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SD63 Update for June 30

In this Update:

Happy Pride Weekend!

Let’s get to the doors with Peggy, Sam, and Emma!

DFLers, have you been out doorknocking yet this year? Now is the time to get out the vote for the August primary. Early voting has already started!

Join our amazing current Lieutenant Governor and next Senator Peggy Flanagan, our representatives Samantha Sencer-Mura and Emma Greenman, and a big team of your DFL neighbors this Wednesday to start our July doorknocks.

Year after year our neighborhoods are key to the statewide tornout that elects excellent DFLers — and this year will be no different! Let’s get Peggy, Cedrick, and the other endorsed candidates with competitive primaries across the finish line, and set up a Blue Wave this November.

Join us at 5:30pm this Wednesday, July 1, at the South Minneapolis DFL HQ, in the Coliseum Building at the corner of Lake and 27th Street again this year. Sign up for more information and any updates, and we’ll see you there!

Meet our sister district candidate

Are you ready to rebuild the DFL Trifecta? It won’t be enough to just vote in our safe blue district — we need to help get out the DFL vote in more competitive districts.

Every election year the DFL House Caucus pairs up safe districts like ours with the more competitive districts that will make the difference to control of the legislature. This year, Sam and Emma will be leading our support of Jason Heaser. Jason is running for District 34A seat to represent Champlin, Dayton, and Rogers.

Jason is an amazing person, and we are lucky to have him as a DFL-endorsed candidate. He’s a Army veteran who first served as a mechanic after high school, deploying to Kuwait after the 2001 terror attacks. Jason attended college on a ROTC scholarship, after law school returned to the Army as a Judge Advocate, and as a civilian returned to Minnesota, joining first the Hennepin County Attorney’s office, and then the Attorney General’s office.

Winning Jason’s district for the DFL will be key to a DFL victory this fall. There are two ways you can help.

First and foremost, Jason needs us to help get his voters to the polls. As usual Sam and Emma will lead a big weekend daytrip every month out to Jason’s district for doorknocking and phonebanking. The first one is coming up on Sunday, July 19. You can email Emma’s campaign manager Barrett for more information, to sign up, and to coordinate rides. And mark your calendar now for the rest of our big weekend knocks in 34A: all Saturdays, August 15, September 26, and October 24.

Those won’t be the only days we head out for Jason — keep an eye out for more doorknocking days.

The other way we can help Jason is with our financial support. Like any competitive campaign, Jason needs our help to produce mailers for doorknockers, pay for email and text blasts, and fund all of the other elements of a campaign. You can make a donation to Jason’s campaign online.

Represent your local district to the State DFL

Interested in getting more involved with the state and regional DFL? SD63 has openings for alternate representatives to the DFL’s State Central Committee (SCC), the main governing body of the DFL in between our biennial conventions. Our primary representative seats are filled, but the alternates replace them at these meetings.

The SCC normally meets quarterly, about half the time online and about half the time in person at various locations around the state. The SCC reviews the DFL’s budget and major expenditures, elects standing committees, and elects state officers at the odd-year business conferences. SD63’s alternates to the SCC also serve as alternates to the Central Committees of the DFL units for the 5th Congressional District, Minneapolis, and SD63.

Anyone interested in one of these alternate slots should fill out this application form by July 3. The completed forms will be distributed to SD63’s Central Committee, which will fill these slots at our July 6 meeting. Everyone completing the form will be entered into nomination at that meeting.

Thank you for a great summer picnic

Last week we had a great time at our third annual Summer Picnic. We heard from some of our great candidates, had lovely conversations with DFL neighbors, and raised a little bit of money for the SD63 DFL.

Even if you missed the picnic, it’s not too late to help out. We use your donations to SD63 to raise our support to the close campaigns that will make a difference for the DFL this fall. Make your donation now!

Today’s public debate playbook tip

Never back down.

Sometimes it is tempting to soften our message to make us “appear reasonable.”

But here’s the thing: DFL values already are reasonable. If we apologize for living up to our values, if we back down from a strong and proud embrace of our achievements and plans for the future, then we aren’t making the DFL seem more reasonable — when we back down, we make GOP criticisms seem reasonable. And that’s the last thing we want.

We can be proud of our party’s achievements as we work to build on them for the future. Show that pride when you talk to voters this summer.

Our SD63 Vice-Chair Pamela Twiss helps run a local study group on the Science of Messaging. You can find more information or sign up for it here. Or, sign up with SD63’s Writers and Data Wranglers volunteer team.

Around town

Support our endorsed candidates!

For State Senator – Zaynab Mohamed (website and sign-up, campaign events, donate)

For State Representative (63A) – Samantha Sencer-Mura (website, campaign events, sign up, donate)

For State Representative (63B) – Emma Greenman (website, sign up, donate)

For U.S. Senator – Peggy Flanagan (website, campaign events, sign up, donate)

For U.S. Representative – Ilhan Omar (website and sign-up, campaign events, donate)

For Governor and Lieutenant Governor – Amy Klobuchar and Ben Scheirer (website, campaign events, sign up, donate)

For Attorney General – Keith Ellison (website and sign-up, campaign events, donate)

For Secretary of State – Steve Simon (website, sign up, donate)

For State Auditor – Zack Filipovich (website, sign up, donate)

For Hennepin County Attorney – Cedrick Frazier (website, campaign events, sign up, donate)

For Hennepin County Commissioners

District 3, Marion Greene (website, donate)

District 4, Angela Conley (website, sign up, donate)

For Minneapolis School Board

At Large (two seats to be elected):

District 1 – Abdul Abdi (website, events, sign up, donate)

District 3 – Shannon Gibney (website, campaign events and sign up, donate)

District 5 – Becca Dryden (website, campaign events and sign up, donate)

Events

Tuesday, June 30

Wednesday, July 1

Thursday, July 2

Saturday, July 4

Sunday, July 5

Monday, July 6

Tuesday, July 7

Thursday, July 9

Saturday, July 11

Monday, July 13

Tuesday, July 14

Wednesday, July 15

Sunday, July 19

Subscribe to our calendars on your handheld device or personal calendar manager

Be sure to add our calendars as separate calendars, and not by importing the events — keeping our calendar separate will allow your device to get updates as we add or change events, and will let you give this calendar its own distinct color, and will let you turn its visibility on or off at your convenience.

Our meetings

Nokomis Library The next SD63 Central Committee meeting will be on July 6, 2026, at 6:30pm. Our meetings are hybrid: this meeting will be in-person at Nokomis Library, and online via Zoom.

All SD63 Central Committee meetings are open to the public.

Support SD63

Donations to SD63 are used to run caucuses and conventions, maintain web and email servers, support campaigns, and hold issue forums and other community events. We have no paid employees.

Mission statement and editorial policies

The mission of the SD63 Update is

  1. To promote the DFL and the DFL’s values, activities, endorsed candidates, and platform,
  2. To develop community support, volunteers and material support for the above, and
  3. To raise public awareness and involvement in civic and other community processes as a means to implement DFL values and platform items,

especially as originating from and applying to Minnesota Senate District 63, and especially with the target audience of SD63 DFL participants and supporters. The editors and contributors of the Update shall execute this mission in a manner consistent with DFL policies and codes of conduct.

Inclusion of official public material

The Update may include content from or references to newsletters and announcements from community groups and elected officials when, at the sole good-faith discretion of the Update editor, these materials support the mission of the Update. Such official, non-campaign materials may be excerpted or referenced even when originating from an elected official who was not endorsed as a candidate by the DFL. Excerpts of and references to such material shall not be understood to be an endorsement, material support or other support of any kind of any candidacy by DFL SD63.

Contested endorsements

Between Election Day of one year and the convention of the relevant DFL Endorsing Unit of the following year, the Update editor may choose either:

  1. To provide coverage of campaign events, volunteer opportunities, and material support opportunities of all candidates who have informed the Update editor of their intention to seek DFL endorsement for a particular endorsement contest, or
  2. To cover no candidates for that endorsement contest.

If a DFL Endorsing Unit (and the SD63 DFL, if different than the Endorsing Unit) declines to endorse any candidate in some endorsement contest, then this policy shall also apply to that contest between the Endorsing Unit’s convention and the subsequent primary election or ranked-choice general election.

Some notes on the Contested Endorsement policy:

  1. Excerpts from and references to the announcements of public officials as described in the Policy on Inclusion of Official Public Material shall be seen as separate from campaign activity for the purposes of this policy.
  2. Note that the editor may opt to cover some endorsement contests but not others, as deemed feasible and appropriate by the editor. The editor’s two options in this Contested Endorsement policy are intended to provide fairness to the candidates for endorsement in any given endorsement contest. The statement of two options for each contest shall not be interpreted to compel or forbid coverage of candidates in any particular contest.
  3. The description of informing the Update editor of candidacy for endorsement described in Option 1 of this Contested Endorsement policy shall be satisfied by a direct communication to the Update editor, or by inclusion in an announcement recorded in the minutes of a meeting of the SD63 Central Committee. The Update editor may also take note of announcements in public forums, or of campaign activity oriented to potential caucus-goers or convention delegates, to serve as such a declaration. However this policy shall not be interpreted to expect the Update editor to discover endorsement candidate intentions outside of the two forms of declaration specified in this note.

No part of the Contested Endorsement policy is intended to contradict the prohibition of supporting candidates opposing a DFL-endorsed candidate, nor shall it compel any SD63 editor or contributor to do so.

Promulgation of this statement and policies

From their approval, the full text of this statement and these policies shall be included below the web publication of all Update issues. Moreover, a reference and link to that web publication shall be included in all email or physical transmissions of the Update. These publications of this statement and policies shall be taken as sufficient disclaimer that the contents of the Update represent a good-faith effort to adhere to all DFL policies and codes of conduct, including but not limited to the avoidance of endorsement of non-DFL-endorsed candidates in the context of an election including one or more DFL-endorsed candidates.

Questions and comments

Questions, comments and concerns regarding this policy or any content in the SD63 Update should be directed initially to its editor via email to newsletter AT sd63dfl DOT org. Further inquiries may be directed to the SD63 DFL Chair, or to DFL Party Affairs.