Frey Superfan Faces Mighty Ducklash

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

This Is the Dumbest Election-Related Story We Could Find

Jacob Frey superfan Dan Green has been flooding Twitter with promo for his guy, which is his right to do, this is a democracy blah blah blah. But after Green posted a gif of the Mighty Ducks along with a pro-Frey sentiment, one of the actual onscreen Ducks, Danny Tamberelli, felt the need to clear the air.

Replying to a post from Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) on Threads (Threads?), Tamberelli said, "Good luck! I saw some Mighty Ducks related gifs coming from JF... not from this duck or others if I know my friends of 35 years..."

Green, happy for the attention, replied thus:

While we appreciate Green’s command of Ducks lore, the whole point of the team is that they were the underdogs, which our two-term mayor, whatever his merits, is not. 

Anyway, sorry to give some annoying social media guy more attention than he deserves. We’re desperate for election content here, people! It was either this or the weird Team Mpls guy in the middle of Washington Ave. last night who thought everyone needed a blowup doll.

More Like Do Have a Cow, Man

We here at Racket are an uncomplicated group of people. We see a headline like "As milk prices dropped, these Minnesota farmers put their cows out to cuddle," and we click it. Simple as.

We have Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval at MPR News to thank for the above collection of words, which refer to a dairy farm in the town of Corcoran, Minnesota. Co-owner Quinci Schmidt's grandfather bought the operation in 1958, and over the years their herd has expanded to 120 cows. But Schmidt tells Sandoval that dairy farming isn't the most consistent form of income in the world—prices have been low for a while now—and so, after being inspired by an Instagram post last year, they decided to diversify their offerings.

So Schmidt got into the cow cuddling business, founding Curious Cows and Company with her brother Caleb Scherber. For $25 a pop, Curious Cows gives you a half hour to hang out with the cows, brush their coats, and feed them straw. If nothing else, click through for the adorable photos of cows like Maui and Mandarin (as well as Lego the barn cat).

The World Is Watching Minneapolis (A Little)

We know you’re exhausted with election coverage, but we thought you might like to know what the rest of the world (or at least a handful of journalists for national publications) think about the Minneapolis mayoral race. 

We ran across three stories from elsewhere. All three compare Sen. Omar Fateh to Zohran Mamdani, with at least one recognizing that the comparison is kinda dumb. All three mention Mayor Jacob Frey’s “Go home, Jacob, go home!” moment in 2020 as a turning point in his career. And all three view Minneapolis through the lens of the George Floyd murder.

Minneapolis is “The City Where the Summer of 2020 Never Really Ended” to Slate, with Molly Olmstead’s point being that the rest of the country seems to have quickly moved on from police reform and social justice issues. David Brauer identifies “Go home, Jacob, go home” as the moment of Frey’s heel turn, when he became “an us-versus-them politician,” while Charlie Rybak of Southwest Voices says that the incident helped Frey with moderates. Anyway, it’s about as decent a piece on Minneapolis politics as someone who doesn’t live here and feels the need to quote Carol Becker could write. 

For CNN, Minneapolis is “set to vote for mayor, with policing at the crossroads.” Is it though? The story, from Eric Levenson, Ryan Young, and Cynthia Salinas Cappellano, is told largely from the vantage point of Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who took over a “demoralized” police force and apparently turned it around. “I have been surprised by how overly politicized policing is here,” says O’Hara. Watching a cop kill a man in the street will do that to a city. 

And finally, Nate Washberg at Washington Monthly says “The Minneapolis Mayoral Race Is the One to Watch. Really.” Why? Because of ranked-choice voting. Washberg discusses the teaming-up of Fateh, DeWayne Davis, and Jazz Hampton, and the potential for this strategy to take down Frey.

Speaking of Ranked-Choice Voting...

There continues to be bafflement, at least at my polling place, about how ranked-choice voting works. While I realize many of you have already voted, if you have not, here is Racket’s Handy Ranked-Choice Voting Explainer. Clip and save!

1. Vote for the person you want most first.
2. Vote for the person you want second-most second.
3. Vote for the person you want third-most third.

That’s it. Really. Though keep in mind you don’t have to vote for three people in each race (you can just vote for one, like in olden days!) and you shouldn’t rank anyone you don’t want to win.