First Person Radio Oct 27: REP. KAREN CLARK: Election Losses and Now What? – Audio below

Elected in 1980, Karen Clark represents an inner city district (61A) in South Minneapolis, the lowest income Legislative District in Minnesota, and consistently receives 75-85% of the vote from her constituents. In 2008 she received 89%, the highest vote margin in the state. In 2010, a year of Republican upheaval and takeover of the Minnesota House, she garnered over 78% (the Independence Party candidate captured 11+%, more than the Republican).

Karen is a frequent speaker on her innovative and “cutting edge” legislation to local, national, and international audiences. She is known among her colleagues for her coalition-building skills and her persistent community-based advocacy on behalf of her inner-city constituents and of low-income and minority-status Minnesotans throughout the state.

As chair of the House’s Public Health Finance and Housing Policy and Finance Committee, Rep. Clark has championed environmental health and affordable housing legislation that challenges the status quo and promotes economic and social justice options. (Under the new majority, she will lose her chairship, but likely remain as ranking DFLer on the same committee.) Rep. Clark is the longest-serving openly Lesbian State Legislator in the U.S. Karen is also the unpaid Executive Director of the Women’s Environmental Institute.

LAURA WATERMAN WITTSTOCK and RICHARD LaFORTUNE analyze Tuesday’s elections with Karen Clark.