Information in a nutshell:
Wes Volkenant, 59, of Andover, announces he will be running in 2016 for the House 35B seat currently held by Republican Peggy Scott, Andover.
Volkenant, DFL Chair of SD 35, is a long-time Training Specialist for Hennepin County's Human Services department and officer/activist in AFSCME Local 34. He will be seeking his party's endorsement at the DFL April convention to challenge GOP incumbent Scott (presuming Scott seeks reelection and is endorsed by her party and/or wins a primary).
Contact: Wes Volkenant, Committee to Elect Wes Volkenant
E-Mail to: wesvfor35b@gmail.com
Website: www.wesvfor35b.org
(As of the timestamp of this post that site was an active working website. Readers are urged to check it out.)
Twitter: @Wesv35b
Phone: 763-434-1551
IN CLOSING: Volkenant's four point platform as identified in his press release surely resonates with me, and the hope is readers will weigh the principles on which he is running with approval. At present it appears Volkenant has no DFL challenger(s) for the endorsement. Whether Scott seeks reelection and/or encounters a GOP challenge is unknown. GOP readers knowing an answer are urged to submit a comment.
__________________________
A heads up caveat for ALL readers, GOP, DFL or independent. Having received more than one email spoofing itself as being from Branden Petersen; emails that did not use his actual address but, e.g., a *.br address (meaning a Brazilian email account), advice to the general public is do not open and click on any links given within any purported political email without first confirming the legitimacy of the email address. Such spoofing might be a phishing trick, and any candidate being so spoofed may suffer dissatisfaction even though wholly innocent of any mischief or error. I have forwarded received spoofing emails to Petersen for notice, he is aware of the problem, so GOP oriented readers are urged to ask him about it.
A second actual, working Volkenant email address, one he has used for sending official SD35 notices as a DFL official, is:
cwvolkenant[at]msn[dot]com
[with the normal format to be used in mailing but with the given format used to frustrate malware web spiders that search websites to harvest email addresses for advertising or other purposes].
Many readers may be aware of these precautions already, but for those not so aware, this notice may prove helpful.
___________UPDATE__________
The Volkenant website notes a fifth issue position not within the single page press release:
Union Collective Bargaining Rights: Labor unions helped build modern Minnesota. As a proud member of AFSCME, I will fight any efforts to turn Minnesota into a Right to Work state, by stopping efforts to further undermine collective bargaining rights and efforts to eliminate existing prevailing wage laws.
[bolding in original] Incumbent Scott has not been an active union supporter in any way known to me during her entire term in office, but I also am unaware of any major effort by her along the lines of Scott Walker's egregious anti-unionism animus toward public employees.
A hope would be at some point in debate or otherwise that Scott and Volkenant would each publicly state and justify a position on a proper minimum wage level. This issue is of importance to millennial voters caught presently in minimum wage employment, and that voting bloc will grow in importance as it grows in voting participation in the district, the state, and the nation. Of course, that is not to say only millennials are mired in such low compensation employment. Anybody so constrained deserves our support in attaining betterment of their economic well being, independent of age or other demographics.