Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent Minnesota editorials

Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 7

Virus will test Minnesota’s strong public health system

Thankfully, an army of skilled professionals is experienced in containing disease.

COVID-19 has officially arrived in Minnesota, with Gov. Tim Walz announcing Friday that a Ramsey County resident who had been on a cruise ship contracted the disease.

The news is jarring but shouldn’t come as a surprise. The viral disease that originated in China has gone global and marched steadily across the United States this year. Fortunately, its Minnesota greeting party consists of the public health equivalent of a well-armed, battle-tested U.S. Navy SEAL team.

Yes, the aggressive disease trackers at the state Department of Health are that good. Not only that, they’re backed up by some serious firepower - the infectious-disease experts at the University of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic and other medical centers in the state’s world-class health care system.

That’s no guarantee against more cases or that daily life won’t be disrupted. But it should serve as a confidence-booster now that the virus has made its presence known here. It’s also a reminder that taxpayer dollars spent fortifying the state’s public health resources have been a wise investment. Few other states are as well-prepared to detect and contain COVID-19, the disease caused by a new coronavirus strain.

Thanks to strong staffing, Minnesota is able to put a large number of scientific boots on the ground during a public health crisis compared to many states. Its disease detectives are talented and experienced. In recent years, they successfully contained an outbreak of one of the world’s most contagious illnesses - measles - that originated in the Twin Cities metro area’s Somali-American community in 2017.

Many on staff also are veterans of the world’s last pandemic, which happened in 2009 and involved influenza. Being on public health’s front lines isn’t new for Minnesotans. That’s where their jobs routinely take them, and their record of working with patients and communities to stop disease spread is impressive.

This competent readiness didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of decades of farsighted leadership within the Minnesota Department of Health and the support of state political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats. Minnesota has been especially well-served by the epidemiologists - scientists who specialize in disease distribution, spread and control - who have led outbreak investigations over the years.

Under former state epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, now at the University of Minnesota, MDH gained renown for its ability to quickly trace the origins of foodborne illness. A key part of its successful formula: mounting a ferocious effort to interview those who are ill. Casting a wide net, then sifting through the answers, allowed the team to identify commonalities and hone in on an outbreak’s origin.

The staffers and public health graduate students who make these phone calls are known as “Team Diarrhea” in honor of a common symptom of foodborne disease. The approach has won national acclaim and is looked to as an example for other states to follow. The Health Department’s praiseworthy collaboration with Minnesota Department of Agriculture scientists has also played a vital role in fighting outbreaks.

The Health Department’s pandemic planning reflects this energetic, “work the problem” spirit, too. Its staff has long been at the national forefront of planning for catastrophic disease outbreaks. They began this undertaking around 20 years ago, helping organize one of the first national pandemic preparedness gatherings in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is located. (That event featured a speech on how the media would respond. The speaker was a Star Tribune reporter who’s now an editorial writer.)

This level of expert readiness doesn’t excuse the public from doing its part, such as hand-washing and staying home from work when sick. Nor does it exempt Minnesota’s political, community and business leaders from lending their skills. The state has a long history of coming together to overcome complex challenges.

A COVID-19 task force that serves to aid and advise the state’s disease-trackers would be a sensible step. One of the benefits: Members could amplify public health messaging and back up difficult calls, such as the need to postpone public events or close schools. Such a task force could serve as a model for other states. The Legislature also should provide MDH with additional funding, as the Star Tribune Editorial Board has urged.

The battle between humans and pathogens is never-ending. Germs inevitably will get a temporary upper hand at some point, with pandemics one of the outcomes when this happens. As the state reacts to COVID-19 making landfall here, the expertise within our borders is reassuring.

___

The Free Press of Mankato, March 7

Thumbs up to Minnesota’s primary

Thumbs up to a state election system that made for a smooth, easy experience for voters during Tuesday’s primary.

While Minnesota’s political parties have occasionally used primaries to choose their presidential nominees, they’ve mostly held caucuses in the past.

The neighborhood meeting format of caucuses is being used by fewer states because it’s complicated, excludes people who have to work or have other obligations when the evening caucuses are held, and because turnout is so low. Minnesota’s major political parties should, and likely will, dump the caucus system for good and stick with primaries going forward.

About 885,000 Minnesotans cast votes Tuesday, including many who took advantage of early mail voting options. That turnout was nearly three times the number of voters who took part in the caucuses four years ago.

While the political parties set many of the rules for how the primary worked, it was the secretary of state and all the county election offices that oversaw the actual voting. Minnesota has always had a robust, secure and usually hiccup-free election system, something many states don’t have. For that voters should be grateful.

A bad link

Thumbs down to Minnesota secretary of state’s office for its bizarre, if brief, linking to a partisan website on the morning of Tuesday’s presidential primary.

According to Secretary of State Steve Simon, the state’s online precinct finder was overwhelmed Tuesday morning, and for 17 minutes voters were directed to a page operated by boldprogressives.org, a group supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy. The information wasn’t incorrect, but accessing it required visitors to provide the group with an email address and ZIP code - information valuable to a canvassing group but not relevant to poll location. That site was, after about 17 minutes, replaced by another, nonpartisan, outside site.

Simon, to his credit, does not try to dismiss the error. But we do share the question posed by one of Simon’s predecessors, state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer: Why was the state’s own site so readily overwhelmed that it had to fall back on outside sites?

There figures to be more voters looking for their polling places in November than for the presidential primary. Simon’s office needs to be ready for that traffic.

Pomp and circumstance

Thumbs up to the state’s graduation rates climbing upward, even if it’s baby steps. Nearly 84% of Minnesota seniors graduated in 2019, up half a percentage point from the previous year.

It’s worth noting that most school districts in our south-central region had rates higher than the state average. Nearly 87% of Mankato students graduated in four years, a slight drop from the year before, but 2018 was the highest rate in five years. East High School had the highest 2019 rate of Mankato schools at 93%.

Some of the smaller school districts in the regions are meeting or exceeding the state’s goal of 90% by 2025. And it’s especially great to see that two area districts that were below the state average in 2018 achieved significant increases in 2019. Waseca climbed from 81% to 88% and Le Sueur-Henderson from 81% to 93%.

Schools and the state education department still need to pay extra attention to their students of color and work to close the gap when it comes to their graduation rates, which are still noticeably lower. The graduation rate for American Indians is about 50%.

Ill-chosen language

Thumbs down to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the leader of the Democratic caucus, for his implicit threat to the two newest Supreme Court justices as the high court heard arguments in an abortion case.

It is not an excuse for Schumer that President Trump verbally abuses federal judges on a regular basis. It’s wrong from Trump and it’s wrong from Schumer.

Schumer backed off his language a couple of days later. But the incident is an indication of how political discourse in this nation has degraded. ___

St. Cloud Times, March 6

Primary turnout was good, but we can make it better with privacy

Minnesota voters participated in a presidential primary for the first time in more than a quarter century. So, how did Minnesotans show at the polls?

Better than caucus straw polls in 2016 - when both Democrats and Republicans had multiple candidates on the ballot.

Just over 885,000 voters showed up Tuesday in Minnesota to vote in the presidential primary, almost 745,000 Democrats and around 140,000 Republicans. (The Republicans get a pass on turnout this time, as President Donald Trump was the only name on the ballot.)

That’s a 175% increase in participants compared to roughly 321,000 voters in the 2016 caucus straw polls.

What can be gleaned from this increase? Perhaps more people are motivated to participate in the voting process. Perhaps it’s a sign of the breakneck speed at which most of us live our lives - voting is less time-consuming than a caucus. Or maybe it’s because the caucus system in Minnesota can be intimidating for first-timers.

Regardless, we can glean from the primary turnout numbers that Minnesotans appreciated the chance to take part in the primary.

So what can we do in 2024 to improve?

That’s easy: ensure privacy for every voter in our state primary.

Your vote in the primary was secret, as always, but your party affiliation could be shared with leaders of our state’s major political parties. Other than a ban on commercial use, there are no restrictions on what those party leaders can do with that data, including publish it.

Legislators still have time to fix this. They can and should pass legislation that will keep voters’ party affiliation private before the scheduled data release in May.

Business owners, journalists, priests and public servants from police officers to department heads know that their party affiliation could become public, and that could lead to trouble down the road as the political winds change. Once, trust in party officials to do the right thing wasn’t such a leap to make, but in this stage of American life, encoding voter privacy safeguards in the law seems like a no-brainer.

Perhaps we will see an even better primary turnout when we know our political preferences are kept private, as they should be to guard against retaliation in the workplace or elsewhere.

And if our legislators don’t make the change in time to protect primary voters? Well, that’s something to remember when they ask for your vote in November.