Mary Franson wins her recount in House District 8B.

Franson, a freshman Republican from Alexandria, picked up one extra vote Thursday when Otter Tail County recounted its ballots. In the end, Franson had 4,799 votes in Otter Tail to Cunniff’s 3,790 votes.

Cunniff’s attorneys are challenging four of the ballots in Otter Tail County, and the campaigns also challenged one vote each in Douglas. But the combined challenges wouldn’t be enough to hand Cunniff the win in the state’s closest election of 2012.

This close win by Franson in a bad year for the MNGOP, and against one of the DFL’s  sleaziest campaigns in a year where the DFL buried the sleaze-o-meter, is good news; there are at least some parts of the state with a little sanity.

And it’s fascinating how little the vote counts actually swung in a recount run mostly be Republicans, isn’t it?

By the way – even though DFL candidate Bob Cunniff conceded yesterday, as the Strib notes…:

The recount results are unofficial until the state canvassing board meets on Dec. 4 at 1:30 p.m. There is also always a possiblity of a court challenge to the election results.

And given that trial lawyers are among the DFL’s main constituencies, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

But ’til then, congratulations Rep. Franson!

UPDATE:  John Gilmore echoes thoughts a lot of us agree with:

Last legislative session we didn’t have any leaders. In fact, we had anti-leaders. Morons. Incompetents.

Not even status quo: our new majority made things worse. They earned their minority status this election cycle but the better good of Minnesota did not.

Enter Mary Franson: new, naive, honest, sometimes bumbling. Extremely well spoken on the floor of the MN House of Representatives and off.

But wait! Can she navigate The Wedge? Tell the difference of quinoa from teff?

No and here’s hoping she never does. Would it be too post modern to take a field trip to Alexandria?

During the DFL-manufactured “Animals” fracas last spring, the GOP establishment couldn’t have shot Franson under the bus any faster if they’d loaded her into a wrist-rocket.

To paraphrase The Boss:  she’s still there, they’re all gone.  Well, some of them, anyway.

Do I even need to say it?

Nationwide, it was a 50-50 election, aided by a media that gave up most pretense of legitimacy to play praetorian guard, and a turnout machine that was, frankly,pretty flawless.

It wasn’t helped by Romney’s campaign’s epic technical bobble – putting all its swing-state GOTV efforts into a technical basket that hadn’t even been stress-tested, and which failed miserably under pressure on election day.

But we held the US House.  Unlike 2008, Obama at least has a speed bump or two in his way.

As to Minnesota – well, Katie bar the door.  I’d bet on a budget over $40 billion, and taxes to match.  I’d also bet that Minnesota companies accelerate pushing their blue-collar operations across the borders to North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Mexico and points west.   We’ll still have lots of Fortune 500 companies here, in the same way New York has a lot of them.  But the people who do the building, manufacturing, servicing, warehousing, planning, programming?  These jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.

The good news?  The Senate elected Dave Hann and some of his best Tea Party underclassmen to leadership – Dave Thompson, Roger Chamberlain and the like . The House leadership under Kurt Kaudt should be similarly aligned to – I hope, dear Lord, I hope – tell the DFL to go pound sand when they try to put a “bipartisan” veneer on their excesses.

After leaving this state with no significant tax hikes, a stable unemployment rate and no deficit, it should be a stark contrast with the state we see in two years.

…as in “Obama inherited all of Bush’s problems”, let’s make sure we’re clear on what the new DFL majority is going to inherit.

• No deficit – indeed, likely a small surplus, when the next forecast comes in.  Yep, accounting gimmicks, K-12 shift, yadda yadda, got it.  Still, it’s not “$6.6 Billion”.  Remember that?
• Low unemployment – among the lowest of any non-North-Dakotan state in the nation.

Place your best on where we’ll be in 2014.

Hey, it’s not just Republicans who blow each other up!

Awkward: Governor Dayton v. MN DFL

Flames that warm the heart.

I think this is going to be a humdinger of an election.  Alongside my predictions from this morning – GOP holds both chambers of the Legislature – I think Chip Cravaack will stave off Rick Nolan, setting the stage for what could be an epic realignment in Minnesota politics.

Beyond that?  I think Lee Byberg has laid the groundwork for what could be – let’s be conservative, here – a result that is unexpectedly good, and disconcerting for Collin Peterson.  And I think it would have happened even without his improvident slander of pro-lifers.

And while I think it’ll take a complete economic collapse and mass civil disorder to make Minneapolis anything but a DFL playground, I think Chris Fields is going to surprise people with his results on November 7.  He’s run a masterful campaign; in a just world, there would be no contest; in a district that wasn’t a one-party thug-ocracy, the statesmanly Fields would make short work of the whiny, petulant Ellison.

As to the 4th CD?

Here’s where we need your help.

Redistricting shaved Betty McCollum’s advantage down, but it didn’t gut it.  The 4th Congressional District was as blue as the Oceana Ministry of Truth’s uniforms before redistricting, of course; and it absorbed a lot of purple territory in Stillwater and Woodbury (as well as a few bright-red districts full of Real Americans up in Grant Township).

Which is a huge improvement, don’t get me wrong.

And so Tony Hernandez has been fighting this campaign to win.  And along with that, there’s been a solid effort by a lot  of candidates at the legislative level.  I think we’ve got a solid shot at four or five new seats in the legislature, either flips or open seats, as well as defending the seats we already do have.

And – this is huge – I think Blake Huffman, Dennis Dunnigan and Sue Jeffers have a solid shot at getting on the Ramsey County Commission.  And if that happens, the Ramco Commission will have a conservative majority!

If there’s a habit from the Old Fourth that we need to put to rest, it’s the idea that Saint Paul and Ramsey County Republicans only turn out when they think it matters – competitive Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races.  The media has done a painstaking, and fraudulent, job of trying to convince them that the Presidential and Senate races are foregone conclusions; they do it to try to convince Republicans not to show up at the polls.

This is where you come in.

The Hernandez Campaign is organizing a phone bank – along with several other campaigns and BPOUs in the 4th CD – to Get Out The Vote, starting tonight and running up until the election.

And we need people to sign up by clicking here and picking a time

Whether you’re a Paleocon, a Neocon, a Ronulan, a LIbertarian, or even an old-school Eastside Kennedy Democrat who’s had enough of the current regime, this is your chance to help convince people that this election makes a difference, and to help cajole them to the polls.

The fact is, Romney has a chance.  Tony Hernandez has a shot at shocking the world – perhaps by winning, perhaps by showing the state that the Fourth is not a safe sinecure and convincing Betty that a nice cushy six-figure gig with a non-profit is a lot less work in 2014.  And if we stick the landing on all five (or more!) of the legislative opportunities and the Ramco Commission, this will have an immediate and lasting effect on politics at the state level.  .

Wednesday, I gave my seat-by-seat picks for the Minnesota House.  Yesterday, I took a shot at the Senate.

Today?  We wrap everything up into what pass for my “predictions” for this race, with thanks to Tony Petrangelo at Left MN, whose district-by-district ratings provided the food for thought that led to this particular bit of rhetorical meringue pie.

Disclaimers:

• I claim no scientific methodology behind my picks.  Their rationales vary – from word on the ground in various districts to gut feelings about others
• I also put no personal weight behind them
• Please do not wager actual money base on these predictions

However, while I admit the pure subjectiveness of this exercise, there’s method to the madness.  While Petrangelo, in his original exercise on the subject, noted that he’d kept his race-by-race rating entirely tied to empirical measures like money raised and voting history, there are some other currents involved that led me to make some of my predictions that deviate from Petrangelo’s conclusions:

• Redistricting invalidated a certain amount of history, or at least put an asterisk by it. 
• Some campaigns are running very strong, aggressive races in districts where, historically, their party has not in the past.  History would show a lack of results for the party that this election, I think, may belie. 

But of course, there’s no such thing as a “toss-up” in real-world elections. Those “toss-up” votes have to go somewhere. Petrangelo rated many more districts “toss-ups” than I do. I rated – very possibly erroneously – a number of districts as leaners or likelies, but with others, there was just no obvious way to make the call.

So how do the “toss-ups” break out?

While I thought of simply dividing them up according to the current enthusiasm gap, that’d just be wishful thinking; I already accounted for that, to some extent, in the races I converted from “Toss-ups” in Petrangelo’s ratings to “leaners” in my own.

So I’ll try three different approaches, and pick one at the end:

• Best Case:  This turns into a Romney wave that sweeps into Minnesota.  I’ll say 75% of the current “toss-ups” go GOP.
• Middle Case:  The toss-ups split; in addition, I’ll assume that 20% of the toss-ups that I converted to “lean GOP” will go DFL
• Worst Case:  All the toss-ups go DFL. (I’ll leave my conversions in place to provide an arbitrary fudge factor, since the “all DFL” scenario seems unlikely).

I’m going to take my middle case, and fudge the GOP numbers down one.  Just because.

That makes my prediction:

• Senate: 35 GOP / 32 DFL
• House:  70 GOP / 64 DFL

It’s unscientific.  Heck, it barely qualifies as free verse.

But I’ll run with it.

Yesterday, we teed up with the House.

Today – using Tony Petrangelo’s district by district ratings as a jumping off point – I’ll take my whack at the Senate.

As noted yesterday, my predictions are largely – but not purely – subjective.  That being said, my subjective predictions, when they’re not woefully off (Mark Kennedy in 2006) are usually pretty dead-on (I nailed the 2004 presidential election within eight electoral votes).

As always, you get what you pay for.

Tomorrow, the breakdown for the next round in the Legislature.

While the “Left MN” blog seems to be a re-boot of the late, demented but unlamented “Cucking Stool”, the site’s associate blogger Tony Petrangelo is one of those rare Minnesota leftybloggers who ought not be under police surveillance – a compliment I give rarely (becaiuse it’s rarely deserved).  Over the years, he’s written some excellent stuff about polling, redistricting, and the mechanics of politics.

And this past week, he’s been releasing a set of predictions for the MN House and Senate.  He’s done this before, by the way:

This is my second time doing race ratings of Minnesota legislative elections, the first time being in 2010. Here are links to my Senate ratings and House ratings from that cycle. I used a Safe/Tilt/Toss-up ratings scale and prior to the election I rated the Senate seats as 31 total DFL seats (Safe+Tilt), 19 total GOP seats and 17 Toss-ups.

The GOP won all 19 seats I had them winning. They also won every single race I had listed as a toss-up. They also won a race I had listed as Tilt DFL, the Don Betzold – Pam Wolf race. Clearly 2010 was a wave year for the GOP.

Still, as Petrangelo notes, it was a game effort:

That said, I don’t think my ratings did particularly bad especially since there was no sort of adjustment incorporated to account for the broader political context of the election.

We’ll come back to that.

As with my previous foray into race ratings I’ve kept this years version to an entirely numbers based exercise. Meaning at no point is a race rating the way it is because I made a subjective judgement about the quality of a candidate.

There’s some more methodology talk in there, which you should oughtta read, because it’s useful stuff and I don’t disagree with any of it.

Which is notable, in that my own ratings below are largely the opposite.

Well, not entirely; in many, maybe most cases, I agree with Petrangelo.  In many others, I made a different prediction because of some qualitative aspect to the race that isn’t readily apparent in the empirical numbers Petrangelo used.  A race held after a redistricting is going to toss a lot of those empirical measures up in the air – as will a wave election (as Petrangelo discovered in 2010).  While this may not be a wave year, there’s a dynamic at work that I think will affect a lot of these races.

I’ll do the House of Representatives first.  I’ll include the House District, the DFLer, the GOPer, Petrangelo’s rating, and mine; if mine differ from Petrangelo’s they’ll be in bold.

Senate tomorrow!

The by-no-means-right-of-center Saint Cloud Times endorsed our old friend King Banaian in his re-election bid in Saint Cloud:

 Given an effective first term, Banaian deserves re-election. He authored the Sunset Commission law and helped college students with textbook prices. His expertise in economics also is a strength.

They also acknowledge that the district is full of government clients who would happily sell the state as whole down the river for extra bread and circuses for state employees:

DFL challenger Zach Dorholt presents a formidable challenge in large part because Banaian’s allegiance to hardline GOP fiscal and business principles might not sell well in a district that’s home to a public university and many public-sector employees.

The paper’s right – King won by 10 votes after a recount, down from a couple dozen on election night, in 2010 – but redistricting was, by most accounts, kind to King.  While some commentators call this race a toss-up, I think that between redistricting and the fact that Obama will have all the coattails of a hunting vest, King will start to pull away this round.

How do you measure success in a politician?

If you’re a liberal, it’s likely in terms of sheer volume of legislation created and money moved about.  Because to a liberal, government is about creating reams of paper, rules, laws, stuff for government to do.

If you’re a conservative, it’s probably more a matter of princple; of getting government out of the way, of taking pointless laws and needless regulations off the books.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Mike McFeely is a talk show host in Fargo.  He’s the current house liberal at KFGO, which was at one time the WCCO of the Fargo area, and like WCCO has shrunk greatly since its heyday (and since I left North Dakota).  He fills the role Fast Eddie Schultz used to play on the station, the token lefty.  Like Schultz, he’s apparently a former small-market sportscaster; like Schultz, he sounds like it.

And like a lot of liberal D-list pundits and pseudo-celebs, he’s got a jones for Mary Franson, GOP incumbent in District 8B and, like most uppity female and minority conservatives, the same sort of catnip for lefties that Michele Bachmann has been for the past decade and a half.  It started  a few weeks ago, with McFeely’s Schultz-like chanting of rumors that even some of the smarter regional leftyblogs long ago debunked.  McFeely came across in that case as a small-town crone abusing the “power” of his radio bully pulpit (and as much as KFGO has atrophied, it’s still not chicken feed)

I’ll give the guy kudos for at least trying to go legit in this letter to the editor in the East Otter Tail County Focus last week.

Rep. Mary Franson does not represent Greater Minnesota values and, by her own admission, will not have a strong voice for her constituents in House District 8B if she is re-elected.

Now, whenever a critic says their target has said something “by their own admission”, you can usually be pretty sure someone’s trying to play a rhetorical card trick; they admitted nothing of the sort.

While Rep. Franson has made embarrassing headlines nationally and statewide for, among other things, comparing her constituents who receive food assistance to wild animals (a claim she repeated even after “apologizing” for it on social media)

Now, when you’re a sportscaster, you can pretty much babble any kind of crap you want – because it’s just sports.  McFeely – like Schultz before him – seems to think politics is about the same.

But no – the smart people dispensed with that meme, too, and months ago; Franson pointed out, correctly, that long-term dependence dehumanizes people, and casts government in the role of the benevolent, responsible pet owner.   The remarks were taken out of context during a fractious session by a DFL noise machine that exists only to provide grist for their campaign mill.

And like a lot of D-list talk show hosts – and yes, my NARN pals and I are better than this – McFeely and “context” are never really on good terms:

At the event during which she repeated her comparison of assistance recipients to wild animals, Rep. Franson admitted that members of her own party did not support her and distanced themselves from her.

Yep.  During the “Animals” fracas, the House leadership shamefully backed away from Franson – one of several “ready fire aim” moments in a trying session for GOPers.

But teapot-tempests come and go; at the end of the day, always, “it’s the economy, stupid”.  McFeely takes a brisk dip into actual fact:

Despite low unemployment in Douglas and Todd counties

Wait – back up.  This Republican corner of the state is doing pretty well, you say?

Huh.

So let’s take a quick breather and set up some actual, factual history:  Representative Franson was…:

1. …elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 on a conservative ticket…
2. …to represent a traditionally conservative Republican part of the state…
3. …that’s doing relatively well, and apparently – by dint of having sent a conservative freshman legislator to the legislature in the middle of a grueling recession – wants to keep it that way.

Just so we’ve got that straight.

McFeely:

Instead of spending time in St. Paul fighting for issues specific to her constituents – such as lowering property taxes for farms and small businesses in rural Minnesota – Rep. Franson spent her two years in the Legislature authoring bills that accomplished nothing.

Perhaps McFeely would favor us by showing us the bill where Franson raised – or declined to lower – property taxes.

Go ahead, Mike, We’ll wait.  Cough up that bill.

[Mr. McFeely – don’t look at this next statement.  Scout’s honor?  OK – all the rest of you know that property taxes are the role of county commissions and city councils.  The legislature doesn’t set property taxes.  Now, the Democrats have spent the last two years babbling about how lowering Local Government Aid inevitably raises property taxes.  McFeely would have you believe that on Franson’s watch, taxes rose as a direct, cause-and-effect consequence of lowered LGA.  It’s one of those chanting points the left throws out there to gull the ill-informed.  But, again, that’s the job of the counties and cities.  Assuming LGA was cut.  Was it?  We’ll come back to that – but I’ll give you a little spoiler; McFeely makes Ed Schultz look smart and ethical].

Got that bill, Mike?  Hint:  It’s between the snipes and the half-round squares.

———-

Next, McFeely botches history – and by “botch”, let’s be charitable and assume he just doesn’t know the actual facts involved; if he does, then he’s just lying:

In her two years in St. Paul, Rep. Franson authored 36 bills. None became law. Very few were even discussed or forwarded. Even her own party wasn’t interested in the agenda Rep. Franson was trying to push. That is the definition of an ineffective legislator.

Wait – authoring laws that don’t get passed “defines” “ineffective?”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the post; conservatives don’t believe generating new laws defines success.

But let’s go by the left’s – and McFeely’s – definition of “effectiveness”.  None of Franson’s 36 bills passed into law.

Which is exactly the same record as House Minority Leader Paul Thissen; none of the two bills he authored passed into law, either!

Or how about a more rank-and-file member?  Ryan “The Intellectual Id Of The DFL Caucus” Winkler chief-authored 22 bills.  None passed; none even came close.

And do you know what?  Neither Thissen’s 0/2, Winkler’s 0/22 or Fransen’s 0/36 are even below average – because in a typical session (for example, 2008, the latest one with statistics) over 4,000 bills are introduced, and around 100 get signed.  That’s about 1 out of 40.

In other words, McFeely tossed out a number that is in itself meaningless without context.  Just like the “Animals” comment and his “property taxes” comment; either he doesn’t know what he’s taking about and doesn’t care, or he does and he’s hoping nobody checks his facts.  Like all Democrat campaigns, he – and by extension, the Cunniff campaign that McFeely is supporting – is hoping people aren’t curious enough to poke at those numbers.

Oh, we’re not done.

———-

McFeely turns next from misleading context to just-plain-ignorance:

At the same time, Rep. Franson consistently voted to raise taxes on residents of Greater Minnesota. She supported elimination of the Market Value Homestead Credit, raising property taxes on all Minnesotans and particularly those in rural Minnesota.

MVHC was a subsidy of metro-area housing; it kept metro-area property taxes artificially low, and subsidized spending by the wastrel DFL governments in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.  Like LGA itself, it transferred money from the parts of the state that support themselves to our basket-case metro areas.

But at least that was a chanting point with a coherent argument.  Next, McFeely wafts away into fantasy-land:

Rep. Franson sided with metropolitan legislators by failing to fight for an increase in Local Government Aid, a tool that provides property tax relief primarily for Greater Minnesota cities and towns.

Local Government Aid, as we’ve discussed in the past, was originally a way to transfer money to poor, outstate towns from the wealthy Metro, to allow them to buy some of the amenities of modern life; modern schools, roads, water treatment plants and the like.  It’s turned into a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth (although Iron Range towns get the most aid per capita).

(And while McFeely doesn’t name, and I suspect doesn’t know, the “metropolital legislators” with whom he claims Franson sided, it’s worth noting that the Metro is divided between cities that are constantly begging for more aid, and suburbs that largely receive none).

The GOP ran in 2010 on a platform of returning LGA to its original purpose – supporting smaller towns that don’t have the tax base to buy the necessities of modern government. And how’d that work?

State funding for LGA has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years and has remained flat since 2010.  Eliminating or reducing LGA will seriously weaken regional centers like Alexandria and small cities like New York Mills.

McFeely gives a statewide number – but since McFeely’s writing about Franson’s performance in re her district, 8B, let’s ask what are the district’s specifics?

Let’s track LGA payments in 2008 and 2011 – payments, not pledges – for the three counties in Rep. Franson’s district, as well as the state averages and the metro areas (measured in per-capita dollars actually paid to the various jurisdictions).  All figures come from that noted conservative tool, the State of Minnesota:

Ah.  So that’s why McFeely gave a statewide number!  Because since 2008 – the only period Rep. Franson had any control over as a legislator – LGA actually rose in Otter Tail and Todd counties; it shrank by an insignificant amount in Douglas County, where Alexandria is. and where as McFeely himself admitted, the economy is doing better than the state average.

So if you’re a liberal?  District 8B’s LGA was steady to slightly up.  More money!  Franson was effective!

And if you’re a conservative?  LGA spending in the district was in line with the GOP’s platform, raising payments to smaller out-of-state jurisdictions that actually need it, and were the original intended target of this spending.  Franson was still effective!

And if you have a functioning BS detector?  Mike McFeely is out of his depth writing about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball, and is serving as a trained chimp reciting DFL chanting points he may not understand, and certainly hopes you, the voter in District 8B, won’t.

Like the following:

Under her watch, property taxes have risen sharply…

Although, as the state’s figures show, not because of anything the legislature did, least of all in District 8B.

…while she has embarrassed her constituents with controversial national headlines.

Which were cowardly manglings of context by people who are getting more and more desperate at their prospects in two weeks, and for whom female conservatives are like red capes in front of bulls.

Franson did get an 86 from the Taxpayers League, among many other spiffs from conservative groups.  She was one of the freshmen “Tea Party” class that held the line on things like spending, tax hikes, and giving money to Zygi Wilf, while erasing the deficit, reforming regulations, keeping Minnesota’s unemployment rate way below the national average, and working to reform our state’s business climate.

In short, she did what the majority of (pre-redistricting) District 11B’s voters – mostly Republican, mostly conservative – sent her to do.

And if this is how desperate her opponent, Bob Cunniff, and his campaign are getting, it looks like she’ll do the same for new district 8B.

And if you live in the area, feel free to let the East Otter Tail Focus – and Mike McFeely – know I said so.

———-

So we started the article by asking how you measure a politician.  The answer – whether you’re left or right – most likely involves doing what one is sent to the Capitol to do.  Has Mary Franson done this?  That’s for the people in her district – not talking heads from Fargo or the Twin Cities – to decide.

So how about a media figure, an uninvited pundit?

Getting one’s facts straight, or at least being honest, would be a great start.

We spoke with Terry Jacobson, who’s running for MN House in HD49B, and Keith Downey, running for Senate in SD49.

And join us tomorrow or the 56 Club’s cruise on the St. Croix!

We’ve had two stories in the past few weeks about traditionally-DFL sinecures softening up, bit by bit.

The first was yesterday; Aaron Brown notes that HD6B – the post-redistricting home of Iron-Range DFL political statue Tom Rukavina – has seen the local paper endorse the Republican challenger, nurse and political newcomer Jason Colangelo, over career DFL/union Jason Metsa:

Aaron “Minnesota” Brown:

In all likelihood, this race will fall easily to Metsa.

But I’m going to keep an eye on 6B because Colangelo has done well in winning over some notable support thus far…Last week he received a remarkably enthusiastic endorsement from the Duluth News Tribune and I predict that editor Bill Hanna is cooking up an epic Mesabi Daily News endorsement for Colangelo after the MDN bludgeoned Metsa before his August primary win over Lorrie Janatopoulos.

Colangelo might be green, but he is following a playbook that I’ve always considered the GOP’s best chance on the Range — unabashedly pro-union, some fairly reasonable ideas for an expanded Range economy, all while preserving the GOP base on social issues. Enough to win? Not likely this year, but if Colangelo “beats the spread” on this one we could a more competitive challenge from him in the future, provided he can handle the heat of increased scrutiny.

This, in “normal” times in Minnesota, is unthinkable.

But these aren’t normal times.  Brown:

But if Rep. Chip Cravaack’s attempt to turn the Range GOP red with a tent revival of mining politics works, watch out here.

And there are rumors filtering down from the Range that Cravaack’s strategy is hitting paydirt in some unexpected places.

More as those rumors get more substantial.

More at noon.

If you’re in Saint Paul this evening, stop by the Hernandez for Congress Taco Fiesta, from 5-8PM.

It’s at 2028 Dayton Avenue in Saint Paul:

View Larger Map

Come on over! Suggested donation is $30 – or feed the whole family for $40!

…that while everyone knows Mary Franson (GOP HD8B) supports the Marriage Amendment…

…that her opponent, retired school teacher and endorsed DFL challenger for the seat Bob Cunniff, hasn’t made his opinion on this bill public yet.  His website and facebook page are silent on the subject.

Just in the interest of free inquiry, it might be good for people to ask Mr. Cunniff what he thinks about this intensely fractious issue.

(Or try to.  His campaign website includes no way of contacting the campaign or the candidate, other than the ‘Volunteer!” page.  You might have to persevere a bit).

If you get an answer, by all means leave a note in the comments.

UPDATE:  Welp, here’;s a real profile in courage (via commenter Jay McCue):

He winds up and gives that issue a 55-yard kick down the road.  “It’s up to the voters”.  Right, that’s correct.  But how do you stand on it?

On paper, the Minnesota Third Congressional District is “purple”.  And by “on paper”, I mean “In the Strib“.

Yes, for decades the district was represented by moderate, IR-era Republicans like Jim Ramstad, Bill Frenzel and Clark McGregor.

And Erik Paulsen has had to work with a lot of different constituencies to win in the Third; he’s done it by showing ample respect to the parts of his district that aren’t, perhaps, solidly GOP – places like Brooklyn Park, Edina and Bloomington…

The MN 3rd Congressional District

…even as he’s worked hard in conservative strongholds like Maple Grove.

And it’s worked.  Paulsen beat Ashwin Madia by something like eight points to succeed Ramstad in 2008 – a lousy year for Republicans – and destroyed Jim Meffert in 2010 by over twenty.

This year’s DFL candidate is  Brian Barnes.  We’ve talked about Barnes before; he claimed the Minnesota police unions were “extreme right-wing” (they’ve endorsed Amy Klobuchar) and his campaign misrepresented Representative Paulsen’s position on a controversial bill.

So far, Barnes’ campaign has “opportunities for improvement” – even compared with the non-entity Meffert, to say nothing of fhe relatively savvy Madia bid.

More bizarre, perhaps, have been some of his back-office choices.

We’ll come back to that.

——————

If you come to the big city from rural America, you get used to the cool city kids sniffing down their noses at you.

And so seeing a tweet like this (which has since apparently been deleted from Twitter)?

@JenE4rmTheBlock
Small town ppl seem to not understand how the real world works
8/31/12 7:54 PM

Pretty run of the mill provincialism – right?

Sure, why not?

Now, how about this one?

This I’d be more prone to call “bigotry” – pretending to know the hearts and souls of people she’s apparently decided to disparage, or just filling in her own stereotypes, based on perhaps the least dispositive trait a person can have; where they live.

Of course, it’s Twitter.  And if there’s a medium with a lower barrier of entry than blogs, it’s Twitter.  The format lends itself to breezy generalization and letting out one’s inner douchebag.  I’ll cop to it; it sometimes brings out the worst in me, too.

But if you’re a candidate running for office in a district that includes towns like St. Michael,  Loretto, Albertville, Rockford and other exurban holdouts as well as burbs like Edina, Bloomington, Minnetonka and the like, you might think it’d be bad form to  employ someone who practices active bigotry toward a big, poitically-active chunk of your constituency.

But Barnes does.  This is “JenE4rmTheBlock”‘s business card:

(I’m not going to post the Instagram link to the photo under the same name as the Twitter feed. It includes an email and what appears to be a personal phone number. If someone wants to claim “it’s not teh same person” by way of trying to impugn the story, I’ve got it. It’s her).

But I’m not doing this to kick dirt on Ms. “4rmTheBlock”.  This is aimed squarely at Brian Barnes. campaign

Candidate Barnes:  is it your position that the people of Saint Bonifacius or Luverne “don’t get how the world works”, or that the folks in Minnetonka, Maple Grove and Bloomington are “Racists” and ‘Homophobes?”   Your “political organizer” has just insulted two groups of people who, together, make up roughly 100% of the district you’re running for.

Does this seem like a good campaign plan?

———-

So we’ve got editing problems, some magical invisible freebie polling, and a “Free-spirited” staff.  What else could go wrong with Barnes’ campaign?

More tomorrow.

Pat Hall is running for Senate in Senate District 57. Here’s his website.

No huge surprises in the primaries yesterday – at least not at the polls.

But the big news in my book?  The Strib’s poison-pen endorsements went 1 out of 3, with an asterisk on that “1”.

In the northeast subs, Karin Housley beat Eric Langness despite getting a snide, snotty, insincere little pseudo-endorsement from the Strib that served mostly as a free ad for the DFL candidate, wannabe professional politician Julie Bunn.   Hopefully Housley will go on to earn much tut-tutting from the Strib’s editorial board (or, let’s be honest, Lori Sturdevant, who seems to set the board’s political barometer).

But it was in the western subs that the Strib truly came a’cropper.

In HD33B, Tea Party activists (“community organizer”? Hmmm) Cindy Pugh pummeled career Representative Steve Smith by more than 2:1 – notwithstanding that the Strib gave Smith a glowing endorsement.  Glowing – but hardly surprising; while Smith had a few conservative issues (he was a solid Second Amendment supporter and had a Taxpayers League scorecard not too out of line with many GOP leaders), the DFL could count on him to vex the conservative caucus on some key issues.  That, of course, is why the Strib endorsed him.

That race was never really in doubt; Pugh had a huge lead from time the first returns came in.

The nail-biter came in Senate District 33.  Connie Doepke – the former Representative who decided to buck the SD33 Republicans’ endorsement of Dave Osmek – jumped out to an early lead, which became the only real cliff-hanger of the evening.  With every wave of precincts that came in, Osmek whittled away at Doepke’s lead, until close to 11PM, when with three precincts to go Osmek took the lead.  The final margin was 107 votes in favor of Osmek.

As Buckley once said, you should vote for the most conservative candidate who can win.  Both Pugh and Osmek are running in a district that is solidly Republican – something like plus 22, if I recall correctly.  I suspect they’ll both win comfortably.

Housley faces a tougher race; the northeast subs of Saint Paul are just about neutral, and the media will be out to try to re-install Bunn.  Housley will need some help.

It’s 8PM as I write this, and I’ll be covering the primary here and over on Twitter.

8:05:  Just waiting for results at the SOS website.  And waiting.

8:07:  And waiting.

8:12:  And waiting.

8:15:  And finally a result.  Sort of.  Lyle Koenen has two votes over Larry Rice in SD17.  That is two, as in 2 votes.  For the privilege of getting clobbered by Joe Gimse this fall.

8:23:  14 vote lead for Connie Doepke in SD33 with about 4% reporting.  Gonna be a long night.

8:30:  With about 10% of the votes in, Cindy Pugh beating Steve Smith 2:1 or more.

8:40:  No votes in from CD8 yet.  CD1 has 4% in, Alan Quist up by about ten.

9:07:  Big surge of votes for Osmek in SD33; he went from a five point deficit to well under a point.  Fingers crossed.   Pugh WAY up.

9:26:  Pugh’s been called the winner in HD33B.  She hammered Steve Smith by better than 2:1.  The west is red!  At the moment,with a little over 20% reporting, Osmek is behind by 35 votes.  He’s been picking up ground all evening (for the last hour and a half, anyway).

9:54: Cliff-hanger time.  Three precincts to go in SD33, Osmek behind by 12 votes.  He’s been gaining a few votes with every precinct all night; will he pull this out?  And will Doepke go for the recount if he does?  Looks like Quist is going to tip Parry.

10:36:  Still waiting on those last three precincts.  Going to bed.  This liveblog is over.  Good luck, Dave!

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance has released its candidate scorecard.

Be advised that anyone that didn’t return their scorecard gets an “F*”, based on the assumption that people who don’t return questionnaires are trying to hide their sentiments until after election time.  I think that may have been a fair assumption ten years ago; In the case of many Republican candidates – for instances, District 65’s Senate and both House candidates – I think it’s more a matter of pro-gun libertarians not wanting to hand the DFL another cheap chanting point in a tough area.

And let’s give credit where it’s due; while I’ve railed against Steve Smith’s record in many areas, he’s been a solid Second Amendment vote, although I don’t see Cindy Pugh being any less a supporter.

At any rate, there you go.  Vote accordingly.

The other day, my friend and moderate alt-media gadfly Marty Owings left a note in the  comment section of my original post on Steve Smith to dispute my notion that Rep. Steve Smith is a “RINO”.  (Similarly, I got a few emails from Republcans – and yes, conservatives – saying that I was unfair to Connie Doepke – or at least about her political record.  I’ve found few defenders of her apparent potemkin endorsement from Erik Paulsen).

As a former boss of mine used to say, “From Salt Lake City, “Way out East” is Denver”.  People bring different perspectives to the table; it’s a fair point that Smith had a Taxpayers League rating similar to Kurt Zellers’ (and it’s ‘fair to point out that an awful lot of fiscal conservatives’ TPL ratings were lower than you’d think they’d be).

Still, I do go with Buckley’s commandment – vote for the most conservative candidate who can win (or do so if you live in SD33 or HD33B, which I do not).

Is there any question that Cindy Pugh is more conservative than Smith?  There was no doubt before – and there’s less doubt after reading the GOP’s release yesterday about Smith:

St. Paul – Earlier this week, the Republican Party of Minnesota asked what Steve Smith was hiding by not submitting his 15th day pre-primary report to the Campaign Finance Board. Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Pat Shortridge issued the following statement regarding campaign contributions received by Steve Smith:

“There is serious concern about Steve Smith’s priorities and voting record in St. Paul. Instead of fighting for our conservative principles, Smith’s voting record has gained the backing of union bosses. That’s not surprising given that, according to a new non-partisan study, Smith voted in the interest of taxpayers barely half the time.

“While Smith has ignored the law and refused to file his Campaign Finance Report, which costs him $50 per day in late filing fees and could trigger future civil penalties, GOP voters can gain some understanding of who is funding his campaign by looking at his 24-hour notices.

“He has received $500 from SEIU, $500 from Laborers District Council of Minnesota and North Dakota, and $500 from Minneapolis Municipal Retirement Association, a clear sign that union bosses in St. Paul are trying to buy the Republican primary for their handpicked candidate.

“Smith failed to fight for conservative legislation in St. Paul and thus, failed to secure the Republican endorsement. Now, he is deceiving voters by not releasing his fundraising numbers and allowing the voting public a clear picture of his priorities. He should follow the law, file his report, and let voters evaluate who’s funding his campaign.”

If the GOP’s charges are true – and I do in fact solicit any response from Smith’s campaign or defenders if it’s not – then that answers that “is Pugh more conservative” bit.

And it’s clear if Pugh wins the primary, she’ll win the election.

As we’ve discussed earlier, the Star Tribune has two goals in its “Endorsement” process:

1. Promote the DFL.  At the least, an endorsement is free advertising.  Beyond that?   It gulls the gullible.
2. Ensure that whatever GOP does get elected causes the DFL as little trouble as possible.  It’s why all and sundry among their columnists, except Katherine Kersten, constantly harken back to the bad old days, when the GOP was basically the DFL with better suits.

Rep. Steve Smith of the southwest ‘burbs is at best a “moderate” Republican, conservative only only law-and-order issues, and would give “RINOs” a bad name on most other topics – or, as the Strib puts it, “thoughtful and pragmatic”.

And that’s the least of his problems. Talk with any mainstream conservative Republican in the legislature about Smith and you get a lot of head-shaking, eye-rolling and “Oof-da”-ing.  From the partisan to the political to the personal, Representative Smith is reportedly a poster child for the downside of life as a professional politician.

But he’s not even a speed bump for the DFL on most issues. and that means “Strib Heart Smith“:

Or as the Strib – and I have it on fair authority that Lori Sturdevant wrote this one too – puts it:

To function well, the perennially divided Legislature needs mavericks — independent-minded centrists willing to occupy the battle-scarred ground between the two parties and to stretch in both directions to strike deals.

But only so long as they stretch to the left.

Seriously – you’ll look long and in vain for similar praise for DFLers who inch to the right.  Partly because the DFL excises them from the party like they’re tumors (See Norm Coleman, Randy Kelly, Jerry Blakey, John Harrington).  Partly because to the Strib Editorial Board, sticking to one’s guns goes by two names; “populist pugnacity!” on the left, “partisan extremism” on the right.

Smith, naturally, “stretches” obligingly and solely to the left:

For 22 years, state Rep. Steve Smith, 62, a family law attorney [we’ll come back to that] from Mound, has played that difficult and increasingly lonely role. He gets our nod on that basis over Southwest Metro Tea Party founder Cindy Pugh of Chanhassen, who has party endorsement.

Not just party endorsement – like Dave Osmek, she had overwhelming party endorsement.

Which is yet another reason the Strib is endorsing Smith – to do its bit to undercut the GOP – a goal at which Smith is a reliable ally:

Unlike most Republicans, Smith is allied with organized labor — eight unions had endorsed him as of late last week. He opposes the same-sex-marriage ban that most Republican legislators voted to put before the voters this year. He voted for the stadium bill; Pugh says she would have voted no.

On vote after vote after vote, Smith tossed the caucus, and a Republican mainstream that has moved to the right over his decades of incumbency, under the bus – to the point where the caucus finally had to do something:

Speaker Kurt Zellers broke with customary practice two weeks ago by endorsing Pugh over his caucusmate Smith. After the 2011 session, amid rumors about Smith’s relationship with a female staffer (he is divorced), Zellers stripped Smith of the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Policy and Finance Committee. (The woman in question no longer works for the House.)

Want double standards?  The Strib’s got ’em!:

By comparison, Pugh, 55, a former general manager of Dayton’s in St. Paul, is an energetic, personable apostle of free-market conservatism….By her own admission, if District 33B voters send Pugh to the Capitol next January, she’ll have a lot to learn.

Pugh is a successful businesswoman, and a key organizer of a political movement, the Southwest Metro Tea Party, that has been turning the formerly “purple” Third CD redder and redder by the year for for the past three years.  She is a dynamo.  Like many of the recent conservative “Tea Party” class of current legislators, she’s got a lifetime of real accomplishments outside of politics.  While the Strib may well prefer someone who’s spent an adult lifetime growing roots in the Capitol, one suspects the voters are getting smarter.

And I did mention double standards, right?  You’ll scour the Strib in vain for any patronizing references to the inexperience of, say, Carly Melin, a 25 year old DFL drone-ette whom the DFL trucked straight from Hamline Law School in Saint Paul to the Iron Range just in time to meet the residency requirements, for an insta-endorsement and perfunctory election to the House, notwithstanding the fact that she had no useful experience at anything, much less politics.

If they send Smith, he’ll have a different set of challenges.

He’ll have the kind of challenges that, were he a conservative like Tom Hackbarth, would have gotten obsessive coverage in the Strib.

We hope voters give him a chance to overcome them. Legislative mavericks are in grievously short supply.

No, we’ve got mavericks; a majority of them in both chambers.  They broke from the Strib’s orthodoxy.

As to Smith?  He’s a RINO.  That is forgiveable, personally if not politically.  He’s a throwback to an earlier, more useless era in the Minnesota GOP; the Carlson/Durenberger years, when the “Indendent Republican” party went along to get along.  May those days be soon forgotten.

What is unforgiveable is that Smith has been one of the leading forces against custody reform in Minnesota.  It’s a system that intentionally exacerbates divorces, by enshrining a “winner takes all” custody and support system that inflames divorces (and racks up billable hours for Smith’s fellow “Family Court” lawyers) and, make no mistake, operates in the precise worst interest of children in the vast majority of cases.  Minnesota’s current child custody system is a barbaric monstrosity that should be rooted out and killed.  

For his decades of supporting this inexcusable barbarism, there is no circle in hell hot or dark enough for Smith (rhetorically and morally speaking, at any rate).  He deserves to be pelted with rocks and garbage, mocked and exiled from polite civilization.

But I, and nearly 90% of his district’s Republicans, would be happy to settle for simply retiring from politics, starting Wednesday morning.

Friday night Brad Carlson and I did a  special NARN broadcast at the Washington County Fair in Lake Elmo.

I took a bunch of pictures – so to help keep the blog loading fast, I’m going to put the story below the jump.

(more…)

Last week, we reported that Congressman Erik Paulsen (CD3) has endorsed Dave Osmek for the MInnesota State Senate in District 33.

Connie Doepke – endorsed yesterday by Lori Sturdevant the Strib, apparetly doesn’t think the people in her district need to know that.

Over the weekend, Doepke’s campaign apparently sent out a lit piece, with a picture of Doepke with Paulsen – and, most troublingly, a quote from Paulsen, and the Congressman’s signature.

This is a fairly clear implication, to those who aren’t paying attention, that Congressman Paulsen – who is on his way to what might be a three-digit victory over the hapless Brian Barnes this fall – endorses Connie Doepke.

Siources tell me none of this was authorized or written by Paulsen’s campaign.  And now Congressman Paulsen’s office has released a statement:

Statement from Congressman Paulsen regarding the Republican Primary in Senate District 33

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT: John-Paul Yates (952) [phone number redacted]

“It has come to my attention that the Doepke campaign recently sent a mailing with a quote attributed to me. I want to make it clear I did not approve this mailing or quote and I support the endorsed Republican candidate, Dave Osmek, in Senate District 33.”

Erik Paulsen

No word yet whether the Star/Tribune’s editorial board thinks this is one of those “thoughtful, pragmatic” moves they crowed about in their endorsement over the weekend.

If you live in the 33, please vote accordingly.

Smiling, because it's not his problem anymore

The IP continues its independence from political relevance.

Since “shocking the world” in 1998, the Independence/Reform Party of Minnesota has increasingly moved into, at best, spoiler candidacy territory.  And with the close of registration for 2012 candidates in Minnesota, the spoiler party looks more than ever to be officially spoiled.

From the party’s high-water mark of 47 candidates for statewide and legislative office in 2002 (an election that included the IP’s only other election victory with St. Sen. Sheila Kiscaden), the Independence Party has seen a slow drip both in terms of quantity and quality of their candidates.  From 23 total candidates in 2006, to 13 in 2008 (not exactly fair to compare since fewer offices were up for election), the IP looked barren.  An uptick in 2010 saw 25 candidates –  but the IP couldn’t even field a full slate of statewide candidates and most of the increase came from quixotic congressional bids.

With both chambers of the legislature up for re-election and a U.S. Senate seat on the line, what did the Independence Party field for 2012?  15 candidates total (actually 16, but two are competing in a US Senate primary).  Considering the number of offices on the ballot, it’s the worst recruitment class for the IP since obtaining majority party status.  It’s even smaller than their 20 candidate class of 1998 – when James Janos was considered a novelty act, not the leader of a political party.

Perhaps Mitch was right three years ago to call the IP “the thing that wouldn’t leave.”

It’s not hard to understand why the IP is increasingly unable to recruit candidates.  In the now nearly 14 years since Jesse Ventura’s upset victory, the party not only has no other significant victory but adamantly remains a political rorschach.  The IP’s solutions on most of the pressing issues remain vague as the party’s organizing principle continues to be “we’re not the other guys.”

In fairness, though, it’s typically not the party infrastructure’s responsibility to define issues – that’s the job of activists and candidates.  But at its core, the IP has become a warming house for policy wonks – thinkers who want to tinker with state government.  A think tank that caucuses is noble in spirit but completely impractical in execution, or in ability to win elections.

For 14 years, the IP/Reform Party has refused to do the necessary grassroots work of basic party building.  Instead of recruiting city councilmen, school board officials or county commissioners to run, the IP has tried (and tried and tried) to recapture lightning in a bottle.  Armed with little infrastructure but state subsidies, it’s not hard to see the IP’s future.

If the Ron Paul Brigades could over-run the GOP, it wouldn’t be hard for the same faction (or a similar one) to do the same to the Independence Party.  In fact, it could have happened two years ago had Joe Repya stayed in his IP campaign for governor.  Depending on what internal blood-letting may occur in the Grand Old Party post November as the Paul legions either dissipate or make camp, a libertarian or conservative take-over of the IP may be merely two years in the waiting.

To the victor will go the spoils – or in this case, a $348,000 check from the State of Minnesota to the party’s gubernatorial candidate.

Connie Doepke filed to challenge Dave Osmek in the primary for the SD33 Senate race.

At the SD33 convention two weeks ago Osmek, a conservative with 11 years’ experience on the Mound city council – beat Doepke,  a GOP representative who left an extremely safe House seat to campaign for Gen Olson’s old Senate seat, after voting for the stadium and the New Generation Energy Act, to say nothing of supporting light rail. Osmek won with over 80% of the delegate vote, after Bonn Clayton committed his delegates to Osmek on the fourth ballot (the battle had been between him and Osmek – Doepke never got out of the twenties).

If you live in SD33, and want the GOP majority to be something other than a lapdog for Lori Sturdevant and Zygi Wilf, you need to turn out to help Dave.

For that matter, if you live in the western subs – usually safe territory for the GOP – you need to find the time to help Dave.  IF you live in:

• SD20 (Wright County)
• SD34 (the Maple Grove/Rogers area)
• Carver County/SD47 (assuming Senator Ortmann doesn’t get a challenge in the primary),
• And even SD44 (Plymouth/Minnetonka)