Zzzzz: Strib State Auditor Endorsements

The Strib doesn't break tradition, so much, by endrosing Pat Anderson for State Auditor. It merely observes pragmatism.

Pat Anderson's detractors say she's a Republican partisan and a self-promoter, but this strikes us as praising her with faint damns. The state auditor's office is by constitutional design an elected position, and by tradition a venue for generating publicity in quest of higher office (see: Arne Carlson, Mark Dayton, Judi Dutcher). Besides, Anderson seems to be doing the public's work rather well.

Her challengers say she has displayed poor judgment by employing a party executive as her deputy, and by issuing special reports on school funding and local government aids that aligned closely with the politics of Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

We tend to agree, but such objections don't offset an overall performance record and management skills that some reliable, neutral observers rate as quite good, really. Neither is her record offset by a personal style that surely ruffles the folks who put too high a premium on niceness.

In other words, "we expect people to use this office as a political platform.

They snub Rebecca Otto, for the stated reason that she...:

seems at least as partisan in her approach to the job. She has brief experience in the Legislature and some school-board service, and is centering her campaign on an irrelevant pledge to help lower property taxes.

...and the unstated reason - Otto is a a dirty-dealing party hack.

I'll "congratulate" Anderson on the endorsement in the same sense that I "congratulated" Nihilist in Golf Pants for winning the City Pages' "Best Conservative Blog" award.

Posted by Mitch at October 23, 2006 06:32 AM | TrackBack