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Marshall Helmberger on DFL District 8, the Long Winter, Alworth Scholarship and Sea Monkeys!

www.timberjay.com/

Heidi Holtan: [00:00:07] Time now for the board news roundup. Friday mornings we get a chance to check in with Marshall Helmberger. He's the publisher and editor of The Timberjaya newspaper serving northeastern Minnesota. Marshall joins us now.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:00:21] Happy to be here.

Heidi Holtan: [00:00:23] Well I think we have to start with the 8th District race. Yesterday we talked to Sam Brodey from MinnPost he's their Washington correspondent and he was reminding us of the District 8 attention nationally but it's pretty fascinating what's going on. So let's let's start off with the DFL convention that was last Saturday.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:00:46] Right. Yeah I would say was probably not a huge surprise. Everyone knew that Leah Phifer was coming in with a big chunk of the delegates and a lot of her delegates were were very committed to her and she definitely showed strength throughout the convention.

She led down every single ballot and under the balloting that endorsing convention they went to a total of ten ballots. Which is kind of standard if you can't come to an endorsement earlier than that. But anyway they did go through all 10 ballots and she peaked out at 52 percent. Well among the five candidates unfortunately for her that fell short of the 60 percent that was needed to actually receive the endorsement. And there was a big push you know for the delegates to endorse somebody and Ken Martin the head of the DFL. He weighed in at one point with the delegates and said if we don't unite behind a candidate you know right away we're going to lose this race.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:01:51] And  that's the fear obviously is if they go into a divisive primary now that will drag on until August. That you know they're going to be putting the DFL candidate you know sort of behind the eight ball in terms of going up against Pete Stauber, the St. Louis County commissioner running on the Republican side. And of course he's unopposed and he's been very successful in raising money.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:02:17] As of March 30 first reported over half a million dollars in money raised which kind of dwarfs the DFL candidates in the race so far. So there is obviously I think a feeling that with Nolan out of the race that's going to be a bit of an uphill fight you know potentially which you know it's funny because you know nationally I think the consensus is that the Democrats are going to do very well this fall but the 8th District may run counter to that trend although you know there's obviously a lot of time between now and then. And one of the candidates on the DFL side could still catch on.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:02:54] The interesting thing of course was that Phifer who you know seemed to be the front runner has now announced that she is bowing out of the 8th District race. So that was a bit of a surprise. I think it kind of expected that it would all move on to the primary. But she felt that it just didn't work with the strategy that she had developed which was focused on getting the endorsement.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:03:19] I Did talk to her this week. And she said really it didn't look like she was going to get support from any of the you know kind of bigger traditional organizations that might provide a significant source of funding and infrastructure. You know to help run a primary campaign they were very focused on the endorsement and of course had they got the endorsement. And of course they would have had you know the party infrastructure and party resources to help with their campaigns so that would have put them in a lot stronger position without that it just made it very difficult to go forward. You know and she said it was very clear to her that she was facing some opposition from kind of the traditional power base within the DFL up here.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:04:04] She had a message that was certainly different in on a number of issues economic fairness environmental protection restorative justice those kinds of issues. She was a little bit. She was more progressive than what you know the norm is here within the DFL or she went up against Congressman Nolan which you know a lot of DFL or still I think have a sour taste in their mouth over that and she's seen by some as having kind of pushed Nolan in the race.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:04:37] I don't think that was the entire set of factors there but I think he's more involved with Nolan's decision obviously. But in either case you know I think there were a lot of folks who do feel that way and that he might still be in the race if she hadn't challenged it and done so well that was part of the problem that she was very organized and got a lot of support in the precinct caucuses and it was you know three days after that Nolan decided he didn't want to engage in a fight. I think for the for the nomination.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:05:06] So so it's very interesting the way that the twists and turns that we've seen here. And of course now Phifers decision narrows the race on the DFL side to Jason Metsa from Virginia and then we have Joe Radinovich from Crosby and also Mayor Hagen-Kennedy from North Branch and then Michele Lee the former KBJR news broadcaster who is from Moose Lake.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:05:33] All four of them now will be competing in the primary. So I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more from the candidates over the next few months.

Heidi Holtan: [00:05:42] You'll keep us posted

Marshall Helmberger: [00:05:43] Oh I will. This is one of the more interesting races we've had up here in quite some time.

Heidi Holtan: [00:05:49] Yeah definitely. Well let's move on Marshall to something that I think a lot of us don't know much about. It's a scholarship fund that comes out of the Duluth area and has given a lot of money over the years to for students interested in math and science. Tell us more about it.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:06:06] Yeah it's called theMarshall H. & Nellie Alworth Memorial Fund and they just actually set a couple of milestones here. Earlier this month when they gave out their five thousand scholarships and reached a milestone of 50 million dollars in total giving since the scholarship fund was established back in 1949. It's interesting that this is really an outstanding scholarship for young people from our area to receive. It's a five thousand dollar a year scholarship for 4 years. So it's it's a big chunk of change and it can really make the difference for us for students I talked to some of the students who are current recipients.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:06:52] And they all agreed that it really was an advantage for them because you know they said they didn't have to work while they're at school which is you know something that's common for a lot of students. And they said they really could focus on their studies. They could get involved in some of the you know the various student clubs and other activities. So I mean they really have a better college experience and are able to get more really from the time that they spend in college as a result of this scholarship.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:07:22] And they give away quite a few I mean just this year in April they awarded 72 scholarships so it's a lot of young people from the area who are being given this tremendous opportunity. And I should mention it is available to students in math and science from all over kind of northern and northeastern Minnesota extends down to Brainerd out to Bemidji and then all across the arrowhead. So you know students who are going to be seniors or seniors next year it's too late to apply for this year. But for folks were juniors now they might want to be paying attention to the Allworth scholarship. The application period begins in November and runs through the middle of January. And you know it's an application process that's a little bit involved but you know it's definitely worth the investment of a few hours to put an application together because the payoff here can really be tremendous.

Heidi Holtan: [00:08:29] And we'll put a link to that on our Web site. The web address is alworthscholarship.org. So Marshall last week you were. I'm not sure how to phrase this you're kinda hoping we were going to break a wet record weather wise but what a difference a week makes .

Marshall Helmberger: [00:08:46] Yeah well we would have we would have slaughtered it from my earlier discussion with Pete Boulay who's the state climatologist. I talked him a couple of weeks ago because I had thought we might be getting close to a record for the longest continuous snow cover this winter. We've had snow on the ground at least up in northern St. Louis County since October 27. And of course we still have plenty of snow on the ground now and as I was starting to you know do the math and so I checked in with Pete Boulay. And he you know he's the keeper of all these obscure records. You know initially he was only fine a record from Duluth which was 172 days which we beat actually as of Tuesday of this week. So we were thinking we might be in the running to beat that record. We obviously would have. But in the meantime after I inquired about it Pete decided he'd better go in and dig through some of the old paper records they have at the State Climatology Office and doing that he was able to find another location which he thought would probably break the record. And this was this is a station that doesn't exist any longer. It was at the Pigeon River Crossing and this is the old crossing. This was where 60 Highway 61 crossed from Minnesota into Ontario.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:10:16] That crossing actually was not on the lake it was inland quite a few miles back in the day and they only recorded weather there for five years. But one of those years was the winter of 1949-50 and that was that was a brutal winter in terms of snow. And in terms of just how long this snow lasted. And so this was just fascinating to see the weather records. And actually Pete was able to send me copies of the records for the whole month for the whole winter and it was really interesting to look at. And just to give you an idea this was the winter they they set the state record for the most snowfall of a 170 inches of snow. You can imagine. And they also had the record for the greatest snow depth. You know they had the most snow on the ground which they said on March 28 with 75 inches of snow on the ground which you know that's already over my head. You know that's so much snow they had. Now is they on the average I wasn't drifts this was just the you know the average snow depth. They started the month of May was 30 inches of snow on the ground. They picked up 31 inches of snow in in April actually just snowed, and snowed, and snowed. So even when they would get a little that melting they just wouldn't it wouldn't gain much. So anyway they had snow on the ground until May 22nd and they set the record at 190 days of continuous snow cover as of today we're at 176 days and there's about 17 inches of snow on the ground.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:12:05] I think what I measured as of this morning we still have a little ways to go but I'm worried that we need to go at least 14 more days and looking at the extended forecast. I'm kind of thinking we may not make it but we're going to come really close. I guess we could keep our fingers crossed that we get at least one more good snow storm and a little cool down then we still might be able to break this record which only seems fitting considering that we've had to sit through a long long winter. We ought to get something for it even if it's only at record.

Heidi Holtan: [00:12:43] That's Marshall Helmberger. Marshall, Quick before we go I just have to ask you yesterday we talked about the back of comic books and sea monkeys and I've never known anyone who actually ordered the sea monkeys. And you did I hear.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:12:56] I did. Actually I ordered them than one guy the first time I was disappointed and I thought well maybe I did something wrong because they always look so cool on the back of the comic book.

Heidi Holtan: [00:13:08] But they never. The second time around either didn't work either?

Marshall Helmberger: [00:13:12] No it didn't work I thought I was going to have a little monkey sitting on my shoulder for gosh sakes. That's what it looked like in the comics you know.

Heidi Holtan: [00:13:19] Doing like song and dances

Marshall Helmberger: [00:13:22] Little hats and septors. I mean it was just wow. I was expecting all that.

Heidi Holtan: [00:13:30] That's Marshall Helmberger, you can read and see more at Timberjay.com thanks. We'll check in next week.

Marshall Helmberger: [00:13:34] Thanks, Heidi.

Heidi Holtan is KAXE's Director of Content and Public Affairs where she manages producers and is the local host of Morning Edition from NPR. Heidi is a regional correspondent for WDSE/WRPT's Duluth Public Television’s Almanac North.