58A: MN Blue Enters Race Between Mullery & Challenger

Jon Olson, the Minneapolis Park Board commissioner who is trying to unseat longtime State Representative Joe Mullery, put out a hit piece at the end of last week that quoted extensively from one of my posts, attributing the quotations to our website.

The views in my column are my own. While MN Blue does endorse candidates, and any of our contributors can endorse anyone they like, neither MN Blue nor I have endorsed Mr. Olson. In a twist that might surprise readers, I personally already voted for the incumbent in this primary by absentee ballot (I am an elections judge and will not be in my precinct on Primary Day).

While Mr. Olson has earned a reputation as a bully during his time at the Park Board, I was surprised by the content of his mailer. I had a chance to talk with commissioner Olson shortly after he filed for office, and at that time, he declined to differentiate between himself and the incumbent whatsoever, saying that he did not want the primary to be about Representative Mullery’s record.

I also discussed taxes, healthcare, education and public safety with the commissioner. While he and I and every other DFLer supports more higher education and early childhood education funding, and while I like some of his ideas regarding increased community involvement, particularly among youth, I did not come away from our conversation with the conviction that Mr. Olson would be a significant improvement on Joe Mullery.

His principal idea regarding reform of tax policy is to shift the local property tax base away from residentially zoned property back to businesses. This tax reform would do almost nothing to help our backwards distribution of taxes, since businesses pass as much of a tax onto its consumers as they can. In short, it is tax policy window dressing – it sounds like big bad business will pay more, but of course they won’t. We discussed the income tax and progressive taxation generally, and I came away with the impression that Olson feels progressive tax increases are job killers. I do not share this view, to put it mildly.

But I was least impressed with his lack of vision for increasing healthcare access. He wants to expand Minnesota Care gradually and focus on reducing healthcare costs for small businesses. This is to be expected from a small business owner. Until Peggy Flanagan dropped out of the race, we had a candidate who was willing to fight for coverage for every Minnesotan, with public coverage if necessary, and it was a top priority. Mr. Olson’s position is timid by comparison.

I was a strong supporter of Ms. Flanagan’s. She brought bold leadership, clear vision, endless enthusiasm, grit, charm and class to her race. Mr. Olson lacks all of these things. Everyone knows that Joe Mullery is far from my favorite politician. But he has a committee chairmanship to leverage in addition to his usually solid DFL vote. All I see in Olson is a usually solid DFL vote, and someone even less willing to put this incredibly safe DFL seat in the liberal/progressive branch of the DFL. He is no Peggy Flanagan. My decision was easy.