According to an email received yesterday from DFL endorsed B.E.T. candidate Steve Brandt, he’s admittedly breaking party rules and endorsing Eric Harris Bernstein.
To find out more about Bernstein, see his Strib article from this summer “Democratic socialists deserve a seat at the table.”
Here’s Brandt’s email:
Dear Minneapolis voter:
I’m sending this message because many of you who have supported my re-election to the Board of Estimate and Taxation have asked me this question: for which of the other two candidates should I vote?
For much of this campaign I’ve answered this way: I’m required by party rules to support my fellow endorsee: Bob Fine. But if you ask me with which of my competitors I’d rather serve, my answer is Eric Harris Bernstein.
So today I’m making a formal endorsement of Eric even though he’s not a DFL endorsee. I don’t do so lightly. But I’m doing so because I believe that Eric would bring an energy and a background in public policy analysis that’s superior to Bob.
I mean no disrespect to Bob, who served for many years on the Park Board and has coached thousands of youth athletes. But serving as a directly elected member of the Board of Estimate is a different role than representing the Park Board on the BET, as Bob did. It requires a balancing of park and other city needs. It requires deep study of city and park finances.
Eric contacted me last winter for a cup of coffee and we had a good public policy discussion. We run into each other occasionally in the weight room at the Y or running the lakes. He’s mounted a vigorous campaign. We don’t agree on everything but we agree on enough. He’ll supplement my persistent digging concerning city finances with rigorous analysis.
Eric has spent the last five years as Coalition Director of We Make Minnesota—a group of labor and community groups organizing for an equitable state tax code capable of funding our public investment needs in health care, education, environmental stewardship, and other essential public priorities. That’s an agenda that I can get behind. And it sounds like a DFL agenda. He’s known at the state Capitol. Like me, he’s helped workers to organize unions.
I hope that you’ll join me in voting for Eric.
Yours for a strong Minneapolis,
Steve Brandt
xxxxxx@gmail.com
612-xxx-xxxx
My understanding of the DFL rules here is that if one “materially supports” a non-endorsed candidate who is running against an endorsed candidate, the “penalty” is that one can be forbidden from serving the DFL party in any number of roles, most of them volunteer positions involving a lot of “church work” but having very little “power”. I have actually seen a list of what counts as “material support”, and it’s basically everything “more” than casting a secret ballot at the polls, and/or privately providing moral support. It includes, for instance, going door knocking on behalf of a “wrong” candidate. It applies even to supporting such a candidate for an office representing a district not one’s own. For instance, living in Mpls., and contributing money to a non-endorsed candidate running against an endorsed one in, say, Brainerd.
Yes, it is VERY unevenly enforced. I had been violating it on and off literally for decades before anyone even told me the rule existed. Most enforcements that I have heard about have revolved around someone seeking “revenge” on someone else. Usually, there is more going on between the complainant and the accused rule-violator than appears on the surface. Typically, this involves the kind of folks who actually think of these party volunteer-work jobs as “centers of power”. There are more such people active in the DFL than any “normie” would expect or believe – and it tends to be “a thing” that runs among the very new and young (the naive), and also among a handful of the older-and-been-around-forever types (the self-important) – but only the ones who memorize all the rules and take this stuff way too seriously (the pompous). If you’ve ever been to a DFL Convention at any level and seen someone come to the microphone and make an esoteric objection to something and actually cite DFL rules – then you know what kind of folks I’m talking about.
There is a mechanism for taking a “leave of absence” from one of these party positions while one is supporting the “wrong” candidate, and then returning to service after the election in question is over. The leave of absence does require approval – it’s not an automatic thing. My own practice since being made aware of these rules by a party authority figure, has been not to bother with the formality of asking for the leave of absence, but to just stop doing any of the volunteer work that is a part of the position held, and to stop going to meetings, during the time period in question. It HAS meant that for about ten years now, I have spent more time “off” doing volunteer work for the DFL than “on”, and I no longer volunteer to do anything that is “ongoing”. It’s their loss, I figure…
I do not know how the rules apply to someone who has been endorsed for an office, as opposed to one who merely holds one of these “church-work” jobs (such as Precinct Chair, Senate District Central Committee Director, etc.). In the DFL spirit of there being a rule for everything, I would imagine that there would be grounds for someone in good standing in the DFL to file a complaint with some appropriate committee, and that the “punishment” could include revocation of the endorsement one holds. That would seem analogous. It will also never happen, because by the time you ran that through the DFL bureaucracy, the election in question would be over. Brandt’s late-in-the-game endorsement of Bernstein, it seems to me, is a case in point. Yeah, he clearly violated the rules. But what can anybody do about it now? And, other than voting for Bob Fine anyway, what would one WANT to do?
The bottom line is that the “honor all endorsements” rules are pretty much futile, and utterly counter-productive, efforts to coerce people to play along by the procedures that have evolved into the Caucus-Convention-Endorsement process that we have. You know – The one that worked so well this year in Minneapolis.
Actually I would suggest that everyone read that oped David mentions. Bernstein makes an excellent case for Democratic Socialism, without talking about the BatSh*ttery that is the DSA platform. Unlike the Greens, the DSA in Minnesota wants to have it both ways: to have party like ambitions in terms of platform, but want to be major influencers in the DFL. The DSA also will put out emails that state they are opposed to the DFL – but then DSA activists that are also active in the DFL say there is internal disagreement within the DSA on that point.
I have seen other DFL endorsed candidates endorsing non-DFL endorsed candidates this cycle before. Why is it only newsworthy when a DFL endorsed candidate endorses a proud progressive like EHB? I seem to recall some of the more moderate candidates breaking DFL lines to endorse candidates who had failed to secure endorsement at the caucuses.
I am unaware of any other DFL candidate this cycle officially endorsing a non endorsed candidate over an endorsed one. We would definitely cover it. Brandt explicitly acknowledged breaking with his commitment in his email.
On Wedge Live’s twitter feed, there is a photo of a mailer paid for by Linea Palmisano, in which she encourages voters receiving the mailer to vote for Forney, Abene, and McKelvey against the DFL slate of endorsed park board candidates.
One of many such examples.
Thanks for sharing this. I agree this seems to break the candidates party commitments. If candidates disregard party rules, endorsements are greatly devalued. Given we’re a supposedly 1 party town, I’d say politics in Minneapolis is ripe for change.
Linea Palmisano did the same thing. https://www.threads.com/@wedgelive/post/DQdD-J8DTOm/linea-palmisano-violating-the-sanctity-of-her-dfl-endorsement-by-pushing-forney-
She sent this out in a mailing.
Thanks. I guess playing by the rules is out of fashion. Along with integrity.
Endorsed DFLer Bob Fine also endorsed Eric.
Why was Steve Brandt excluded from the mailer from the State DFL that many people received on Wednesday? The mailer only included Bob Fine, one At-Large Park Board Candidate, and 2 District Park Board candidates.
Good question. He’s definitely DFL endorsed. Speculation: Did Brandt give the DFL notice that he would be endorsing Bernstein ahead of his announcement?
It may have been the other way around – though I don’t think Brandt is a petty person. I think the DFL needs to re-think there policy regarding party members and candidates working for DFLers that don’t get endorsement. This happens all the time, and is selectively enforce. I gave money to DeWayne Davis in the time period between Fateh endorsement, and the yanking of same.
I am DFL endorsed but chose not to participate in that particular mailer. I was already on the party-sponsored sample ballot that was mailed earlier, And knowing that I was planning on endorsing Eric over Bob, I saw no reason to help promote Bob’s candidacy as a fellow endorsee.