advertise its anti-union zealotry or its owner's GOP mega-funding. (Maybe somebody should tell Gov. Tim Walz...) Spending money in America is always a morality crapshoot—don't make us tap the Sonic meme. Considering that, we direct your attention to this hilariously scandalized report from reactionary right-wing grievance mill Alpha News, who, honestly, aren't all that forthcoming about their own brand of partisan hackery.
In it, writer Jenna Gloeb warns readers about perhaps the Minnesota State Fair's most duplicitous vendor—the menacing Grandstand Mini Donuts stand, which Alpha News breathlessly investigated back in 2017. (Gloeb describes herself as an "Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist," which might warrant its own investigation.) "The Grandstand Mini Donuts stand has an agenda that’s not listed on the menu," her copy screams. "While you’re savoring those sugary delights, some of your dollars are quietly making their way into the coffers of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party."
The (quite boring!) story hasn't changed much over the years: Grandstand Mini Donuts still channels its profits ($225,907 in 2022) into a political action committee, Best Fair Foods, that distributes money to DFL groups. Gloeb reports that she even bothered the PAC over its insidious snack shack, but they smartly ignored her request for comment. Our advice for everyone of all political persuasions during this, one of the more maddening election seasons in recent memory? Don't shoehorn politics into literally everything—just enjoy the State Fair, no matter where it sends your donut dollars. Also, as we mention all the time on Racket, Tom Thumb Donuts is the G.O.A.T., so go there instead.
MN Supreme Court Enlists Rare Backup Court to Handle Serial Justice Candidate
Michelle MacDonald would really like to serve as a Minnesota Supreme Court justice. She has challenged incumbent judges in four of the last six election cycles, and presumably wants to snap her losing streak, or at least keep running indefinitely. But MacDonald's law license is suspended, and the Secretary of State's office determined that this made her ineligible for the office and so kept her off the ballot. MacDonald challenged this decision, but the Minnesota Supreme Court, which would ordinarily hear the case, was the same body that suspended her license, and whose members MacDonald was consistently campaigning to replace. So in a rare move Tuesday, an appeals court justice and four lower court judges stepped in on their behalf to hear McDonald's case, reports Peter Callaghan for MinnPost.
In an order that arrived shortly thereafter, the replacement justices decided that, “Because MacDonald’s law license in Minnesota is currently suspended, she is not ‘learned in the law’ and thus is not constitutionally qualified to be a justice of the supreme court.” Her lawyer, Eric Bond Anunobi, admitted Tuesday that Supreme Court precedent defines “learned in the law” as... being an attorney, which MacDonald currently is not. He argued, however, that, “it would be dangerous to adopt this wholesale rule that because a lawyer is suspended they cannot be judges.”
MacDonald's current suspension (it's not her first) stems from what the court deemed "repeated falsehoods" the outspoken Republican issued during her 2018 candidacy, Callaghan writes. Among her missteps: "several ethics violations," the Strib reported last year, plus shit-talking sitting judges via the radio. Last year the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that MacDonald had not "undergone the requisite moral change for reinstatement to the practice of law."
Is Duluth Pricing Out Middle-Class Tourists?
That's what Jay Gabler investigates in his latest for the Duluth News Tribune, and anecdotal evidence appears to be dropping into donation boxes at city museums. Folks at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum are seeing bigger-dollar bills appear, ditto for the folks at Glensheen. "It's like I'm attracting almost a new kind of visitor," observes Matthew Sjelin, director of the Karpeles Museum. Elsewhere, the cost of Twin Ports lodging is spiking. "You can go down to the Cities and get a hotel for $120, and here it's $240," says Stacey DeRoche, marketing coordinator at the St. Louis County Depot. "It's kind of crazy, some of the prices." Jesse Hinkemeyer, GM of Pier B Resort Hotel, confirms that upward trend.
All of this tracks with what Duluth leaders apparently want. The agencies tasked with promoting city tourism "evolved our strategy to prioritize out of state markets," according to a statement issued to Gabler. Now you're seeing a luxury cruise liner, the Viking Octantis, glide past Canal Park. And you're seeing an airport that once handled "predominantly" biz flyers shift to 50/50 biz vs. tourism post-pandemic, reports Tom Werner with the Duluth Airport Authority. "We are at a spot where we kind of have to think about, how do we want to position Duluth?" says Tricia Hobbs, the city's senior economic developer. "What do we want that Duluth identity to be?"
More Fact Checking on How Gov. Walz Handled the 2020 Rioting
Earlier this month, the Star Tribune's Andy Mannix and Liz Sawyer published a timeline that showed conclusively, no, Gov. Tim Walz did not "let Minneapolis burn" during the protests and riots that followed George Floyd's 2020 murder. Now ex-Twin Citian Eamon Whalen is back in Mother Jones to determine whether Walz "encouraged" rioters during those confusing days, as Republican VP candidate JD Vance recently suggested.
“It’s absolutely not the case that the governor encouraged the rioters,” says U of M sociology professor Michelle Phelps, who authored a new book, The Minneapolis Reckoning, which she discussed with Racket in June. Phelps tells Whalen that Walz attempted, “to appeal to the centrist Democrat watching the protests from [the suburbs] who were incredibly relieved when the National Guard was called in, and the people living in Minneapolis, some of whom at that moment were fervently calling for police abolition.”
Thus, the current portrayal of Walz as a leftist radical, which straight-faced GOPers like Vance are attempting to promote, ring “laughable” and “totally baseless," according to onetime Minneapolis mayoral candidate Sheila Nezhad. Whalen describes Walz's 2020 actions as more interesting and complicated than what the Vances of the world are spewing out: "He left many disappointed, on the left and right."
