WINONA Minn. – A shadowy Republican front organization has flooded Winona mailboxes with slick oversize postcards that attack 18-term State Representative Gene Pelowski for “a spending spree.” The mailer is loaded with half-truths and misrepresentations and attempts to demonize Pelowski. The mailer calls Pelowski a “far-left politician.”
On state spending
The mailer’s sponsor, which calls itself “Renew Minnesota,” accuses Pelowski of raising taxes to fund a 40% increase in state spending. Nobody outside of Renew Minnesota is quite sure where the organization’s 40% claim came from. The Legislature, to be sure, increased 2024 general-fund spending by 29% — but not by 40%. The mailer doesn’t address the better question for intelligent discourse: Did new spending go to priorities that the public endorses. Such needs to be the fulcrum of discussion in a democracy – not incendiary charges that flow from an unsupportable premise that any government spending is necessarily excessive.
Pelowski. First elected from Winona in 1983. A retired high school political science teacher.
Heart-string rhetoric
The mailer attempts to portray Pelowski as unfriendly to ordinary people and especially the poor. Dark imagery shows a forlorn, apparently financially desperate single mom and her pre-school daughter. The increases, says the mailer, “are hurting every Minnesota, especially middle-class families.” There is irony in that the mother and daughter image is from a stockpile of images from a global aggregator that sells whatever-mood-you want pictures. Nether mother nor the little girl is from Minnesota.
Pelowski response
Asked about increased spending by the Democrat-controlled Legislature, Pelowski noted that new 2024 general fund spending was not funded by new taxes. “Rather,” he said, “the vast majority of increased spending is one-time and is funded by dramatically higher-than-anticipated revenue collections and the massive surplus projected for the current biennium.”
Nixon-esque dirty trick. The mailers encourage readers to check out a website whose domain name appears to be Pelowski’s own site. It’s fake.
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A fair question regarding the surplus, a record $17 billion, would be what to do with so much money. The Legislature voted to return most of the surplus to ordinary taxpayers. Families with less than $150,000 taxable income were mailed a check for $1,000. The Renew Minnesota mailer doesn’t mention that Republicans had opposed the rebates and instead favored jiggering tax tables into the future to benefit corporations and rich people.
Gasoline tax
The mailer talks about a 20% increase in gasoline taxes, which is misleading and out of context. Fact: The gas tax will increase 5.9 cents to 28.5 cents, all earmarked for road and bridge upkeep. The Minnesota tax compares to:
> California, 77.9 cents a gallon.
> Illinois, 66.5 cents.
> Pennsylvania, 62.2 cents.
True, some states are less. Alaska, for example, is 9 cents, the lowest in the nation.
Renew’s Democrat targets
The same mailer was sent to voters in eight House districts in which the Democrat incumbents had the narrowest victory margins in the 2022 election and presumably therefor would seem the most vulnerable for re-election in 2024. The mailers all were identical except names of the seven Democrats were custom-swapped for each district. So what the mailers alleged against one was also alleged against all. It was fill-in-the-blank boilerplate. Ditto. Ditto. The Renew Minnesota targets:
> Jeff Brand, House District 18A, St. Peter, whose 2022 election margin was 50.0%.
> Dave Lislegard, 7B, Aurora, 51.1%.
> Matt Norris, 32B, Blaine, 51.1%.
> Gene Pelowski, 25A, Winona, 55.5%.
> Lucy Rehm, 48B, Chanhassen, 51.1%.
> Zach Stephenson, 35A, Coon Rapids, 52.4%
> Brad Tabke, 54A, Shakopee, 51.8%.
> Dan Wolgamott, 14B, St. Cloud, 51.%
No Senate Democrats were attacked. Their four-year terms don’t expire until 2026.
Renew Minnesota profile
The mailers have no easily trackable source. Fine print in the mailer is vague. It says the mailer was prepared and paid for by Renew Minnesota, P.O. Box 26471, Minneapolis. But there’s no street address. The fine print also notes that Renew Minnesota is “an affiliated 527 independent expenditure committee” that “is not coordinated with or approved by any candidate nor is any candidate responsible for it.” None of this is a satisfactory explanation of the organization. Although Renew Minnesota is registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, as required by law, it isn’t required to document donors or financial backers on a timely basis – albeit an annual report is required in January. So who’s the money behind Renew Minnesota? It is known to be closely tied to a fairly new organization, the Minnesota PrivateBusiness Council, which disclosed last summer that t had raised about $700,000 in dues from member companies. The Council is headed by Jim Schulz, of Plymouth, a Republican who ran in 2022 for state attorney general and lost.