by Steve Timmer

Aug 4, 2026, 9:30 PM

Ron Latz did not win an endorsement, part two

I wrote a story, published on July 9th, about the Senate DFL Caucus, and seemingly the DFL Party itself, campaigning for Sen Ron Latz in his primary race against challenger Lynette Dumalag. There is a lot of important background to the story you must understand before reading this one. So, if you haven’t read it, please do.

I will repeat that it is an article of faith of the DFL Party that it does not favor one candidate over another in DFL primary contest when no endorsement has been made. Well, it’s more than that: it’s a bylaw, the violation of which can get a party official sanctioned. Candidates can be sanctioned, too, for claiming or intimating DFL endorsement during a contested primary without endorsement.

As you’ll know if you read the linked article, the DFL Senate Caucus has sent multiple postcard flyers to District 46 voters touting Ron Latz; one of them said it was from the DFL Party itself.

Outrageous. How can this be?

It can be because the DFL Senate Caucus, although it calls itself the DFL Senate Caucus, is not formally a part of the DFL Party; it isn’t a ‘party unit.’ (Read the linked story, please.)

Haha, you’re not the boss of me, the DFL Senate Caucus can say, apparently did say. How do you like them apples? I think it’s skullduggery, and I am not alone. Former Governor Arne Carlson had been critical of legislative caucuses for years. (Just as an aside: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Harold Stassen, and Arne Carlson are the greatest 20^th Century Minnesota politicians. Fight me.) Here’s a bit from an opinion piece he and others authored that was published in the Minnesota Reformer in 2021:

Here in Minnesota, legislative caucuses of both parties have fully embraced this new wealth. In 2020, the caucuses went into the campaigns having raised more than $25 million. If this were to be averaged out evenly between the 201 members of the Legislature, the amount available to each incumbent would be a staggering $130,000. And this is money only from the caucus and does not include funds from the party or contributions to candidate committees.

Remember, this was six years ago. The caucuses amount to very well-funded incumbent protection leagues. Most of the money comes not from ordinary citizens, but rather from special interests, interests before the Legislature that is.

In the case of Dumalag vs. Latz, neither individual got the Party endorsement. But to take an even more extreme case, I can’t see anything to prevent the DFL Senate Caucus from campaigning in a primary for an incumbent who lost an endorsement to a candidate who was, in fact, endorsed by the Party. Remember, the caucus is a free agent, not a DFL party unit.

In any event, the DFL Senate Caucus’s campaigning for Ron Latz has continued. Mailboxes were filled recently with a letter from Edina Mayor Jim Hovland urging voters to “Join me in voting for Ron Latz.” It wasn’t exactly from Mayor Hovland, of course, because it was distributed and paid for by, you guessed it, the DFL Senate Caucus. The envelope had the return address of the DFL Party on Plato Boulevard in St. Paul. There are a couple of problems here.

Letter to District 46 from Mayor Jim Hovland

First, Mayor Hovland doesn’t live in District 46. He lives in District 50 with me. Hovland clearly won’t be voting for Latz. (I have voted for Jim Hovland every time he’s run for mayor; I consider him a friend of mine.) The two municipal mayors who DO live in District 46 (Hopkins and St. Louis Park) support Lynette Dumalag.

Second, the letter repeats some puffery about Ron Latz’s anti-ICE efforts, all from the comfort of the Capitol. Lynette Dumalag was out on the streets. I harbor the suspicion these were the words of the caucus, not the mayor.

The Senate DFL Caucus (and the other legislative caucuses, too) can make ‘independent expenditures’ because of a law change several years ago. (It’s in the earlier article.) But query how independent they really are when the beneficiary of the expenditure is a senior member – or any member – of the organization making the expenditure?

This is all really rotten. The law must be changed back to prevent legislative caucuses from making ‘independent’ expenditures, and the DFL needs to rein in its legislative caucuses.