Growing Impatient - Doug Grow
Growing Impatient - Doug Grow holds forth on the latest "scandal" in today's Strib. In so doing, he pounds another spike through the forehead of the notion that he's anything but a shill for the DFL.
Last fall, Tim Pawlenty's gubernatorial campaign was penalized an unprecedented $600,000 for clear-cut violations of Minnesota campaign laws.
There was nothing clear about the law, but we digress.
But in a twist that must have stunned even him, Pawlenty managed to turn that blast on his integrity into a political triumph by refusing to protest the ruling of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.
"A strong leader takes responsibility," he said of the violation and fine.
With those words, Pawlenty wasn't seen as just another cheating pol. Instead, he was applauded as a refreshing, stand-up guy.
Re-read that last paragraph. In other words, he wasn't
really a "stand-up guy", doing the right thing. He was (Grow presumes) just another cheating pol. No debate about it - not in Doug's world, anyway.
This fit the image Pawlenty long has cultivated. He has pounded on the themes that he's a God-fearing, rock 'n' roll-loving, joke-cracking, hockey-playing guy with blue-collar roots from the working-class neighborhoods of South St. Paul.
With help from the media, he has sold the image well. Minnesotans may disagree with some of his political stances, but gee, isn't he a swell guy?
Unmentioned by, and perhaps unknown to Grow, is the fact that he
is, by every account I've heard from everyone, everywhere, a generally swell guy. To convert him into anything else requires some clever reconstruction of history.
Which is Doug Grow's specialty.
In the past few days, however, it has become apparent that the image is way too simplistic. Overnight, Stand-up Pawlenty is looking a lot more like Slick Tim.
Sorry, Doug. "Slick" is already taken - your ex-president earned it.
We've learned that Pawlenty is secretive about his dealings, keeps vague records and does business with a very small circle of friends who played major roles in putting together his administration.
News Flash: Political associates look out for each other. Unless Doug Grow believes Dorsey and Whitney hired Walter Mondale for his courtroom skills.
He held a two-hour conversation with reporters Tuesday afternoon. Clearly, this session was meant to charm reporters and buff up the tarnished nice-guy image.
Typically, when a governor and reporters gather, the governor keeps a lectern between himself and the media wretches. On Tuesday, we were invited to sit at a huge table with the governor and ask as many questions as we wanted.
Again, stop the presses - the governor knows how to handle the media. Media people have egoes as large as, and generally larger than, that of the great outdoors (and I include myself in those days). He's good at it.
During our nice chat -- where were the cookies? -- the governor was affable, never once showing his temper.
In Doug Grow's world, I'm sure that could only be a sign of supreme artifice.
To many of us, this might be seen as a sign that Pawlenty doesn't think temper is needed - that the truth sets him free.
Still, for most of the two hours, this was Slick Tim talking, not Stand-up Pawlenty. The governor spent far more time talking about what's legal than about what's right.
And this year's "Les Nessman Recognition of the Screamingly Obvious award goes to...Doug Grow, of the DFL Star-Tribune!
Sheesh, no kidding, Doug. In a week in which the press and the DFL punditry has attacked the legality of what he and his associated allegedly did, why indeed would Pawlenty, a lawyer, focus on legality?
Why indeed?
Especially if he's a "stand-up guy?"
For example, he summed up news accounts about roles he and other friends and political appointees played in such companies as NewTel, New Access and Capitol Verification, with the classic lament of all embattled pols.
"What did anybody do wrong?" he asked. "What did anybody, in their role as a government official, do wrong?"
The Governor asks. And Grow responds:
Time may answer those questions.
Ah, a non-answer. So let me get this straight:
Grow continues:
Meanwhile, the new surprise that Gov. Slick dropped on Minnesota Tuesday concerned the so-called job he had leading up to, and during, the campaign.
Pawlenty revealed that he was hired by his friend, Elam Baer, to act as legal counsel for Access Anywhere, one of many companies Baer controls. (Recall, Pawlenty served as a board member of another Baer company, NewTel. Pawlenty claims to have had no knowledge of illegal sales tactics being used by New Access, a subsidiary of NewTel, while he was on the board of NewTel.)
And again, not only has no evidence come out that Pawlenty
would have known about the "slamming", or that his capacity as legal counsel had anything to do with sales tactics.
Board Members select corporate officers. They do not run call centers. They do not interact with the company at a tactical level. If the company's officers aren't delivering at the bottom line, the board ejects them and replaces them. That is what board members do.
Pawlenty was paid $4,500 a month to "work" for Baer and Access Anywhere. But this was not exactly the employee-employer relationship most regular Minnesotans relate to.
The checks weren't made out to Pawlenty, nor were they signed by Baer. Instead, checks went to BAMCO (Business and Management Consultant). BAMCO was a one-employee company. The single employee was Pawlenty. BAMCO had just one client. The one client was Access Anywhere.
What made the relationship real special is the fact that Pawlenty/BAMCO has no record of the hours spent working for Baer/Access Anywhere. All Pawlenty says is that he worked from 10 to 30 hours a month to collect the retainer. He's vague about what he did.
Question for Doug Grow: Precisely what do you think a retainer is? A fee to
retain services as a lawyer, not to use them. It's paying for a lawyer's availability.
What does Doug Grow think the lawyers that McClatchy Newspapers retain do for their time? Deliver newspapers?
There may be nothing illegal here. Certainly, other pols have had sweetheart jobs during campaigns, but typically the public has known about them.
Another question for Doug Grow: Does he think that Pawlenty wasn't listed in the company's annual report as a board member?
It's secrecy that makes this deal smell. Until the headlines hit, none of us knew about Pawlenty's spot on the mini-board of directors of NewTel. Not until Tuesday did any of us know of this funky little one-client firm, BAMCO.
Note to Doug Grow: I'm sure you're also clueless about my little one-person, zero (at the moment) client firm, Humanware Design. It's a legal construct to allow income from freelance or consulting work to be taxed at corporate rather than personal rates.
Or have you been working for the Mommypaper your entire career, and never needed to learn how freelancing works?
What we have here, at least, is less an issue of Pawlenty's secrecy than Grow's ignorance.
Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, is a longtime friendly foil of Pawlenty. He put Pawlenty's political problem succinctly.
"I liked the guy because I thought we came from similar backgrounds," Rukavina said. "But I didn't forget where I came from. I think he has. I don't think there's anybody in his old neighborhood who would be paid $4,500 a month and forget what he did to earn it."
What does it mean to be "from the neighborhood?"
If you're Tom Rukavina, it means talking in an accent that the Coen Brothers would have cut from Fargo as "too over the top", and acting no more literate or knowedgeable than the deadenders that stagger out of the bars at 1AM in Virginia, and waving your "roots" in people's faces, as if they, themselves, were a qualification. It means treating one's "blue collar roots" as a licence to be an ignorant buffoon, or at least to talk like one from the floor of the House.
If you're Pawlenty, it means that no matter how far one goes in life, one keeps some of the values of the place you came from. Including hard work, resourcefulness, and using your talents to their full extent.
Pawlenty left the neighborhood long ago. Now it appears he may have forgotten where it was.
One of the great glories of American Civilization is that one is not bound, any more than one chooses to be, to one's "neighborhood" or upbringing or social class, or much of anything else.
"It appears" Doug Grow has forgotten that.
Posted by Mitch at
July 17, 2003 07:04 AM
