Monday: Jay Benanav
Tuesday: Jerry Blakey
Wednesday: Randy Kelly
Thursday: Bob Kessler
Today: Bob Long
Saturday: Bobbi Megard
Monday: Other candidates
Bob Long says, "I've always had this sense of public service instilled in me by my father."
Energetic Long runs energetic race
BY THERESA MONSOUR
Pioneer Press
Bob Long talks fast, walks fast, works a room fast. At 10 a.m. one day last week, he zips through a senior citizen bridge club.
Eleven players sit at three folding tables on the third floor of Hillcrest Recreation Center in St. Paul's Highland Park. Long's daughter, Katie, 10, and Brandon Fitzsimmons, a field organizer in a yellow "Go Long!'' T-shirt, follow in the candidate's wake.
"I'm Bob Long. I'm running for mayor. ... I know it's terrible to interrupt a card game. ... Sept. 11 is the primary.''
Long figures he has to move fast in the pack of candidates running for mayor in St. Paul. Sixteen will be on the primary ballot, and about a third of them are high-profile contenders. Long is one of them.
Long takes the stairs down to the second floor. The elevator doors open, and an elderly woman steps off. He introduces himself. Hands her a flier. Promises as mayor he'll work on senior citizen housing and keeping a lid on taxes. "Thank you," she says. She folds the flier and walks away.
Once outside, Long introduces himself to an elderly man and a woman with a toddler as they climb the stairs up to the center. "Hi, I'm Bob Long. ... I'm running for mayor. ... I'd appreciate your support."
Next stop: 1300 Wilson Ave., a senior high-rise across town on the East Side.
Long walks into the lobby and finds a willing listener in a woman who says she has recently moved back from California. While Long visits with the woman, Katie settles into a chair and Fitzsimmons disappears into the elevator. Long is hoarse, but he keeps talking. After he and the woman part, his daughter gets up. "Dad," she says, "Brandon is doing 8 through 17."
Long and his daughter take the elevator to the seventh floor and work their way back down to the lobby, distributing literature in the hallways. Alongside each door is the apartment number and below that is a clip. Some of the doors already have green fliers hanging from their clips: "Meet the next mayor of St. Paul. State Sen. Randy Kelly." Long says some of the other candidates have been copying his campaign tactics. He clips his brochure over the Kelly flier.
"HIGHEST-ENERGY'
L
ong, a DFLer who lives in Highland Park with his wife and two children, served on the St. Paul City Council from 1988 to 1994. He's an attorney, a small-business owner and a soccer coach. Some of his most active volunteers, in addition to his family, are his neighbors and other soccer parents.
Mark Glad, a technical manager at 3M, calls Long "the highest-energy guy I know." Glad says he saw Long tool around on in-line skates and watched while Long tirelessly organized soccer practices. Glad found himself drawn into the campaign when his neighbor started the dash for mayor.
"He is very good and very committed to working with others to get a consensus and to move projects forward and create positive change," says Glad.
Not all of Long's supporters are new to politics. Ora Lee Patterson, second vice president of the St. Paul NAACP branch, is co-chair of his campaign. She has known Long since the two of them worked for former Mayor George Latimer in the early 1980s. She says Long has the kind of persona that can pull the city's factions together.
"These times demand a different kind of leader," she says, "a different kind of leader who has vision."
Long's vision is shaped in part by his upbringing. His father was chief psychologist and his mother was head dietitian at the state hospital in St. Peter. "I grew up right on the grounds," he says, recalling they lived for a time in staff apartment buildings on the campus. He was an only child.
"I've always had this sense of public service instilled in me by my father," says Long.
DON'T INTERRUPT
W
hile he works the Wilson hallways, Long talks about strategies he honed while running for City Council: Hit the building on the day the milk is delivered. Drop in on the card parties. Check the community rooms during lunch because some of the buildings serve communal meals.
Long and his daughter meet up with Fitzsimmons and work their way to Wilson's community room. They find one man sitting at a table working on a jigsaw puzzle and two others -- a man and a woman, each with a cane -- standing next to the table.
"I can't vote for you," says the man sitting at the table. He's a big man with a big voice. "You got to get in a hot tub with that Barbara woman." He's referring to radio personality Barbara Carlson and her interviews with guests from her hot tub.
The big man asks Katie if she's going to vote for this Bob Long. Katie says yes. "He's my dad," she says proudly.
"I could never vote for my dad," says the big man. "He was in jail."
Long asks when the building holds bingo games. Wednesday afternoons, says the woman with the cane. But don't interrupt the bingo, she cautions.
"We can use every vote in this building," he says.
As Long turns to leave, he notices a woman sitting by herself. She is tethered to a portable oxygen tank. Long talks with her briefly. She waves away a brochure.
Bob Long leaves the building. Next stop: Linwood Recreation Center across town.
It's not quite 11: 15 a.m.
Theresa Monsour can be reached at tmonsour@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5457.
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