It’s election day in Senate District 66.

If you’re a Republican – or a black parent sick of the racism of low intentions your kids get from the school system, or a Latino family tired of having the DFL take your vote and repudiate your beliefs, or an Asian family tired of having your votes harvested and then having your businesses regulated out of business and your neighborhoods destroyed by the Central Corridor, or a Democrat who works a day job and is sick of seeing how your taxes rise even as your property values plummet – then you need to vote for Greg Copeland.

If you’re a Democrat?  Well, you own this city.  Your leadership is giggling and saying there are no Republicans in Saint Paul and Greg’s got no chance.  Seriously, you do have better things to do, don’t you?

Here’s the SOS polling-station finder site.

Disclosure – I’m a volunteer on the Copeland campaign.

It’s election day in SD66.  More on that in a bit.

The Pioneer Press didn’t endorse a candidate through the front door.  But that didn’t prevent them from taking their shots through the backdoor.

Dave Orrick spent about a column-foot painting Mary Jo McGuire’s toenails – and then turned to Greg Copeland.  Or at least the part of his bio that fits the DFL’s narrative:

How each arrived at Tuesday’s election is different, too. One bowed out of a political career rather than battle a friend, while the other was run out.

McGuire, 54, a St. Paul native, declined to seek re-election to her House seat in 2002 after a once-a-decade redrawing of the boundaries put her in the same district as her friend and fellow DFLer Rep. Alice Hausman.

How very, very noble!

Copeland’s political history has more turmoil. He left his longtime home of Florida, where he had served as a county commissioner, for Minnesota in the early 1990s. He ran for office unsuccessfully several times.

He served on the Payne- Phalen District 5 Planning Council until 1996, when the board voted him out for allegedly publicly bullying, slandering and humiliating staff and board members, former board members have told the Pioneer Press.

That sounds like some serious allegations.  If only we had a group of people whose job was to investigate things like this.

Except Dave Orrick did.  From Greg Copeland’s response to the PiPress, with emphasis added:

Mr. Orrick reported that I was removed as President of the Payne-Phalen District Council in September 1996, that is true. I can only wonder why as Mr. Orrick looked through your newspapers’ morgue, why did he skipped the story printed in your paper which reported the firing by the Board of Directors of the Community Organizer and the Secretary-Bookkeeper for violating district council financial policy, which is what I blew the whistle on six months earlier. The allegations made by these staff members against me to oust me as President, were reported by Mr. Orrick, why did he not report these same staff were fired six months later for the very serious mis-behavior I brought to the board’s attention as Board President.

Huh.

Wonder how that didn’t make the story.  Seems…germane to me.

As does this:

Also missing from Mr. Orrick’s report was the fact that I was re-elected to the Board of Directors in April 1997 and the Board issued an apology to me and another Board Member who blew the whistle on the then-former staff. The Board of Directors also voted to name me to the St. Paul Mayor’s Honor Roll for distinguished community service to my neighborhood.

Back to Orrick:

In 2006, despite concerns about Copeland — such as his having been delinquent in property taxes and being pursued by creditors — the Maplewood City Council hired Copeland as city manager. Twenty months later, after a series of staff resignations and on the eve of revelations that the city’s finances weren’t being well tracked, he was ousted from City Hall following a political upheaval that also led to the defeat of former Mayor Diana Longrie, Copeland’s chief defender.

The whole story?

Not really, notes Copeland:

Regarding my service as City Manager of Maplewood from April 2006 to January 2008 Mr. Orrick reports I was I was “ousted” on the “eve of revelations” concerning city finances. The fact is all city managers serve at the pleasure of city council majorities. In the November 2007 city election one of the council members lost her re-election contest and when the new city council met for it’s initial organizational meeting I was placed on Administrative Leave, I was not “ousted”, and the city agreed in February 2007 to pay me a five month severance agreement and I left in good standing.

That’s a part of the story that everyone leaves out.

Orrick punches the “balance” ticket, sort of:

On his campaign website, Copeland says of his tenure in Maplewood, in part: “I made significant administrative cost reductions and hired new police officers and firefighters/paramedics, while freezing the property (tax) rate in my first year.”

Copeland elaborates:

There was no “revelation” of fiscal mis-management, quite the contrary, in fact the 2007 City Audit prepared by the Accounting firm of HLB Tautges Redpath, LTD dated August 8, 2008 reported a 2007 budget surplus for my last year as City Manager of $903,873. The audit showed an ending fund balances of $24,269,853, with a 38% unreserved General Fund balance; working capital of $6,858,366 which was a 12% increase over the previous year. I reduced the city debt service as a percentage of total expenditures and under-spent the city’s $29.9 million operating budget saving taxpayers $575,162. All while freezing the 2007 property tax levy and adding new police officers and firefighter/paramedics.

The Pioneer Press – all the news that helps the DFL.

Come on out and vote today.

Disclosure – I’ve been volunteering for the Copeland campaign.

As usual, when reviewing the DFL’s claims, the rule of thumb is “distrust but verify; then, resume the distrust”.

So too with DFL House Minority Leader Paul “Mini-Bakk” Thissen’s claims that the GOP budget is “destroying jobs”.   MPR’s “Poligraph” addresses Thissen’s claims.

At least, analyzes the direct claim on its face.  To really analyze it, and the DFL’s entire response to the GOP’s initiative to re-engineer how this state budgets its’ resources the money they divert from the economy, you have to dig a little deeper.

“Last week, the House Higher Ed budget put 1,200 employees at Minnesota’s colleges and universities on notice” he wrote in an April 5, 2010, press release. “The tax bill will slash another 1,700 jobs in counties and cities across Minnesota… With [the state government jobs] bill, the Republican Majority not only hands out an additional 754 pink slips, but also slashes support for private sector job creation.”

Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, is right that cutting government spending would cost jobs, but his numbers are hard to pin down.

In part because they were never meant to be “pinned down”.  Scare lines are supposed to be nice and vague.

And scare lines are all the DFL really has, this session.

Problem is, Thissen’s scare line isn’t even a good one:

The House version of higher education funding bill would cut about 17.7 percent from the University of Minnesota’s budget and mandate a tuition cap of up to 5 percent. That could mean the loss of 600 to 700 jobs, said Richard Pfutzenreuter who is the Treasurer for the University of Minnesota.

But he points out that those numbers include employees who will retire early and jobs that will remain vacant. Only a fraction will be layoffs, he said. Further, it’s unlikely the university would balance its budget only by cutting jobs, he said. Rather, it will be a mix of trims.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) budget would be cut nearly 16 percent. As a result, the system is looking at either 554 staff reductions or 490 faculty reductions, including retirements and unfilled positions. That’s about 3 percent of the system’s 19,300 person workforce, according to spokeswoman Melinda Voss.

All told, that’s about 1,200 jobs. But Thissen’s figure is on the high end because it’s unlikely all cuts would come from layoffs. And those figures include retirements and unfilled positions as well.

In other words, Thissen is taking the “worst case” – more on that later – and putting it out there, unvarnished and without context, to disinform the voter.  And MPR is giving the reader the gentlest possible reminder to read beneath the surface.

Thissen’s numbers are based on fact, but he leaves out some important points. For instance, he doesn’t mention that it’s unlikely that the University of Minnesota will cut only jobs to save money, nor does he point out that employment reductions would be made through retirements and hiring freezes, not just layoffs. And his claim on the tax bill relies on just one source–Gov. Mark Dayton.

Given all these caveats, it was a tough call. But overall, Thissen is correct that the spending bills being debated in the House would likely mean government job losses throughout the state.

Right.

Just like cratering revenue means job losses to all of us in the private sector.

And what does the private sector do when this happens?

Not just lay people 0ff (not the smart companies, anyway); if it wants to survive, the business changes the way it does business.

And as much as it may hurt the feelings of some government workers, it’s a fact that there is a difference between the horse that’s pulling the cart and the one that’s sitting in the back cracking the whip.  Government funding exists because the private sector pulls the cart forward. Fewer horses in the cart makes the whole thing easier to pull – and, ideally, means more horses can do the pulling.

Which is something that was, to be fair, outside the scope of the MPR piece – and something Thissen wants to keep you from thinking about.

Tuesday is the special election in SD66.

Greg Copeland is running against former DFL Rep Mary Jo McGuire.

What’s at stake?

If McGuire wins, not much will change; Saint Paul will go from being represented by a whackdoodle liberal to an arguably less whackdoodle liberal.  There’ll be a net/net zero change in the minority caucus.

But some of the things McGuire stands for deserve scrutiny – especially in the wake of the Wisconsin situation.

McGuire introduced a bill that would have made state judgeships appointed, rather than elected, positions:

McGuire was Chief Author in 1997 of HF 1077 which  Proposed  a Constitutional Amendment Requiring that ALL Minnesota Judges To Be APPOINTED by the Governor!

Why is this a bad thing?

Of course, if you’re worried about special interests dominating judicial elections, the OSI/JAS alternative is even worse. That’s because state bar associations and legal groups are dominated by trial lawyers. Lawyers and law firms are the seventh biggest political donors of “all time,” according to Opensecrets.org, and dominate state politics in parts of the country.

The judicial system should maintain a necessary degree of impartiality, but America’s founders certainly didn’t intend for judges to be unmoored from democracy. About 95 percent of America’s civil disputes end up in state courts. That’s an enormous amount of power, which needs checks and balances. There’s a reason why 87 percent of America’s judges are elected.

There are so many reasons to vote for Copeland next Tuesday; he opposes the Central Corridor (even now!) and public taxes for the Vikings; he’ll push for a $10K/jerb tax credit, and advocate a two year property tax freeze.

But perhaps the best reason is that the DFL elite, which treat Saint Paul like they do all of their other special interests – as a milk cow for votes and support – deserves the setback.  They think they own Saint Paul – it’s their own words.  This sort of arrogance shouldn’t be rewarded.

So please help Greg out.  Money’s good (donations page), although it’s getting late for that.  What the campaign needs right now – today through the election – is volunteers.  Volunteers on the phone bank, and out door-knocking.  If you can spare an hour or two, please check in.

Every campaign says they can win.  Every campaign must believe it on some level, or nobody would try to run at all (as, in some parts of Saint Paul, indeed, no Republican does; we’re working on changing that).

This special election race is going to be a tough one.  But if every Republican turns out, it’s doable.  So if you’re a Republican – or a Democrat who is sick of the way your party is abusing the taxpayer – and you live in SD66…

…please come out on Tuesday.  And if you know someone in SD66 who should be voting, make sure they turn out on Tuesday!

We can do this!

I am, of course, a volunteer on the Copeland campaign.

I talked with a MN state legislator last night.  It was a Republican from the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, by the way, although not one who is regarded as among the most conservative of the lot (and before anyone asks, it was not Rep. Banaian).

Being somewhat new to having interest in the budget process, I wanted to know more about the “Fiscal Notes” that the Democrats are yapping about.

Is the GOP bypassing them because they are products of Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB), which is a partisan office (its head, Jim Schowalter, was appointed by Gov. Dayton, who can also remove him).

“That’s part of it”, the legislator responded.  But there’s more.

More important than the partisanship is the fact, says the legislator, that MMB’s modeling does not account for savings to be realized by budget changes.  The models they use for calculating costs of budget iteams, in addition to being weighted toward racking up costs, do not (says the legislator) account for the money to be saved by the changes.  For example, MMB’s response to the GOP’s plan to consolidate the state’s Information Technology (IT) operations, in addition to the absurd cost projections (ten people, tens of millions of dollars), ignored the savings the consolidation would cause.

Now – did the savings get ignored because the MMB’s process isn’t designed to find them, or did they get ignored because MMB is run by a Dayton appointee whose employment depends on keeping his boss happy, ergo defeating the GOP?

Distinction without a difference, I say.

Mary Jo McGuire won the SD66 DFL primary last night.

And she won it big – 54-37, in an election that was pretty sharply geographically divided; in a primary battle that was fought out between packs of union and special interest supporters, McGuire, who used to represent part of the area in the Legislature, dominated the tony Como Park and teacher-and-oldster-chocked Midway neighborhoods that make up 66B  with crushing majorities.  Lesch, the incumbent in 66A, also dominated his turf – parts of Wards 5 and 6, on the North End and East Side – but with lower margins.

And so the voters in SD66 have a choice to make; between GOP-endorsed Greg Copeland, a guy who’s actually done something to make government work better, and an Ivy-League special interest-mongering attorney and “Community Organizer” whose entire career screams “Listen to your betters, peasants!”.

I’ll be writing about this choice in the coming week and six days.

Today is the DFL’s primary in Senate District 66.

The DFL declined to hold an endorsing convention this time, choosing to go straight to a primary.  Part of it may have been it was a good way to stir up some publicity for what, for the DFL, is a snoozer of a race.

(Of course, the GOP is running a serious candidate and, less normally, a serious campaign.  But more on that tomorrow).

The candidates are a guy named Marchese who I really don’t know (nor will I need to), former HD66B representative Mary Jo McGuire – who left office something like 16 years ago but has dialed in the “women’s vote”) and current 66A representative John Lesch.

Who to vote for, if you’re a DFLer?  Or perhaps someone who decides to become a DFLer?

Perhaps what you want is a genuine legislative leader?