Les Lester

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Les Lester

Democratic Party

Elections and appointments

Last election

August 11, 2020

Personal

Birthplace

Sardis, Miss.

Profession

Author/teacher

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

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Les Lester (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Minnesota's 5th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on August 11, 2020.

Lester completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Les Lester was born in Sardis, Mississippi. He received a bachelor's degree in 1996, attending Chicago State University and the University of Minnesota. Lester's professional experience includes being an author and teacher and working for WJPC radio, WLTH radio, and Chicago Defender newspaper. His organizational affiliations include the St. Paul NAACP as communications chair and Operation PUSH as communication director.

Elections

2020

See also: Minnesota's 5th Congressional District election, 2020

Minnesota's 5th Congressional District election, 2020 (August 11 Democratic primary)

Minnesota's 5th Congressional District election, 2020 (August 11 Republican primary)

General election

General election for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Incumbent Ilhan Omar defeated Lacy Johnson, Mickey Moore, Toya Woodland, and Ervan Katari Miller in the general election for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on November 3, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ilhan Omar (D)	64.3	255,924
		Lacy Johnson (R)	25.8	102,878
		Mickey Moore (Legal Marijuana Now Party)	9.5	37,979
		Toya Woodland (G) (Write-in)	0.0	34
	Submit photo	Ervan Katari Miller (Independent) (Write-in)	0.0	0
		Other/Write-in votes	0.4	1,448

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 398,263
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Chris Kelley (Independence Party)

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Incumbent Ilhan Omar defeated Antone Melton-Meaux, John Mason, Daniel Patrick McCarthy, and Les Lester in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on August 11, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ilhan Omar	58.2	103,535
		Antone Melton-Meaux	38.5	68,524
		John Mason	1.5	2,721
	Submit photo	Daniel Patrick McCarthy	1.1	1,901
		Les Lester	0.7	1,267

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 177,948
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Ervan Katari Miller (D)
• Leila Shukri Adan (D)
• Haji Yussuf (D)

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Lacy Johnson defeated Danielle Stella and Dalia al-Aqidi in the Republican primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on August 11, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Lacy Johnson	76.6	9,188
		Danielle Stella	18.6	2,236
		Dalia al-Aqidi	4.7	568

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 11,992
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Laverne Turner (R)
• Brent Whaley (R)
• Lucia Vogel (R)
• Alley Waterbury (R)

Legal Marijuana Now Party primary election

Legal Marijuana Now Party primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Mickey Moore advanced from the Legal Marijuana Now Party primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on August 11, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Mickey Moore	100.0	940

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 940
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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2018

See also: Minnesota's 5th Congressional District election, 2018

General election

General election for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Ilhan Omar defeated Jennifer Zielinski in the general election for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on November 6, 2018.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ilhan Omar (D)	78.0	267,703
		Jennifer Zielinski (R)	21.7	74,440
		Other/Write-in votes	0.4	1,215

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 343,358 (100.00% precincts reporting)
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on August 14, 2018.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ilhan Omar	48.2	65,237
		Margaret Kelliher	30.4	41,156
		Patricia Torres Ray	13.0	17,629
		Jamal Abdulahi	3.7	4,984
		Bobby Joe Champion	2.8	3,831
		Frank Nelson Drake	1.8	2,480

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 135,317
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Julie Sabo (D)

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5

Jennifer Zielinski defeated Christopher Chamberlin and Bob Carney Jr. in the Republican primary for U.S. House Minnesota District 5 on August 14, 2018.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Jennifer Zielinski	56.5	8,680
		Christopher Chamberlin	32.5	4,999
		Bob Carney Jr.	11.0	1,688

---

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 15,367
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2020

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Les Lester completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Lester's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I concur with the well-known mantra that, "Service is the rent we pay for our time here on Earth." My critique of the world around us compels me to address those issues that I see in need of redress. Climate change, universal health care, fair distribution of wealth, educational opportunity, science, spirituality, accurate history, racism reduction, and campaign finance reform are just some of the areas that concern me and occupy my thoughts.

I became a writer and journalist because it allowed me to address pressing issues to the larger world, and share perspectives that might help to propel the world progressively forward. Covid-19, I believe, is a wake-up call for mankind to respect the delicate balance of life and nature.

I would like to represent Minnesota in Congress to seek novel solutions to pesky issues that continue to plague us.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• There must be a redress to "socially engineered poverty," that has left too many people outside the realm of living fulfilled, contributing lives.

• "Global warming" and COVID-19 should sensitize us to the delicate balance of nature and life, and compel us to critique and mitigate the use of fossil fuels, engaging in fracking, and releasing greenhouse gases into the environment.

• "Health care" should not be a commodity, bought and sold like goods on a mercantile or financial stock exchange. The current system of commerce is based on scarcity, reminiscent of a time when there was no safety net and economic failure devolved one's life to wretchedness. In the 21st century, we have an opportunity perhaps for the first time to pool the nations, and the world's resources for the greatest good of all. And universal health care should be deemed as our collective inheritance.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I believe that "education" brings about awareness and awareness the ability to think. Critical thinking is often lacking in the world, today, because we're too often educated passively via television and mass media. Formal education, along with challenging life situations in some respects, affords us the ability to look deeply and broadly at issues and perspectives helping us to arrive at sound analysis based on supporting facts and paradigms, not merely hearsay or prevailing opinion. I am passionate about ensuring that the United States expands its purview of ensuring we have a well-educated public, whether formally or informally.

Mass media can be helpful in educating in a broad way, meanwhile. Prior to the Ronald Reagan administration's repeal of the "Fairness Doctrine," in 1987, every broadcast station, in the U.S., was required to have a public affairs director, whose job was to ensure that both sides of an issue were presented surrounding controversial areas of importance, to the public. Citizens were able to more thoroughly express their views on issues, which worked to balance out well-reasoned public analysis of issues.

The absence of TV and radio shows that offered counterbalances of ideas resulted in popular opinions being promulgated via the airwaves, resulting in a mass society educated on ideas without thorough critique. I would like to work on a select committee in Congress analysing the past benefits of the Fairness Doctrine... .

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

I remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was 5 years old.

What do you perceive to be the United States’ greatest challenges as a nation over the next decade?

The advances in automation and artificial intelligence will continue to take-up jobs that have traditionally served as stabilizing factors for family security. The lost of millions of manufacturing jobs across the Midwest in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa over the past several decades, for example, created employment deserts for good-paying jobs. That worked to usher in the election of Donald Trump, many pundits suggest.

A similar lost of working-class jobs that account for about 58% of the workforce seems afoot nationwide, as we see shopping malls closing due to increased online retail purchasing, call centers and customer service jobs defaulting to artificial intelligence, transportation jobs, such as trucking, already developing autonomous freight runs between Texas and California, currently with human monitors; delivery jobs such as Uber, may also become self-driving by 2030, and fast food franchises are currently experimenting with self-service kiosks.

How will workers be expected to survice in 2030 going forward?

With a universe of information available on the Internet, the need for colleges and universities, as we know them, is going to be greatly impacted. Online-type classes will expand, relatively speaking, and the cost of education will have to decrease to retain and attract students. What kind of jobs will be available for students in the humanities is questionable, because much of the information that was hidden away in esoteric books, in the past, is readily available online for free, going forward.

While there doesn't seem to be enough green jobs to replace the job losses, the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) might be the answer. Our medium of trade is not backed by gold anymore. It's backed by our economy. If we can keep capital-flow sufficent with price regulations, to fend-off inflation, we can move into a secure future where the cost-performance ratio will decrease, due to automation... .

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

2018

Ballotpedia biographical submission form

The candidate completed Ballotpedia's biographical information submission form:

“	What is your political philosophy? Lifelong Democrat, joined Green Party in current political run due to its concern for the environment, and after the incumbent Keith Ellison decided to vacate his congressional seat on the final date of filing, for the ballot, to run for the Minnesota Attorney General's office--it was too late to file as a Democrat for the Primary Election. I believe the Green Party is attractive to Progressives, like me, because it believes in everything the Democratic Party believes, but is stronger on the environment. I believe we can narrow the achievement gap for Black students when we merge the full history of Black people with world history. As a writer, my research has shown me that the pre-Greek and pre-Roman cultures were Black classical cultures, but Black students never see this in text books. They only see a European framework of history. I want to serve on the education committee, in the House, and lay the groundwork, in Washington, where the next Secretary of Education will be sensitive to ensuring that Black youth get their full classical narrative in America's schools. I believe within one 12-year cycle of 1st through 12th grade (under my proposal), a more confident and progressive Black youth will emerge from our public schools decreasing dropout rates, unemployment, crime, and incarcerations. Is there anything you would like to add? Les Lester's mantra in the campaign is: "Just as the founder's signed the Declaration of Independence, voters can sign their 'declaration of independence' from business-as-usual candidates by writing-in Les Lester." In 2010, Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski won as a write-in candidate. And for most of this country's history the electorate have written-in the candidates' names, as printing was not so ubiquitous as it has become. The demographics of voters in the 5th Congressional District are independent swing voters. The same electorate who voted-in 3rd Party candidate Jesse Ventura (Reform Party) in 1998, for Governor in Minnesota.	”
—Les Lester

See also

2020 Elections

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Government

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External links

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Footnotes

[show]

Minnesota's current delegation to the United States Congress

Senators

Amy Klobuchar (D)

Tina Smith (D)

Representatives

District 1

Brad Finstad (R)

District 2

Angie Craig (D)

District 3

Kelly Morrison (D)

District 4

Betty McCollum (D)

District 5

Ilhan Omar (D)

District 6

Tom Emmer (R)

District 7

Michelle Fischbach (R)

District 8

Pete Stauber (R)

Democratic Party (6)

Republican Party (4)