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The media has a trust issue. David Montgomery has the story at MPR News: Many Minnesotans don’t trust the state’s news media or believe it does a good job of covering people like them. That’s the findings of the APM Research Lab’s new Diverse Communities Survey, which interviewed more than 1,500 Minnesotans about media trust and other topics.
This widespread mistrust of the media is driven by multiple factors, including politics and race. Many Republicans, for example, believe news outlets have a liberal bias. Meanwhile many people of color also see the news media as covering them in too negative a light — if they get covered at all. The Diverse Communities Survey found less than half of Minnesotans say they trust the media to always or mostly do what’s right. That’s lower than Minnesotans’ trust in other institutions like public schools, police, or the medical system, and similar to levels of trust in state government.
The Star Tribune’s Jessie Van Berkel had a profile of new Republican Party of Minnesota Chair David Hann. "The state party chair is not the center of the political universe in Minnesota. We're just not. You want your candidates to be," Hann said. "We have a job to do. The job is to build an organization and make sure those ideas get communicated effectively and that we have the capabilities to help the campaigns be successful."
The Star Tribune story doesn’t talk about Hann’s views on election integrity, which is important, given that many 2022 Republican candidates continue to raise doubts about the 2020 election, even though reviews have found no widespread problems, and dozens of court challenges have been dismissed.
MPR’s Tim Pugmire did ask Hann about it. “I don’t think that it makes any sense to try to go back and re-litigate the last election,” Hann said. “But it is important, and I think it would be important to everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike. I think everybody wants the public to have confidence in the election system, and if people don’t, then we need to address those concerns."
State DFL Party chair Ken Martin said Republicans are making false allegations that could undermine future elections. “What is the goal here? It’s much deeper and sinister than just those individual races they’re trying to challenge,” Martin said. “They actually are trying to erode the fabric of our democracy with this continued assault on Americans’ faith in our elections.”
Meanwhile the Associated Press reports: The House’s second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, standing by Donald Trump’s lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud. More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead sticking to his belief that the election results should not have been certified by Congress. “I’ve been very clear from the beginning,” he said. “If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don’t say the states determine what the rules are. They say the state legislatures determine the rules,” the Louisiana congressman said on “Fox News Sunday.”
A court-appointed redistricting panel is set to hold a hearing this evening in Woodbury to begin gathering information on the redrawing of political boundaries to reflect 2020 census data. The panel of five judges will establish new redistricting plans if the Legislature and governor can't reach agreement by mid-February. That seems likely, given that lawmakers have failed to agree on new legislative and congressional maps for several decades. Still, House and Senate redistricting committees continue to hold their own separate hearings on the once-a decade process. The court consolidated two lawsuits filed earlier this year that challenge the constitutionality of Minnesota’s current legislative and congressional districts based on population changes. In addition to Woodbury, the panel of judges has hearings scheduled this month in eight other cities around the state. Redistricting has to be finished by early next year.
Speaking of redistricting, reporter Brian Bakst noted that so far only seven of Minnesota’s 201 legislators say this term will be their last due to retirement or seeking a higher office. Based on history that is likely to change a lot over the coming months. In the last five post redistricting elections, average turnover is 64 seats. In all years from 1970 on when all seats in the Legislature are on the ballot, it's 50. David Montgomery put that in graphic form looking at the percentage of turnover: | |
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