Happy Pride! Did You Know Goldy Gopher Will Perform at Your Gay Wedding?

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

Goldy Gopher, Head-Spinning LGBTQ+ Ally

As corporate cowards flee from anything underneath the DEI umbrella, it's nice to see University of Minnesota mascot Goldy Gopher is still a loud, proud LGBTQ+ ally. We learned as much over the weekend, when critic/journalist Emily St. James posted a semi-viral photo of Goldy rocking a gold sequin tuxedo at a lesbian wedding:

"The wedding was at the Campus Club, and my understanding is that you can have Goldy attend an event there!" St. James tells Racket. "One bride graduated from U of M's masters program, and I believe her dad is an alum? But I think it was just because of that. I was baffled for a second and had to figure out what was going on."

Paul Rovnak, senior associate athletic director for communications at the U, directed us toward Goldy's "humorous" bio and also this appearance request form. "Goldy accepts requests for a variety of events including but not limited to weddings, retirements, banquets, and birthday parties," we learned, although: "COMPLETION OF THIS FORM IS A REQUEST ONLY, AND DOES NOT SECURE GOLDY FOR YOUR EVENT." Appearance rates range from free for charities to up to $400/hour. We also learned that Goldy will only wear the tux at certain events, like lesbian weddings.

At this point you might be asking yourself: What intel do we have into Goldy's sex life and gender identity? Very little. But Google's top "Things to know" glitchy AI prompt asks, "Is Goldy Gopher a boy or a girl?" The dubiously sourced answer? "In recent years Goldy, who was once considered male, has become 'a universal Gopher.'" We stan our nonbinary 13-striped ground squirrel or chipmunk!

DNC Chair Ken Martin to Vice Chair David Hogg: "You Essentially Destroyed Any Chance I Have"

Earlier this year 25-year-old Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg floated the idea that his party should fund primary challengers to “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats. Seems like the perfect prescription for a rudderless, ineffectual, old-as-hell opposition party, right?

Wrong, said newly elected DNC Chair Ken Martin, who chaired the Minnesota DFL from 2011 through 2025. Martin wasted no time chastising his young vice chair for daring to improve the Democratic stable of candidates, arguing that "party bosses should not be involved in putting their thumb on the scale." Hogg's actions reportedly "enraged many establishment-oriented Democrats."

The infighting got pretty brutal, according to leaked audio Politico published Sunday. Here's Martin to Hogg during a private Zoom meeting with fellow DNC officers from May 15...

No one knows who the hell I am, right? I’m trying to get my sea legs underneath of me and actually develop any amount of credibility so I can go out there and raise the money and do the job I need to to put ourselves in a position to win. And again, I don’t think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to. So it’s really frustrating.

Politico's Holly Otterbein describes that as an "extraordinary admission" from the man who, just months ago, vowed to rebuild the broken Democratic Party. Martin, 51, declined an interview request, and instead told Otterbein in a statement that he's "not going anywhere." Hogg denies leaking the embarrassing audio clip.

Wait, What's Happening During Today's Marathon Special Session at the Capitol?

Minnesota lawmakers adjourned last month without having completed their jobs. Specifically, the 14 in-limbo bills, most of them related to the budget, that'll have to be ironed out over a 21-hour special session that kicked off 10 a.m. today. The Minnesota Reformer's Madison McVan and Michelle Griffith assembled a nice primer outlining the the "larger—and more contentious—issues included in the bills."

Among 'em: rolling back MinnesotaCare for undocumented adults, a proposed $270 million cut to the Department of Human Services, legislation that would mediate fights between homeowners and HOAs, a $700 million infrastructure package, and issues related to cannabis taxation. Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders have been hammering out the two-year, $66 billion state budget behind closed doors for weeks, which isn't ideal for fans of government transparency and accountability.

Downtown St. Paul Has Been Declared Dead Before

We love when Nick Woltman of the Pioneer Press treats readers to history lessons, and today's is about deathless attempts to declare downtown St. Paul dead. As you've surely read, the heart of the Saintly City is reeling these days due to vacancies, closures, inaccurate fears about rising crime, and decreased foot traffic. But Woltman writes that this ain't St. Paul's first death rodeo.

In 1970, a PiPress headline suggested “urban renewal” had resulted in a “modern desert.” Another headline from that era asked, “Downtown: Is it going out of business?” By 1990 columnist Nick Coleman decided “downtown St. Paul is deader than downtown Atlantis," writing: “I felt like a guy in a Twilight Zone episode who wakes up to find himself alone in a vacant city: Where is everybody?” (Smartass Minneapolitans have been saying that about our sleepy neighborhood for hundreds of years.)

Local John Mannillo, whose career spans those '70s and '90s downtown death panics, thinks market forces will right the ship. “Downtowns have a cycle,” he tells Woltman. “Good investors don’t buy when the market is up. Right now, we have opportunities downtown.” St. Paul Public Works Director Kathy Lantry likens the work needed to foster healthy downtowns to maintaining a garden or a marriage. “You can’t put anything on autopilot and expect it to be good,” she says. “It takes work. It takes constantly checking in, doing new things, culling out old things. Of course that’s easy to say.”