Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
A Dozen Olympic Medals for MN Athletes
Olympians are returning home after last night's closing ceremonies, and as Josie Albertson-Grove reports for the Star Tribune, a certain Hmong-American gymnast got an especially warm welcome at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I'm sorry but if you look at these photos of Suni Lee and her fans from staff photographer Jeff Wheeler and a tiny, happy teardrop doesn't start stinging at the corner of your eye then we are not the same:
Lee took home a gold medal (women’s gymnastics team) and two bronze medals (all-around, uneven bars) in her second Olympics—and impressive as that may be, she's not the most decorated MN medalist in the 2024 games. That honor goes to Lakeville swimmer Regan Smith, who earned five medals: gold in women’s medley relay and mixed medley relay, and silver in women’s 100 backstroke, 200 backstroke, and 200 butterfly. Coming home with one medal apiece (nothing to sneeze at!) are Sarah Bacon (silver, women’s synchronized springboard diving), Napheesa Collier (gold, women's basketball), Alanna Smith (bronze, women's basketball), Anthony Edwards (gold, men's basketball), Rudy Gobert (silver, men's basketball), and Jordan Thompson (women's volleyball).
All in, writes the Strib's Cassidy Hettesheimer, Team USA athletes with Minnesota ties took home 12 medals, tying the number from 2020 in Tokyo, which is believed to be the most we've ever won in a Summer Olympics. (Add in Lynx and Timberwolves players who medaled for their own countries, and the total is 14.) Hm, it's almost like sending a dedicated staff member to cover that historic event would have been a good idea...
Forget MAGA, It's Time to MAMA
Since presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced last week that MN Governor Tim Walz would be her running mate, those on the right have naturally been slamming the guv as a dangerously radical left-wing liberal who would impose his freakish set of beliefs on our great nation. Writes Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell: good!
The Republican case against Timmy goes that MN has passed a downright hellmouth-opening set of lefty laws during his time as governor—free school lunches, enshrining abortion, drivers licenses for all, restoration of voting rights for people released from prison or jail—the kind of legislation that, were it to be adopted on a wider scale, would surely spiral our country into liberal chaos. If the children can eat for free, how will we get them to work in the mines???
Rampell argues that "the country should be so lucky" to find itself under such a regime—in fact, she says the Dems' new agenda should be to Make America Minnesota Already. "In general, Walz’s state agenda has been politically smart, fiscally sound and family-friendly—not to mention long overdue pretty much everywhere else in America," Rampell writes. And if ever there was a message that speaks to our Minnesota Exceptionalism... man, between this and the so-called Minnesota Model, this campaign could cause unprecedented ego swelling for North Star Staters.
Could Republicans Bust up the Trifecta?
While we're on the subject of MN's historic legislative wins, let's not forget it was the DFL trifecta that pushed 'em through—and you'd better believe Minnesota Republicans are looking to bust up that trifecta.
For MinnPost, Peter Callaghan writes that a Republicans are eyeing key House and Senate primaries to upend DFL control. "[P]erhaps the easiest way to grab some power comes in the picturesque communities of Excelsior, Deephaven, Wayzata, Tonka Bay, and Mound," Callaghan explains, given a special election to round out the term of former state Sen. Kelly Morrison in District 45. (Morrison stepped down to run for Congress, timing the decision so that the election of her replacement would coincide with the normal primary/general votes.) The DFL needs to hold Morrison's former district to keep the Senate—and of course, they need things to go their way in November, when all 134 House seats'll be on the ballot.
Music Scene Temp Check
So how are things "going" in local live music these days? It's a big, broad, and maybe impossible question to wrangle, but I enjoyed this longread from Steve Marsh at Mpls.St.Paul Mag attempting to make some sense of it.
Marsh's approach is multifaceted; he talks to folks from Ashley Ryan at First Avenue to young artists like Ber and Papa Mbye to David Safar, managing director of The Current, to understand what's happening across the scene. How is First Ave's quiet fight against Live Nation going? What are new, smaller venues like Cloudland, Zhora Darling, and Berlin contributing to a vibrant local music community? Are the lingering effects of the pandemic still a factor? How does the post-pandemic lack of a music-centric alt-weekly impact all of this? Does the different way Gen Z socializes (and crucially, the amount young people drink) play into all this? And what the hell is going on at Icehouse, anyway? If you've ever mused over any of those questions, or if you're just someone who likes local music, you'll enjoy this one. Even if it is unsettling to learn that the mag's house style for hardcore music is apparently "hard core."
Elsewhere in MN music: We've heard of a local angle, but a musical angle? Rolling Stone managed to find one, asking area musicians like the Jayhawks, Alan Sparhawk, and Dua Saleh what they think of Tim Walz. Does Walz look "like the kind of guy that would be out on the fringe of the Surly Field watching Ween"? Sparhawk sure thinks so!
