To the Cottage Grove Journal, Recently, I heard news that the Legal Marijuana Now party candidate, Laura Pride of Newport, is actually a spoiler attempting to tilt the state representative 53b race to Republican Steven Swoboda over Democrat Rick Hansen who decided to run after Keith Franke opted out of the race. If that is the case, let me state this bluntly. This will probably not work. It is true that in most elections in Minnesota, third party candidates do tend to tilt elections to Republicans. However, this district leans Democrat and no Democrat has ever lost here if there is a third party candidate on the ballot.

Keith Franke and John Kriesel won the district because people who voted for third party candidates in other races would vote for them and this is before the new district maps came in. Finally, I will state this one more time. Republican house leader Kurt Daudt believed that the Republicans in Newport and Saint Paul Park were expendable and worthless. This is based on the 2011 redistricting maps he co-made that would push the two cities into a strong Democratic district with no chance of Republican representation. If he believed otherwise, he would have admitted the maps were wrong years ago. Franke never mentioned this because he was a Republican loyalist to Kurt Daudt and still apparently is.

So if you feel like the cities of Newport and Saint Paul Park matter, please vote Hansen in November. William Cory Labovitch South Saint Paul Have an opinion on the recent school bond referendum and want to share why you did or didn’t vote for it? Interested in something else instead?

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