Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
WALZ WATCH: GOP Doubles Down on China
Republicans haven’t found their “Hilary Clinton’s emails” or “Hunter Biden’s laptop” drumbeat this election cycle yet, so it looks like they’re testing a “Walz is a Chinese Communist Party operative” line of attack. Last Friday, U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, asking for details on Walz’s activities in China which, as far as we know, include teaching English, traveling with high school students, and honeymooning in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. “Governor Walz has longstanding connections to CCP-connected entities and officials that make him susceptible to the Party’s strategy of elite capture, which seeks to co-opt influential figures in elite political, cultural, and academic circles to influence the United States,” he writes. Comer appeared last night on Fox News to assert that Walz "has really embraced China's view of the world." So that’s what they’re going with for now. The obvious self-own here is that their guy admitted to making nearly $8 million from China during his presidency while Walz’s personal finances don’t suggest any financial windfalls… in any country, including his own. But hey, if this angle gets gets orgs like the House Freedom Action to waste money on bonkers ads like this one, so be it.
Pizzagate Believer Running for Judge
In 2016, just as things in were turning really stupid in the U.S., there was Pizzagate, a profoundly dumb conspiracy theory involving internet sleuths who deduced that the Democratic Party was running a pedophilia ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza shop. And Nathan Hanson, an attorney running for judge in Minnesota's Judicial District 10, was right there, believing it to be real. The GOP-recommended candidate is a prolific tweeter—something you love to see in a judge, right?—but retired journalist David Brauer did the lord’s work and screenshot a few sad #pizzagate-era posts where Hansen is just teeming with excitement over the possibility of human trafficking. It’s a great find, if not a particularly shocking one. A quick perusal of Hanson's Twitter retweets reveals conspiracies aplenty, including voting conspiracies, Walz conspiracies, Star Tribune conspiracies, and all kinds of other things voters may want to consider.
Meet St. Paul’s $1.8 Million Fire Truck
Next month, Minnesota’s first electric fire truck will be hitting the Irish-designed streets of St. Paul, but it comes with a helluva price tag. According to this excellent Minnesota Reformer story by Max Nesterak, the original plan was to get congressional funding for this state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line truck. But that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that fire trucks aren’t eligible for the type of funding that city officials applied for. The good news is that the truck will be cheaper to maintain than the average fire truck, and there’s a projected savings of $25,000 per year on gas. But the $1.8 million price tag—not including the $48,000 charging station—is a lot of money up front. Apparently the truck's manufacturer, Rosenbauer, likes to shower fire departments with free goodies, including the St. Paul Fire Department. In fact, a six-person SPFD delegation even traveled to view the expensive e-truck’s construction in Austria, though Nesterak writes that “airport parking, an international cell phone plan, two taxi rides and a dinner at Vienna’s Hard Rock Cafe” only set them back $545.61—that’s a deal!
No Weed? Then No Jesse Ventura at the Fair.
Is Jesse Ventur-ing to the State Fair this year? Nope! In fact, he is boycotting the whole thing entirely and encourages you to do the same. Why? Because weed in all forms is still banned from the Minnesota Get-Together. The former governor made his announcement Monday morning on WCCO’s Chad Hartman Show. “The State Fair allows alcohol to be drunk on the fairgrounds. You can go over there, get smashed on alcohol, go on a ride, and throw up all over everybody because you've been drinking,” Ventura points out when asked about his THC company, which he discussed with Racket in great detail earlier this year. “They have 18 designated smoking places for tobacco, and yet they have banned cannabis." During the 'CCO interview, Ventura also discusses kook presidential candidate RFK Jr. picking Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, rips on Trump and Vance, and endorses Harris-Walz.
