Melting Down

We had a great time talking with Saint Paul Mayor Randy Kelly on the NARN show at the fair yesterday.

I think we'll be talking to Mayor Kelly for another four years.

For starters, the Saint Paul DFL is...er, melting down over Kelly's independant endorsment of President Bush last year, acting like a bunch of fourth-graders, taking their toys and going home:

Party officers voted this week to nix an invitation Kielkopf extended to Kelly, even though he considers himself a supporter of former City Council Member and DFL endorsee Chris Coleman.

"I think the party that we're trying to build on the East Side should be a big-tent party and be open to people," Kielkopf says. "What does this tell all those Democrats that are going to vote for Mayor Kelly? That we don't want them? It just makes it that much harder."

If you're not from Saint Paul, the local DFL can be bewildering. The stereotype of the city party is the relentlessly sanctimonious, Volvo-driving, MPR-listening, free-range-Alpaca-wearing, Kathleen-Soliah-supporting, Wellstone-sign-in-yard-after-two-years-not-removin g, sixties-pining, politically-correct-to-a-fault frump. But the East Side DFL is a little more bumptious - the pro-union, pro-USA party that John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson might recognize.

So what is the City DFL telling the East Siders who support their guy Kelly?

My vote: "Shut up and think when we tell you to think".

The snub is a sign of how bitter the feelings seem to be over Kelly's independent ways. Last year, he barnstormed the state campaigning for Republican President Bush. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman were headliners at a Summit Avenue fundraiser for the mayor earlier this month.

The First Ringer - whose analysis should be the envy of the entire Twin Cities media - notes:

Angst among St. Paul’s liberal base is so deeply intertwined with the race that not one, but two attempts at forcing a recall of Kelly have been launched by a pair of identical twins, Dan and Dave Duddingston, who picketed Kelly’s bi-partisan fundraiser with lawnsigns reading ”Republican Randy.” If the Kelly/Coleman battle has become a theatre of the absurd, apparently we’ve found the comic relief.

Coleman, the Duddingston twins and others certainly have their right to be upset over Kelly’s presidential pick and in a city as overwhelming DFL as St. Paul, it’s an assumed winning position to flaunt one’s liberal credentials. Only St. Paul hasn’t elected an endorsed Democrat since the Berlin Wall was still standing and has elected fiscally moderate-to-conservative candidates including---gulp---one Republican [Technically, Norm Coleman was a Democrat both times he was elected - but that didn't last long - Ed.]. If purity was the only test for St. Paul voters, the other night’s debate could have been resolved with cutting the candidates to see who bled the bluest.

I wonder - when will the Saint Paul DFL figure it out? Saint Paul's stereotype is almost the same sort of caricature as Minneapolis' - but the fact is, there's a reservoir of common sense that has led the actual voters to tap fiscally-moderate, socially-conservative DFLers who either play to the GOP or actually eventually join it.

Posted by Mitch at August 28, 2005 07:52 AM | TrackBack