Part 2 – Coverage of the 2009 Minneapolis Elections: Candidates’ statement on 2009 election for mayor of Minneapolis

By The NewDignityParty.org – Re-posted with permission.

The following statement is endorsed by Bill McGaughey, Papa John Kolstad, Al Flowers, Bob Carney, Dick Franson, John Charles Wilson – All candidates for Minneapolis Mayor in 2009.

RT1A recent Star Tribune article is headlined, “Low-key mayoral contest depressed Minneapolis turnout, officials say”. Only 45,964 persons cast votes in the 2009 city elections, the lowest since 1902. In contrast, 161,713 persons voted in the 1937 Minneapolis city election. Hubert Humphrey received 102,796 votes when he was elected mayor in 1947. When Sharon Sayles Belton was elected in 1993, the vote total was 103,846.

Admittedly, part of the reason for the low voter turnout may be election fatigue in the year after Barack Obama ran for President. That could not be helped. However, another reason may be, as the headline suggests, that Minneapolis voters were not excited by the race at the top of the ballot, the contest for mayor. It was said that the candidates besides Rybak were political nonentities, lacking both in campaign resources and public recognition. The voters felt there was no contest and, therefore, stayed home.

As Minneapolis mayoral candidates in 2009, we apologize for our low profiles to whomever might have been offended. At the same time, we declare that most of the ten candidates who ran for mayor against Rybak ran active, energetic, and sometimes creative campaigns. We raised serious issues, posted hundreds of lawn signs around the city, distributed thousands of pieces of literature, knocked on numerous doors, appeared at the candidate forums to which we were invited, maintained campaign websites, and otherwise carried out the normal functions of a political campaign. For all that effort we received, between us, about 27 percent of the vote, compared with Mayor Rybak’s 73 percent. Read more

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