Tim Walz is a great guy and a great Governor but this is an appreciation thread for someone else in Walz world - his chief of staff @chrisschmitter. During Covid, I would join the chiefs for Governors Walz, Whitmer, Evers (Chris, JoAnne, and Maggie) on weekly calls to try and figure out how to make sense of the world. The check ins were a crucial info sharing opportunity- but they were also therapy for us four.

Next Friday is the last day an IL Gov’s Office will occupy the 16th floor of the James R Thompson Center. In honor of that I will be using this thread to amplify the things we will miss on behalf of the generations of state employees who occupied these walls. First entry…this: These mid-century modern trash cans used to collect water from the ceiling.

This was my mother, Nancy Caprara. She died 30 years ago today. This is my favorite pic of us together. She’s teaching me how to roller skate in our kitchen on Christmas morning. I kept falling & every time I fell we laughed harder which made it harder to get up on the skates. This was her a month before she died, learning how to boogie board in Sea Isle, NJ. My brother @jcaprara & I taught her. She got me up early the last morning of the trip to hit the water “before the lifeguards shut us down.” The memory of that morning remains my best.

I want to take a moment today to talk about how the right wing misinformation machine works, how it churns up outrage, how supposedly “civil” Republicans fuel it...and what the real world consequences are for innocent people caught in its trap. Last week a ton of people sent me a screenshot from a Twitter/Instagram account called @deuxmoiworld. They track supposed celebrity sightings - basically a completely unverifiable gossip account.

I usually leave this stuff alone & I am not going to dignify the insane column I just (mistakenly) read in a local opinion section with a retweet. But it’s been a long few months & I ain’t just going to let this one go: Early on in the pandemic, two of the modeling experts we consulted with about how to respond to this virus showed us a table. This was March. The data was still shaky and the progression of the virus was not well understood. But that table was very clear.

Hi 👋 It’s your friendly political friend here with a brief & hopefully pleasant public service announcement as we get into political ad season. There are lots of ads running at the presidential level right now that are tweeted & retweeted here on the Twitters. Truly this is every campaign manager (and former campaign manager’s) favorite time of the year. The time when EVERYONE becomes a political media consultant. We love it. (This is sarcasm font.)