Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

My dissatisfaction with politics and politicians usually simmers in a stewpot of cynicism. But sometimes the pot boils over as it did when the US Court of Supremes ruled on April 29 in the case Louisiana v. Callais. The decision virtually ends racial gerrymandering, the practice of drawing legislative district lines to deliberately increase or decrease the political power of a specific racial or ethnic group. On the other hand, the court said that partisan gerrymandering, drawing boundaries to increase the power of entrenched partisan officeholders, is just ducky. And that’s why I’m boiling.  The Constitution never mentions "redistricting" or "districts" at all. It requires the Census every ten years to, among countless other things, determine how many Representatives each state gets based on population. The number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives was capped at 435 by Congress in 1929, and that is where it stands today. Apparently, the grand poobahs i...

During the last years of my active involvement in party politics in Nevada, I found myself tarred with the label “racist” by a group of my fellow Democrats.  The event that led to this labeling occurred at a county central committee meeting sometime in the 2000s. These are often raucous and disorganized events. When attending these types of meetings, I spent much time in sidebars with a few people at a time while the body considered resolutions. As a candidate to chair the state party, I found these sidebars necessary. During one of them, I missed the chance to vote on a resolution introduced by one of the caucus leaders. And for that sin of not voting, I earned the racist label. I was reminded of that minor irritation when I ventured a comment on a Facebook post by a popular local FB poster. Following a recent high school football game between long-time rivals Duluth East and Denfeld, a video surfaced on social media showing an East student directing a racial slur at a Denfeld pla...