Daily Digest: Nurses’ strike ends
Good morning and happy Friday. What a week.
1. About 4,000 nurses in an open-ended strike of four Allina hospitals and the Phillips Eye Institute since Labor Day approved a new contract in a vote Thursday. Some will return to work early Sunday, and they will all be returned to active status by then. Negotiators from the union and Allina reached a tentative agreement earlier this week after Gov. Mark Dayton and Lt. Gov. Tina Smith convened them with federal mediators for talks at his residence. That deal was approved in the Thursday vote. (MPR News)
2. Is Minnesota still a reliably blue state in presidential elections? Some of the election web sites this year have shown it light blue, that is, almost a swing state. That may be because there have been relatively few public polls here to give them reliable data. Another reason may be that other states have gotten more liberal in the past few years. There are some indications that Minnesota's electorate may be looking more like the country's as a whole. (MinnPost)
3. A record-breaking 90,000 people have already voted in Minnesota. More than 10,000 of them are in Hennepin County and more then 20,000 are in Washington, Ramsey and Dakota counties. (Pioneer Press)
4. Donald Trump on Thursday called allegations that he groped and forcibly kissed woman "vicious" and "totally, absolutely false." He said he would provide evidence to dispute the claims "very soon." Speaking at a campaign rally in Florida. Trump said the claims came from"the Clinton machine," which apparently includes the New York Times and other news outlets. Trump also criticized People writer Natasha Stoynoff's looks, arguing that he wouldn't have made a move on her. She wrote Wednesday Trump had pushed her against a wall and put "his tongue down my throat" in December 2005. "You take a look at her, look at her, look at her words," he said, "You tell me what you think. I don't think so, I don't think so." (NPR)
5. As Trump holds big rallies, Hillary Clinton appears to be playing it safe, trying to avoid making mistakes. Thursday she had lots of surrogates campaigning for her, including President and Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton. From this story: "But in a fractured news media landscape, a boisterous campaign rally packs less punch than it used to and aides said they can more effectively target voters through other means. And the headlines about Mr. Trump of late underscore the Clinton campaign’s long-held assumption that dominating the national news is not always a good thing." (New York Times)
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