Who does not LOVE Gordy’s Hi-Hat in Cloquet? When Paul and I used to do summer trips to the Boundary Waters (pre-kids), we would get almost as excited about stopping at Gordy’s for root beer floats as we would about reaching beautiful Ely. You could order whatever you pleased because you knew you were going to work it off with several days of canoeing. Today we were just on a car trip but there is no way we were going to pass up the indulgence! We can’t wait till the kids get old enough for a canoe trip, but for now, a trip to Gordy’s is pretty great on it’s own.
As always, we look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail soon.
A report released this week from the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board shows that Minnesota candidates for the House of Representatives and statewide constitutional offices accepted political contributions of $6,604,404 in the 2008 campaign season…
…Leading the pack in the contribution and cash-on-hand race during the 2007-08 election cycle among announced 2010 gubernatorial candidates was state Sen. Thomas Bakk, DFL-Cook, who raised $93,470, all of it in 2008, and had $131,742 on hand at the end of the year. Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, actually raised more in contributions than Bakk – $97,465, all of it during 2008 – but had less on hand at the end of the cycle, a total of $84,743; Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, a DFLer, raised $83,783 and had $53,081 on hand at the end of 2008; and Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, raised $29,345, all of it in 2008, and had $35,092 in cash at the end of the reporting period.
We took a quick trip to Chicago this week as our friends from
University of Chicago law school organized a lovely fundraiser to
support Paul’s campaign.
It was really great to see old friends, and many of my family members were able to make it as well (I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago). We were excited to show the kids our school and dorm, the church where we met (and where Paul proposed to me in the pouring rain), and other old haunts, but alas, they were quite disinterested! I am very happy to say however, that our kids do love a good road trip, and we had a blast marking off license plates from different states, singing silly songs, playing the alphabet game, etc.
Great quality time before the back to school flurry of activity begins!
As always, we look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail.
Sixteen months out, it’s already evident that the 2010 Minnesota governor’s race is unlike any other we’ve seen…
WHO’S HOT
DFL: Paul Thissen
There are already two DFL races in view: a contest for the party’s late-spring endorsement, and an
ensuing primary battle that is sure to pit the endorsee against Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, two
amply bankrolled candidates who have made it clear they won’t abide by the endorsement.
We’re not saying Thissen is a frontrunner for the endorsement. He remains a dark horse. But in the
early going, he has been the DFL candidate who has shone brightest–traveling all over the state,
highlighting health care, and earning high marks from competitors for presentation and for strategic
judgment. A few months back, he looked to most observers like a campaign footnote. No more.
The aging of our population and how we’re going to address those issues, how we’re going to plan for that, is not something that you’re going to find showing up at the top of public opinion polls, most likely because the media is not even going to be focusing on it and asking the question.
One of the things we need from our next governor, and what people ought to be looking for, is who’s thinking about those issues that are really going to shape Minnesota 5 and 10 years down the road. And this issue, the demographics of us getting older, is absolutely one of those issues.
If we don’t start addressing this now, we’re going to be overwhelmed by what some people are calling the silver tsunami, and we need to be prepared instead of reacting.
The number one goal from my perspective as we think about aging issues needs to be making sure we do everything we can to allow people to stay in their homes as long as possible and stay part of their communities and their neighborhoods as long as possible. That’s good for the people, and it’s good for all of us.
One of the stories that brought me to this issue and highlighted its importance to me is a constituent I have who has been taking care of her husband for about a dozen years now. Her husband became disabled in his early fifties and for the last dozen years or so she’s been working really hard to keep her husband in her home, caring for him every day. The strain that that puts on her and the physical exhaustion that puts on her is really compelling when you listen to it. So she’s doing this great service, something we really expect people to do, but they also need a lot of support.
There is a huge cost of institutionalizing people rather than having people stay at home. It’s so so much more expensive for people to be in a nursing home and have that kind of care. So there’s a real fiscal impact to supporting these informal caregivers. They give us a really great bang for our buck.
The second thing that we really have to get after is making sure we rethink how people in Minnesota plan for long-term care. And with this I’m largely talking about people like me, about my age, I’m 42. We need to start thinking about ‘how much money do I really need to start putting away?’ There are ways that the state can work in partnership with non-profits and with the private sector to get people thinking about that and saving for retirement.
We have to protect and keep robust and strong our public pensions. Because that’s one place where the state has a real direct impact on how people are going to be able to live out their retirement.
To keep our nursing homes alive we are going to need to have people start saving their private dollars. Without those private dollars the capacity of government to continue to fund them at the level we need is going to diminish. It’s a terrible and vicious cycle that we need to break out of and the answer long term to breaking out of it is getting folks like me, folks like a lot of us around the state, to start to think about — ‘OK, what do I need to put aside for my retirement?’
The third thing is designing our communities — helping communities design themselves — to make sure that they work not only for people of younger and middle age but for older Minnesotans. It’s really important that we have nursing homes, because there are people who need the skilled level of care that is available only in that setting. But to the extent that people don’t need that care, we shouldn’t have them in institutions. Our preference should be to keep them in their home. Keeping people in small towns, keeping people connected to their communities helps support the communities. There going to continue to do their shopping, continue to go to the pharmacy, continue to do all those things that keep local small towns alive.
We can’t have a one-size-fits-all mentality from the state government dictating how we’re going to deal with these issues. We have to just give communities some general goals and then the dollars to design their programs to keep seniors in their communities more effectively.
I’ve been excited to be involved in trying to think through how we’re going to tackle this problem. To be a leader in the Legislature. There is more energy around this issue than there ever has been in the past. I think it’s a hugely exciting opportunity for Minnesota and could really distinguish us from so many other states and so many other places around the world. This is going to really change how we think about every aspect of our lives in Minnesota. and it is going to be one of my top priorities as the next governor.
Who does not LOVE Gordy’s Hi-Hat in Cloquet? When Paul and I used to do summer trips to the Boundary Waters (pre-kids), we would get almost as excited about stopping at Gordy’s for root beer floats as we would about reaching beautiful Ely. You could order whatever you pleased because you knew you were going to work it off with several days of canoeing. Today we were just on a car trip but there is no way we were going to pass up the indulgence! We can’t wait till the kids get old enough for a canoe trip, but for now, a trip to Gordy’s is pretty great on it’s own.
We took a quick trip to Chicago this week as our friends from
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