Awada Good It'll Do Ya

Awada Good It'll Do Ya - When I'm not writing Shot in the Dark, or job-hunting, I contribute to the "Political State Report". It's a group blog, run by überblogger The Daily Kos, and includes contributors from all political orientations from just about every state in the Union.

There's a bit of a discussion going on about Pat Awada's proposed cuts to Local Government Assistance between Lakeville moderate blogger Jeff Fecke and I.

In the Comments section, Fecke notes:

And I just don't see Thatcher in Awada. I watched her debating on KTCA last night, and the Mayor of St. Cloud was eating her for lunch. She just doesn't have it. And more to the point, Minnesota is trending red, but we're not quite ready for the Quist wing of the GOP. If you doubt that, ask Brian Sullivan how his term in office is going. Or for that matter, Allen Quist.

I responded more or less like this:

I've met Allen Quist. Pat Awada is no Allen Quist.

For those of you from out of state - "Allen Quist" is a bedtime story Minnesota liberals tell their kids to scare them straight - a Christian Conservative who had a brief vogue in the early nineties; the GOP endorsed him for governor in 1992, and moderate extremist Arne Carlson ran and won the election as an unendorsed, independent Republican.

No, Pat Awada has aroused the ire of Minnesota's liberal elites; she's a woman, yet she's a conservative! She's not only a conservative - but she's been an extremely successful politician; she was elected mayor of Eagan in her late twenties, at a time when the DFL believed that it owned that demographic.

The DFL is spinning all the usual boogeymen against Awada - out-of-context recalls of remarks she made as mayor, painful race-baiting about her use of her maiden name during the election. (And the debate? Pfft. I've seen her tear liberals into long thin strips. Everyone has a bad night).

Here's what I think; Awada's the "bad cop", hoisting the trial balloon, running interference with her 41% LGA cut proposal. Pawlenty will seem "moderate" in turn, proposing a lower (but significant) cut.

By '06, with a rebounding economy, the budget crisis will be over, Pawlenty will be a hero, Awada will look like a visionary - the driver behind the winning strategery...

Is this blue-sky, wonky cloudbusting? Duh. I get to do that.

But I don't think it's that far-fetched - no more so than the notion that in 2003, 2/3 of Minnesota's government apparatus would be controlled by the GOP...

Posted by Mitch at February 13, 2003 04:56 PM