Alright, by now you all know – Gov Dayton is probably my least favorite governor in any state. I think he is insincere, hires horrible staff and lacks leadership.
At any rate, we got him for at least another year until hopefully Minnesotans will not make the same mistake again by electing someone else. One can argue was Emmer better in terms of minority outreach and I would say no. Emmer completely ignored minorities in his team and just assumed all voters were white. On the other, Dayton fed us bunch of useless, meaningless and empty campaign words that never got off the ground.
I guess then the question is do we want a governor that ignores a large junk of voters or one that only uses them to get votes. Well – you decide next year, depending who runs against Dayton. When will politicians learn empty words or ignoring minority voters don’t work. Inclusion works by respecting all voters by addressing their issues.
At any rate, update on the disparity is apparently MNSure agency head which we all know by now lacks any face of color in their leadership has taken a tropical vacation while many here including many autism parents with MCHA insurance lost coverage. How nice and typical of Dayton administration.
Now, when the Maryland head of their insurance exchange took similar vacation, she left under pressure. Dayton will probably promote MNSure’s vacationing leader during crises because stand by your staff at the expense of your voters is his cup of tea. Some good news here is all of those minority agencies that MNSure initially snubbed sort of like how the Oscors snub many minority actors. Well, it seems some of them were awarded small grants to do outreach into communities of color. See that here:
Education gap update is looking a little better according to recent numbers – MN is still at the bottom for minorities while white kids are at the top near MA, but we are not the worst anymore. YAY! – not really.
Autism Disparity is also a little better, it seems MDH has hired two Somali autism outreach workers to help with autism and immunization. They have not really done anything significant yet, but time will tell. This is still peanuts since Dayton promised he will ask his MDH administration to look at Somalis and Autism through research. We are still waiting for that and I am sure he will repeat that tired line in 2014 elections. A bonus note, when we asked Sen Franken to write a letter to Gov Dayton urging him to keep his autism promise, Franken told us….. wait for it…..Gov Dayton is doing a good job. What? I know. Sen Franken has to go back to SNL.
As usual, above words are my own and do not reflect any committee.
Thanks!
Idil – Somali Autism Mom & Minority Advocate