Doug Fawn

A number of us NARN and MOB bloggers were wondering - what impact would Chris Coleman's relationship with Strib columnist Nick Coleman (he's a younger brother) have on the Strib's coverage of Saint Paul politics.

If
yesterday's Doug Grow column is any indication, the answer is "introduce a level of fawning we haven't seen since Tammany Hall owned some of the New York City dailies".

For all of our (utterly justifiable) bashing of Nick Coleman, Doug Grow probably qualifies as the local columnist who most reliably carries the DFL's water.

He wrote about last week's Saint Paul mayoral primary, in which mayor Randy Kelly polled about half of Chris Coleman's numbers. Kelly, a lifelong east side DFLer, endorsed George W. Bush on principle during the last presidential election.

Naturally to the likes of Grow, that means Kelly is subject to every yawping DFL stereotype about Republicans:

St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly is learning that money can't buy you love.

A little more than a year ago, Kelly announced he was endorsing President Bush. This was surprising, given that Kelly still proclaims he's a lifelong DFLer.

At the time, many people were wondering how Kelly was benefiting from the endorsement.

Kelly said this was about noble things. His endorsement, he wrote, was for "the greater good for my kids, my city and the nation."

Turns out, the endorsement didn't hurt his campaign treasury, either.

Cash from all over the country has poured into Kelly's campaign. Before Tuesday's primary, he had four times as much money as the DFL-endorsed candidate, Chris Coleman. He had 40 times as much loot as the Green Party's Elizabeth Dickinson.

All the mayor lacked was votes.

In Grow's special little world, it's all about that GOP money.

Never mind that a Republican, or an "out" conservative DFLer, in Saint Paul would need a trunkload of money to counteract the lockstep rule of the government and teachers unions, to say nothing of the local media. No, to Grow Republican=money=bad.

The man with the cash lost to Coleman by a nearly a 2-to-1 ratio. He managed to beat Dickinson by a mere 8 percentage points.

The incumbent didn't even win his home precinct.

Most saw this as a stunning slap -- at least until Kelly and members of his entourage started spinning. With straight faces they explained that the outcome was expected and predictable and no reflection of the mayor's popularity in St. Paul.

Gosh, go figure - politicians playing politics.

Make no mistake about it - Saint Paul is a city dominated, for worse or worse, by a form of Democrat party only slightly less addled than Minneapolis' - and they're angrier. They've had two straight conservative DFLers thumb their noses at their endorsement proces, and beat two straight endorsed (and hilariously liberal) DFL candidate at the polls. Norm Coleman did a spike and a dance in the end zone by becoming a Republican after his second election. Randy Kelly's endorsement, to the Saint Paul DFL faithful who take their Kool-Aid by IV, is worse.

So the DFL finally endorsed a putative moderate; among "progressive" circles in Saint Paul, Chris Coleman is regarded as no better than Randy Kelly, due to his association with the Chamber of Commerce.

But he's the DFL, dammit - so he gets a Doug Grow hagiography:

Laughing, Coleman said that he went to bed Tuesday night feeling pretty good about the outcome. It wasn't until he read the Kelly camp's version of the primary results that "I realized how badly I'd been beaten."

Disclosure time: Chris Coleman is the brother of my colleague Nick Coleman. Not only that, Nick is Chris' godfather.

"By the time they got to me," said Chris, the sixth of seven children, "they'd run out of aunts and uncles."

"I was 11 years old, sitting there watching 'Gumby' " said Nick, "and my dad came into the room and said, 'Hey you! You're the godfather.' "

These Gumby-watching Colemans are not related to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, a New Yorker by birth.

If the focus were any softer, the Colemans could pass for panda bears.

(Coleman's a New Yorker. In fact, most of the best Twin Citians come from somewhere else).

Chris Coleman is a rare candidate. He's not afraid to say he received votes from people who aren't so much charmed by him as disgusted by Kelly.

"He [Kelly] tried to say that this president is good for St. Paul," Coleman said. "Most people don't understand that."

Under Bush and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, St. Paul has lost millions of dollars for everything from police to schools, Coleman said.

In November, St. Paulites showed Kelly what they thought of his endorsement. They voted 3 to 1 for John Kerry.

Tuesday they showed they've neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Well, the city DFL certainly hasn't.

And Doug Grow is well within his character, acting as a flak for the party, wherever, whenever.

For example:

Stuart Alger is chairman of St. Paul's DFL. He said Kelly's flip-flop on the presidential race is what angers many.

"At first he said he wasn't going to endorse anybody," said Alger. "I think people were OK with that. Then he didn't just endorse [Bush], he started campaigning for him. It was a complete reversal."

It'd be out of character for Grow to tell the whole story; Kelly held off on giving his endorsement, and campaigned for Bush when he realized that the Saint Paul DFL had no sense of humor about apostates.

An organization, Recall Randy, sprang up in the days after Kelly endorsed Bush. The group wasn't successful in getting a recall election, but it never went away. These days, it's distributing signs that read: "Republican Randy, We Remember."We're not political people," said Laura Duddingston, a Recall Randy founder. "We feel like scorned people."Doug Grow apparently can't use Google. Or he can, and misspelled "Lara Duddingston". Or he misspelled it on purpose so people couldn't Google it themselves. Or he doesn't read Shot in the Dark. Lara Duddingston is "not political people" in the same sense that JB Doubltless is "not opinionated".

It wouldn't serve Doug Grow's purposes for you to know that, of course.

Duddingston says most people she speaks with are upset that Kelly continues to call himself a DFLer.

"He wouldn't endorse Senator Wellstone," said Duddingston. "He wouldn't endorse Walter Mondale [after Wellstone's death]. He wouldn't endorse Roger Moe. But he would endorse President Bush. At some point, you've got to say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck. Why can't he just be honest about it?"

Ask Doug Grow.

What was Kelly thinking when he embraced Bush?

Kelly's campaign office did not return repeated calls to answer the question.

But beyond Kelly's deep respect and adoration ["Adoration"? Note the wording - you just know Doug Grow believes respect of George W. Bush is not possible; the sarcastic "adoration" tells you all you need to know about the "depth" of Doug Grow's tongue in Chris Coleman's mouth analysis - Ed] of the president, it's reasonable to think there just might have been some political favors involved.

For example, at the time he endorsed the president, Kelly owed much politically to Norm Coleman, who had embraced Kelly's first race for mayor.

And the money has flowed into Kelly's coffers.

"But this race really isn't about money," said Chris Coleman. "If it was about money, we would have lost by as much as we won by."

Money can't buy you love.

And it sure can't buy you the sort of fawning, non-focus coverage that the trifecta - the Strib's open DFL partisanship, Doug Grow's flagrant DFL hackery, and the chummy association among the politician Coleman and the media hack Coleman - will get you.

Money can't buy you honesty, either. Not if you're a Twin Cities major media consumer.

Posted by Mitch at September 19, 2005 04:10 AM | TrackBack