Minneapolis has always wanted to roll back Minnesota’s “Pre-emption statute”, which prevents city governments from enacting gun laws different (especially more stringent) than state law.

And they’ve been lobbying to change that as long as I’ve been aware of the issue – and that’s getting to be a long time, now.

“Ron V” of the Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms blog notes that the City is not above lying through its teeth to try to do it.   Mr. V writes:

The (post Sandy Hook) Minneapolis City Council Legislative Agenda on Firearms recommendations were prepared by Melissa Lesch, Intergovernmental Relations Specialist, and WIFE OF REP. JOHN LESCH (66B DFL), who was one of the MN legislators leading the gun control charge in the Minnesota legislature post Sandy Hook.

[Minneapolis Police Department assistant chief Matt] Clark testified before the city council at the request of Melissa Lesch/IGR. Included in the recommendations from Melissa Lesch/IGR was full support for Obama’s extremist federal gun-grab agenda. The Legislative Agenda ultimately approved by the city council included:

–A plan to use the city’s weight to lobby the state legislature for the repeal of the state pre-emption provision currently included in Minnesota’s right-to-carry law (MN 624.714).

Meaning, the city of Minneapolis wants to be able to override state law and set its own ordinances in regard to permit holders and gun owners who live in, travel through or visit the city of Minneapolis by implementing ordinances to:

—-Require concealed carry and outlaw open carry by lawful permit holders within the city limits of Minneapolis;

—-Ban lawful carry from parks and public buildings within Minneapolis;

—-Ban common use semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines within city limits;

—-Require that permit-to-carry applications be approved by local police chiefs (returning to arbitrary “may issue” standards);

—-Deny the 2nd Amendment rights of any person who has experienced a “mental health incident that required the intervention of law enforcement” or anyone who has ever been placed on a 72 hour hold;

—-Add additional regulations to the transfer of firearms;

—-And a number of other vaguely worded recommendations designed to allow infringement of 2nd Amendment rights

Nothing new, there.

Here’s the rub;  Minneapolis is lying, via its police department, about the data it’s using to try to convince the legislature.

Here are the verbatim statements made by asst. chief Matt Clark during the testimony:

—-“We’ve had incidents where handgun owners have had handguns taken away from them. Where they have lost those firearms because somebody knew they had them on their person, and they specifically took it away from those individuals.”

—-“What we’re looking for… is that if you have a permit to carry a firearm that it [be] concealed in public. We have a lot of calls from constituents, individuals, residents, visitors that are very ‘shocked and surprised’ to see a handgun on somebody out in the open…”

As to the latter?  In parts of this world, people are “shocked and surprised” to see same-sex couples, women without headscarves walking without male relatives, or Jews without Stars of David on their person.  We don’t dignify any of those, either.

But it’s the former that Mr. V went after:

Following those statements by asst. chief Clark in January, I immediately made several attempts to contact asst. chief Clark and chief Harteau, as well as the MPD public information officer, to request the data upon which Clark’s testimony was based…After multiple attempts over several months to get the information, I NEVER received a response from Clark or Harteau, and finally filed a Data Practices Request with the city of Minneapolis to get the information on which his testimony was based.

Mr. V requested the info and math behind the dates, places and case numbers of incidents where people openly carrying firearms had their guns stolen – and of course whether they were carry-permittees carrying legally at the time.

And the result?

In total, the response to my Data Practices Request for the cases used as the basis for Clark’s testimony to the city council includes 15 incidents between 2000 – 2012 where a firearm was taken during a crime incident, NONE OF WHICH INCLUDE an incident where a firearm was taken from a lawful permit holder while open carrying in a public place. The 15 incidents they tried to palm off as citations for Clark’s testimony include:

–Six (6) Robbery of dwelling (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Four (4) Car-jackings (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Two (2) Business robberies where a store gun was taken (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Two (2) Random street robberies where one female had a gun in her purse, and the other, which made the news last spring, was a guy randomly attacked who had a permit but his gun was concealed in his pocket …

–One (1) incident where a holstered firearm was taken from a victim IN HIS OWN YARD BY SOMEONE HE KNEW (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

If “ProtectMN” and its official minions couldn’t lie, they’d be silent.

That’s what got Betsy Hodges the victory in Minneapolis’ mayoral election last night.  About a third (36.55%) of a 34% turnout in the first round.

Cam Winton came in just under 10% with 7,500 votes.  Which is about ten percent better than a Republican did in the last Minneapolis mayor race.  Or the one before.  Or the one before that.  Ad infinitum (or at least back to the nineties, which was the last credible GOP candidate I can recall in Minneapolis).

Now, we know there are more than 7,500 Republicans in Minneapolis.  240,000 people in Hennepin County voted for Mitt Romney, for crying out loud – and the “Republican districts” in Henco would fit into a phone booth and leave you enough room for someone to come in and ask you what a phone booth was.  If even 20% of those 240,000 were in Minneapolis, and they’d come out to the polls last night, Winton would have crushed Hodges.

But Republicans never come out for local races.  My theory:  they’re so used to getting beaten down in local, county and Congressional elections, they only come out for statewide and federal races, where their votes actually end up mattering; a GOP vote from Longfellow is worth exactly the same as a GOP vote from Dassel.

The upsides last night?  The fake Republicans, Bob “Let’s Build a Bike Skyway” Carney and Ole “Will Run For Office For Food” Savior, got less than a percent of the vote.  In a cycle in which the 5th CD GOP started out being run by people whose main goal was to destroy the GOP, that’s not a bad job of protecting the brand – although most of the credit goes to Winton, who ran a great race.

Nationwide?  I can’t be too disappointed.  Christie isn’t my favorite Republican, but he had my favorite result – crushing his opponents in a blue state.

Ken Cuccinelli outperformed expectations immensely last night, coming within two points in a race everyone counted him out of – and (this is important) losing to a Democrat vote surge in the only part of the country that’s doing well financially right now, the DC suburbs.

Takeaway?   A good candidate is better than a bad candidate.  A well-organized party in an area is better than a party that’s a Bulgarian goat rodeo.  A two-party city is a better prospect for a challenger than a one-party cesspool.   And all three factors matter, every election,every time.

And it’s going to take either a Detroit-style calamity, or several cycles of rebuilding the GOP as credible contenders, to change either Minneapolis or Saint Paul.  Which would mean spending less time in a circular firing squad shooting other Republicans and more time actually making a case to actual voters.

And I think I started saying that seven years ago, and it’s only gotten worse in the metro.

I don’t “endorse” candidates on this blog or on my show. 

Partly because I’m not under the illusion that anyone cares what I think.

And partly because on the off-chance someone does care what I think, I’d much prefer they make up their own mind for themselves, rather than piggyback on anything I, or anyone, says. 

But if you live in Minneapolis, I’m going to urge you to vote for Cam Winton for Mayor.

If you’re a Republican in Minneapolis?:  Here’s the deal; 25-30% of Minneapolis is Republican.  The DFL vote is split six ways – or, perhaps most realistically, two ways (the DFL-endorsed Hodges and the well-funded Warner).  If every GOP voter in Minneapoliscomes to the polls and closes ranks and puts Winton as their #1 choice, he’s got a decent shot.

If you’re a conservative voter:  Winton’s no paleo.  He admits it up front.  He’s a former DFLer and it shows.  But Buckley’s dictum holds true; if you’re a good conservative, you vote for the most conservative candidate who can win.  There is no way around it – if there’s a more conservative candidate on the ballot, they are not in a position to win.  Seriously – who’s raised any money?  Who’s knocked a single door?  Who’s gotten any media?  Nobody.  Winton is not a movement conservative – but in the context of Minneapolis in 2013, it’s a miracle that someone even this close to conservative is on the ballot at all.  Winning would be a great step forward. 

If you’re a “Liberty” voter:  one of the biggest problems too many “liberty” voters have is that they have nothing analogous to the Buckley commandment; for too many of them, anything less than 100% agreement is disagreement.  Because Winton is imperfect on a couple of Libertarian issues, he’s not perfect “Liberty” candidate:

• He favors hiring more police.  The current fad among big-L libertarians is to distrust, even hate, the police.  I get that.  But Winton is running for office in a city that’s 60+% DFL and a fraction of 1% “Liberty” purists – and many of those DFL voters live in North Minneapolis, a place where abstruse Libertarian principle comes in way, way, way behing “stopping gangbangers from terrorizing the neighborhood”.   Public safety is one of very few legitimate jobs of government.  Follow-up question:  Who do you think is more likely to reform Minneapolis’ police department – a mayor from the establishment that made them what they are today, and is utterly beholden to the union that makes any reform via the DFL impossible? 
• He supports background checks at gun shows – provided they can not be turned into a confiscation list.  Which is both a palliative for DFL moderates who might be thinking about coming over and voting for him, and a statement with no teeth whatsoever; it’s impossible to make a background check anything but a confiscation list, ergo he has no plan.  And – more importantly – Minneapolis’ pre-emption statute prevents the City of Minneapolis, or any city, from imposing gun controls more strict than state law.  And let’s not forget – while Winton may favor background checks under conditions that can never occur in nature, every DFL candidate in the race favors outright bans; they will throw your guns into a smelter if they get a chance.  But either way, anything Winton or any of the other Mayor candidates say about gun control is completely irrelevant.  Tell you what – we elect him Mayor, I’ll undertake the job of convincing him he’s wrong on gun control.  Deal?   
• He supports modifying, rather than scrapping, the Southwest Light Rail:  The problem is, the mayor of Minneapolis has little influence over the project.  It’s the Met Council.  The SWLR is going to happen, barring a major change in state government – as in, a GOP (or, sure, “Liberty”, whatever) Governor and Legislature to completely gut the Met Council.  So – at election time, you want the mayor to piddle away potentially thousands of “moderate” DFL votes over an issue he has no meaningful control over, to win Minneapolis’ literally dozens of hard-line 100%-er Liberty voters? 
• His company is in the wind power business:  Lots of misinformation here; I’ve seen “liberty” people claim his company builds wind turbines and collects the big government subsidies.  It does not; it maintains existing turbines.  Someone has to – why not his company?  If you’re a Libertarian who opposes bike paths but rides ’em anyway because you already paid for ’em, sound off here. 

For some “Liberty” voters, it’s like talking to the wall – and that’s leaving out the ones who aren’t voting because they just want the whole system to collapse anyway.  For those that are left?  Incrementalism may be a dirty word, but incrementalism in the right direction is better than the wrong direction.  If that makes any sense to you at all, please vote Winton.  Or vote your principle and put the “liberty” candidate, whoever it may be, as first choice but put Winton second. 

For DFLers who care about Minneapolis:  Minneapolis’ current system is unsustainable.  There is no way for the current system to keep running the way it is.  Minneapolis is going to bankrupt itself – maybe later than sooner.  Not only can you not tax yourselves to prosperity, but in Minneapolis under the DFL machine you can’t even tax yourselves to competence.  The streets are terrible.  The schools have among the worst achievement gaps in the United States – worse than Philly or Detroit, for crying out loud.  The North Side is a shooting gallery.  And yet Minneapolis is laying off cops but proposing building a trolley from where people aren’t to where they don’t want to be, at exquisite city expense ($53 million a mile!), and socializing the city’s power system. 

If you’re a DFLer with some common sense – and I know there are a few of you out there – isn’t it time to say “enough?”  To stop the crazy train?  To run a city like a city, and not an excellent frat party for government hangers-on? 

I can’t vote in Minneapolis.  I wish I could.

It’s probably as good a time to announce it as any.  If all goes according to plan, on the Northern Alliance Radio Network tomorrow we’ve got…

• Minneapolis mayoral candidate Cam Winton, and…
• Twin Cities radio legend T.D. Mischke. 

Tune in from 1-3PM!

Cam WInton’s website is right here.

Here’s Cam Winton’s website.  You don’t have to live in Minneapolis to help Cam shock the world.

Here’s my piece about Daniel Henninger’s piece saying we should just let Obamacare collapse from its unwieldy incompetence.

And since it was “Springsteen Cover Saturday” in honor of Bruce’s 64th birthday last Monday – here’s my series on why Springsteen resonates with conservatives.

Tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, I’ll be talking about the DFL’s absurd endzone happy dance over the state’s Forbes ranking, and the onset of Obamacare.

And in the second hour, I’ll be talking with Minneapolis mayoral candidate Cam Winton about his quixotic campaign – with an emphasis on how you can help, and on how very possible it is for the good guys to shock the world in November.

It was a year ago yesterday that a depraved lefty walked into the national Family Research Council headquarters a a pistol, 100 rounds of ammo, and the intention to kill every person in the office. 

He was stopped by a building manager and acting security guard, Leo Johnson, who, although shot twice, subdued the leftist gunman, who had walked into the lobby claiming to be a new intern.  Johnson asked for ID. 

After Corkins takes a suspiciously long time rummaging through his bag to produce identification, Johnson cannily stands up and walks around the desk to get a closer look at what Corkins is doing. Corkins bolts upright, gun in hand. Without the slightest hesitation, Johnson rushes Corkins, who fires twice. A bullet shatters Johnson’s left forearm. “And I just couldn’t hear anything, my arm just kind of blew back. So at that point I was thinking: ‘I have to get this gun,’ ” Johnson told The Weekly Standard. “That was my sole focus—I have to get this gun—this guy’s gonna kill me and kill everybody here.”

From there, Johnson somehow manages to push Corkins across the lobby and pin him against the wall with his bad arm. “I just started punching him as hard as I could, until I could feel his grip loosen,” recalled Johnson. Eventually he takes the gun from Corkins with his wounded arm. Before long, Corkins is subdued on the ground. Corkins now admits that it was his intention to shoot everyone in the building. There’s no question Johnson saved a lot of lives.

This was a genuine hate crime; the shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, had a backpack full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches he intended to smear into his victims’ faces after shooting them, apperently to suffocate the wounded. 

Johnson was a hero.  And you’ve heard scarcely a word about it in the mainstream media, who spent most of the past 18 months trying in vain to pound the utterly-non-bias-related Martin-Zimmerman case into a “hate crime”, and the past couple of years trying unsuccessfully to politicize the Giffords, Aurora and Newtown shootings.

And yet here was the real thing (and by no means for the first time).  And…

(crickets)

There are some illuminating contrasts between the media’s handling of the political dimensions of the Family Research Council shooting and the shooting of Representative Giffords. In the latter case, the media rushed to assume political motivations and were quick to blame, of all people, Sarah Palin…there is no evidence whatsoever Loughner saw this map or that allegedly violent political rhetoric—even “campaign” is a term borrowed from war—was in any way a cause of the Giffords shooting. That didn’t stop serious news organizations from lending institutional credibility to the irresponsible allegations…though Giffords was shot in January 2011, as recently as this year in an article on gun violence the New York Times saw fit to remind readers that “many criticized Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee, for using cross hairs on her Web site to identify Democrats like Ms. Giffords.”

 And NBC news fairly raced to blame the Aurora shooting on the Tea Party. 

By contrast, the media handled awkwardly the revelation that Corkins admitted to plotting mass murder as a means of furthering a popular liberal cause. “A detail sure to reignite the culture wars that erupted around the shooting is the fact that Corkins told FBI agents that he identified the Family Research Council as anti-gay on the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” wrote the Washington Post during Corkins’s trial in February. It’s a little unseemly for a newspaper, when finally forced to confront actual politically motivated violence, to worry about the shooting’s impact on the metaphorical “culture war.” Particularly when irresponsible actors in that culture war continue to get a free pass from the media.

The SPLC – cited with grave solemnity as an authority by rafts of lefty bobbleheads – has become a bit of a hate group in its own right:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was once a laudable civil rights organization that sued racists and violent extremists. Now it regularly demonizes anyone who runs afoul of its knee-jerk liberal politics, and despite this it is still regularly cited by the media as a “nonpartisan” watchdog. Some of the SPLC’s newly targeted “hate groups,” such as pickup artists, are merely kooky or distasteful. Others singled out by the SPLC, including Catholics who go to Latin mass or Christian organizations similar to the Family Research Council, are well within the mainstream. Tellingly, the SPLC doesn’t just name the Family Research Council on its website—it posts the council’s address on a “hate map.” That map is still on SPLC’s website, and the organization refused calls to take it down after the Family Research Council shooting.

But they won’t. 

I bring it up because we’re seeing the same thing with the Widstrand beating in Saint Paul.  Now, to be clear, there’s no evidence that it was a “hate crime”, per se; in other words, there’s no evidence that any of the youths stood on a soapbox and bellowed “I’m doing this because I Hate Whitey”.  And for purposes of charging that brutal assault, evidence is what is needed.

But you can see, feel and hear the nervousness in official Saint Paul and Minneapolis government circles; as crime as dropped in most parts of the Twin Cities, it’s stayed steadily well above average on the East Side, the North End, the North Side, Phillips.  Parts of the East Side have been deteriorating before our eyes over the past decade, in a city that is generally mostly just stagnant. 

And yet nobody in offical Twin Cities circles will call the elephant what it is.  They hold official observances for the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” misery-exploitation caravan – which exists to protest the deaths of children who look like the children of NPR executives – and studiously ignore the fact that black on black crime in the Twin Cities is astronomically higher than any other rate in the state.

From the City of Minneapolis website, with emphasis added:

Regular meeting of the Minneapolis City Council Committee of the Whole standing committee and Intergovernmental Relations subcommittee.
Municipal Utility: 10:00 a.m. public hearing to consider authorizing the establishment of a municipal electrical utility and authorizing the City to own, operate, construct, and extend electric facilities and to purchase and acquire the property of any existing electrical public utility operating within the City of Minneapolis for the purpose of providing electrical and related services.
10:30 a.m. public hearing to consider authorizing the establishment of a municipal gas utility and authorizing the City to own, operate, construct, and extend gas and similar facilities and to purchase and acquire the property of any existing gas public utility operating within the City of Minneapolis for the purpose of providing natural gas and similar services.

Minneapolis’ unofficial motto: “100 Years of Socialism: Someday It Might Work”

Oh, yeah. Excel will shut down its Minneapolis headquarters if the city takes over the city’s power business.

More government union jobs, I guess.

Cam Winton is running for Mayor of Minneapolis.  Here’s the website.

Remember what happens every time the conservative mainstream GOP mixes it up with the “moderates” that have descended into near irrelevance among everyone but the Strib Editorial Board? 

How the media establishment chides the GOP to be more open?  Bigger-tented?  More tolerant of dissent?

Well, at the moment, either does at least part of the mainstream media.

Nick Coleman – who used to be one of those Strib people who audibly pined for the good ol’ days when his Dad was in the Legislature and the GOP was a huge tent covering everyone from moderate DFL suckups to really moderate DFL suckups – is now wanting to start checking ideological IDs. He was reporting from the Tatooine cantina that was the Minneapolis DFL City Convention over the weekend:

Is the #mplsdfl tent too large? EVERYONE is in it, but they don’t agree, don’t get along and — maybe — shouldn’t be in same party.

— NickColeman (@NickColeman) June 16, 2013

Minneapolis has a choice;  five DFL candidates, ranging from crazy to pants-crappingly unhinged…

…and Cam Winton, the DFLer-turned-GOPer running on the “get some value for all those freaking taxes we pay” platform.

If there was ever a time to shock the world, this is it; Cam could use a buck or two, and even some volunteers, if you’re so inclined.

The best map of Minneapolis I’ve seen yet:

The new Vikings stadium has been unveiled.

About a year after $500 million in public money was approved by the Minnesota Legislature for a new Vikings stadium, the curtain was pulled back Monday, May 13, to let the public see what the $975 million facility will look like.

The new design was unveiled at a 90-minute event Monday evening at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The building will be asymmetrical and multisided. The roof will slope to ensure snow doesn’t pile up atop it.

It looks like a microwave that fell out of a truck on the freeway.

But at least it’s being paid for by electronic pull tabs oops.  It’s going to be paid for out of your taxes.

The least the Strib, WCCO, KFAN and KSTP could do is give away some free tickets, since this is our “present” to them and their long-term viability.

Yesterday, we looked at the changes in voting in the 4th Congressional District after redestricting, and tried to give some context to what were, at face value, disappointing election results.  As I noted yesterday, the Tony Hernandez for Congress campaign had some big handicaps – fundraising was as terrible for him as it was for every other Republican, and a redistricting that was pretty benign for Betty McCollum – and a huge one, an epochal DFL turnout against the Marriage Amendment.

Most of those issues were writ larger across the river in the 5th Congressional District, covering Minneapolis and most of Hennepin County.  By all accounts, Keith Ellison was the biggest beneficiary from redistricting; the 5th CD became, on paper, even more strongly DFL than it was before.  And if anything, the 5th CD’s Republican party was even less functional last year than the 4th’s was.

But Chris Fields, the GOP-endorsed candidate in the 5th, brought the kind of game the GOP hasn’t seen in Minneapolis in way longer than I can remember.  Fields was a great candidate; he was elected Secretary of the State GOP last weekend, so hopefully he’ll be in a position to be one again soon.  He worked the district hard, had a small but highly-motivated staff, and raised a lot more money than Republicans normally do in the dismal 5th.

And so what happened?

Here are the vote totals and percentages going back to 2000:

But what does this mean in a larger historical context?

As yesterday:  the top two rows show how many more voters each party turned out in 2012 than in the year shown below.  The additional turnout for the DFL – and Ellison – in 2012 was staggering; 33,000 more than in 2008 (a great DFL year by itself), 43,000 more than in 2004 (a decent GOP year), 85,000 more than in 2000 (an excellent GOP year, outside the 5th anyway).

And as yesterday, the bottom two rows show a “rematch”; the DFL’s numbers in the listed year against Fields’ 2012 numbers.  Fields turned out over 30,000 more Republican votes than in most presidential off-years (2002 was a great year for the MNGOP), and 30,000 more than even in 2000, which was a very good GOP year throughout the US.

So what do these numbers mean?

Simply this:  the 5th remains a difficult district for Republicans.  But the combination of a strong GOP candidate, a motivated campaign that knows how to message the district (as Fields most certainly did, although the Minneapolis media was an even more bald-faced Praetorian Guard for Ellison than it was for McCollum) and raise money makes it possible for the district, as badly as it was gerrymandered, to edge closer to being a 60-40 district than a 75-25 one.  And as dismal as that seems, that’s at least within striking distance; Chip Cravaack overcame a 60-40 district in 2010.  It’s difficult – but not impossible.

And that is the mission for the GOP in both the 4th and 5th CDs; take their turf from “Impossible” to “Herculean”, and thence maybe to “Difficult”.

More candidates like Fields, like Tony Hernandez and Teresa Collett, will certainly help.

Better-organized District committees will also go a long way, as will a functional state party capable of raising money and – this is important – not undercutting the messaging of the 4th and 5th CD candidates.

And this last year, top-line percentages aside, was a decent start.

…don’t get far from a radio.

Or a computer, or a mobile device.  You get the idea.

Big Northern Alliance Radio Network broadcast tomorrow.  We’ll have Cam Winton on to talk about the Minneapolis mayor’s race, and Senator Sean Nienow will be with us to talk about his call for an investigation into the Vikings Stadium funding fiasco.

That’ 1-3PM tomorrow, on AM1280 The Patriot!

So the “debate” among the DFL candidates for the non-partisan Minneapolis mayor’s race took place yesterday.

What happened?  Probably nothing all that newsworthy; it was a debate of DFL candidates.  

For a non-partisan race.

Of course, Cam Winton – who is running as a fiscal conservative and social moderate – was left out of the debate since he’s not a DFLer (anymore).

There’s been a flurry of emails between Winton and the Humphrey Institute.  And I personally wrote Dr. Larry Jacobs and the Humphrey Institute to get clarification on the debate about the debate.

The debate looks a little like this – and I’ll paraphrase both sides, since the email trail is a long one:

Winton: The Humphrey Institute should not be running partisan debates for a non-partisan race.  It violated the Humphrey Institute’s mission.  And shunting him to the separate “losers debate” with the likes of Leslie Davis and, I dunno, Howling Cat LeLouche and Fancy Ray McCloney and having a DFL-only debate is a straight up sign of bias.

Jacobs:  The Humphrey Institute is aware that there is intense competition for the DFL endorsement – and this debate is analogous to the intra-party debates in the run-up to, say, the Presidential or Gubernatorial primaries.  The Humphrey Institute invites plenty of Republicans to marquee events, and Winton is going to be the subject of a separate event with plenty of media coverage [other than the “Losers’ Debate”]

Perhaps Jacobs’ explanation – that the partisan debate is a nod to a traditional endorsement process  – makes sense, in and of itself.  Maybe.  The Minneapolis mayor race is officially non-partisan, so the “endorsement” should be meaningless – but we all know that in Minneapolis, it’s not.   It’s an important bit of PR in Minneapolis, a city full of people who vote party first and foremost.

And that’s the part that sticks in my craw.

So here’s a question for Dr. Jacobs: since the DFL-only “debate” is designed to inform voters in advance of an endorsement that is…

• officially meaningless, but…
• worth much in terms of intra-party public relations,

then it follows the entire exercise of the debate is a DFL PR event.

Yes, kudos to Dr. Jacobs and the Humphrey Institute for doing the “make-up” appearance with Dr. Jacobs.  It was the right thing to do, certainly.

But I’ll stifle my endemic snarking about the DFL mien of most regional pseudo-government institutions (like Humphrey) and ask, seriously – why does the Humphrey Institute carry on with an event that the changes in Minneapolis’ electoral system has turned into nothing but a DFL campaign event?

As I noted yesterday, there’s going to be a debate among the candidates for Mayor of Minneapolis.

The DFL ones, anyway.

Cam Winton – a former DFLer who is running a fiscally-conservative, socially-moderate campaign with backing from Republicans and DFLers who get that Minneapolis is rapidly going broke and frittering scarce resources away on “nice-to-haves” while the necessities go begging, has a murder rate three times the state’s (and double Saint Paul’s), and the city careens toward a pension meltdown – wrote to Dr. Larry Jacobs at the Humphrey Institute to ask why.

The letter is below the jump.

(more…)

Cam Winton is running for Mayor of Minneapolis.

Winton – a former DFL activist who told of seeing the economic light after going into business – is running as a fiscal conservative and social moderate, and not as an endorsed Republican, per se.  I attended his kickoff rally a few weeks back in Minneapolis, and had a pretty singular experience for a GOP activists, standing in the same room and cheering along with people who’d opposed the marriage amendment (which Winton also opposed) and listening to Ashwin Madia, a couple of lesbian marriage activists, and Winton’s business partner extolling the candidate’s virtues.

And it was in that crowd, I thought, that one might see a successful challenge to DFL hegemony in Minneapolis; a candidacy that attacks the DFL’s weak spot in Minneapolis – its incompetence at running a city – while ignoring the GOP’s big weaknessses in places like Minneapolis.

Now, some – including my friend John Gilmore – have asked “is Winton Republican or conservative enough?”   He, and they, point to the fact that Winton is a former Democrat, and was in fact a prominent enough activist through 2008.

As a former Democrat myself, I’m pretty forgiving of Road to Damascus conversions.  And if you want to grill a candidate to assess the sincerity, or at least integrity, of their beliefs, then a debate could be a fine place to do it.

And there’s the problem.

———-

The Minneapolis mayor’s race is an expressly non-partisan one.  Party identification doesn’t appear with candidates on the ballot.

The Humphrey Center – the U of M’s Poli-Sci think tank and, if you ask conservatives, DFL hatchery and retirement home – is hosting a debate of these candidates this coming Wednesday.

The DFL ones.

Let’s rephrase that for impact; the Humphrey Institute – a public institution whose mission is at least ostensibly not “furthering the DFL’s interests and hindering their opposition” – is hosting a debate for a non-partisan office in the city in which the Institute resides.  And they’re only inviting DFL candidates to it.

According to the Winton campaign, he has been invited to a second debate.  At this second debate – which will have virtually no media coverage – Winton will appear on a panel with Bob Carney and Leslie Davis, a couple of perennial candidate who are shunted into a side-debate to isolate the comic relief from the “Real” race…

…which, the Humphrey Institute has decided in its infinite institutional wisdom, is among the DFL candidates, who will get the “real” debate.

This brings up a couple of questions:

Is the Humphrey Institute serving as a DFL campaigning tool?: Why the seemingly arbitrary cutoff at “DFL”, in a race where every candidate goes to the final ballot (Minneapolis uses “ranked choice” balloting, resulting in slow, unreliable elections with no need for party endorsements or primaries.   Having a fully-partisan “debate” is not only against the Humphrey Institute’s stated mission – it’s supposed to be irrelevant to the contest at hand.

Is this a debate or a DFL campaign rally?:  The Humphrey Institute’s planned event will include five DFL candidates who differ on policy only in the most tangential incidentals. That’s not a “debate”, it’s a support group meeting.

“Debate” implies “difference of opinion”:  But this “debate” – the one the U of M will actually publicize, the one the media will attend – studiously ignores a sharp, articulate candidate who sharply differs from the DFL on some issues where the DFL itself knows it’s vulnerable – spending, taxes, regulation, public safety, infrastructure.

I asked the Humphrey Institute’s Dr. Larry Jacobs about this last week.

I’ll have that part of the conversation tomorrow.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m back!  I’ll have Senator Julianne Ortmann to talk about the raft of gun-grab legislation the DFL is spooling up. Plus Cam Winton, conservative candidate for Mayor of Minneapolis. 
• Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow.  Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Check out our new UStream video and chat  – hopefully.  
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Sic Transit Gloria Rock et Roll

The 400 Bar is likely an ex-bar.  It’s pining for the fjords.  It’s no longer nailed to its perch.

A message newly posted on the club’s website — which has been devoid of show listings or any updates since November — was the first confirmation that the building at 400 Cedar Avenue S. would be changing hands. It reads:

“After 17 years of presenting shows, we’ve closed the old building on the West Bank. Thanks to all the great music fans and artists who’ve worked so hard to make the 400 what it is. An online auction featuring some of the club’s memorabilia starts this weekend at www.400bar.com. See you in 2013.”

The bar’s operators for those 17 years, Tom and Bill Sullivan, are staying mum on the changes and letting O’Brien do the talking. And he’s not saying much. He did say that the building has been bought by Abdighani M. Ali, who is an assistant director of the south Minneapolis charter school Banaadir Academy and a Somali and Muslim community leader. Ali, however, could not be reached for confirmation.

I only played the 400 once, back in the eighties, back when its stage was about the size of a pool table.  But I always loved the place’s dingy vibe.

Oh, well – with the Uptown, the Union, MacReady’s and (the unlamented) Fernando’s gone, the Mitch Berg Nostalgia rock and roll tour has pretty much three stops – the First/Seventh, the Turf, and the Cabooze.

Which, as much as I get out these days, is probably going to still be pretty grueling.

Tim Dolan is retiring as Minneapolis’ police chief.

He plans to become an advocate for making honest, law-abiding citizens easier victims for criminals.

No, really:

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan, who retired Friday after six years as chief, said he’ll spend some of his newfound spare time doing volunteer work for “reasonable” gun control groups.

“It’s always been a passion of mine,” he said of gun control. “I worked at it quite a bit as chief, and there’s a lot of work still to be done.”

It’s tempting to say “there’s no such thing” as a “reasonable gun-control group”.  Of course, that’s untrue.  This is one group that advocates for gun laws that stress keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

It’s the National Rifle Association.

Is that the “reasonable gun control group” that Chief Dolan is talking about?

Dolan said he plans to help the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, D.C., the Joyce Foundation in Chicago and a local group, Protect Minnesota: Working to End Gun Violence.

The Brady Campaign and the Joyce Foundation are famous for trying to drum up junk “science” against civilian firearm ownership.  As to “Protect Minnesota” – a group that has to change its name every five years when even the media start realizing what they are.  Their leader, Heather Martens, has never, not even once, said a substantial true thing about the subject of guns.  Not a single one.

Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, said she met with Dolan on Wednesday at his office to discuss what he will do for her group.

“I think, basically, he will be a resource on gun policy … and give feedback on legislation,” Martens said. “He has always been a voice for preventing gun violence.”

Given Martens record, one might conclude Dolan has personally committed dozens of murders.  But we won’t go quite that far.

Sorry, Chief.  Your post-retirement activities will enable, not prevent, crime.

According to generator of meaningless statistics Bundle.com, Minneapolis children are among the most spoiled children in the US:

Bundle “examined spending by households with children at stores that sell toys, clothing and other services for tots, kids, and teens.” Parents in Manhattan and Brooklyn had the most spoiled kids (by far). The next up on the spoiled list were kids in Miami, Fla., Minneapolis and Tulsa, Okla.

While right across the river…:

But on the list of least spoiled kids, St. Paul came in second…

Clearly, Saint Paul’s  politicians were raised in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak has been nominated for the “World Mayor” context:

Based in London, the [World Mayor] group says it is an “international think tank for local government, organizes the World Mayor Project and awards the World Mayor Prize.”

If Rybak wins, I think it’d be just deliciously ironic if a flash mob descended on the award ceremony and robbed and beat everyone there.

As far as the award itself?  Looking at the field…:

Rybak is one of five mayors in the North America category.

The other N.A. nominees are:

Régis Labeaume of Québec City, Canada

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore

John F Cook of El Paso

Cory Booker of Newark

…it looks like it might be as accurately tired “Toilet Mayor”.  Which may be why I’m not in public relations. \

It was a year ago today a tornado skittered through North Minneapolis, killilng one, injuring 30, and spreading damage throughout a neighborhood that didn’t need any more damaging.

Government sprang into action…

…and a year later, the neighborhood is still pocked with damage, with some damaged buildings still scattered about the place.

Congressional candidate Chrs Fields, writing in the Strib, takes Keith Ellison to task over the government’s response:

 A continual lack of focus by U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat representing the Fifth District, led to a failure in making the case for the North Side in Washington. Who else is there to make the case? Instead, Ellison focuses on issues in the Middle East concerning Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians. They are not the 99 percent of constituents, are they?

To be fair, at least North Minneapolis is free of Syrian tanks, so far.

To be honest, an Israeli bombing raid would probably get Representative Ellison’s attention better than his constituents’ calls.

Fields (with emphasis added):

We live in a political age when, if you live in a politically one-sided congressional district or state, an administrative department can afford to ignore you. Why? Because if a member is from a “safe district,” voters cannot punish the congressman for his neglect.

But if we were one of those “hotly contested” congressional districts or “swing states,” we not only would have gotten federal assistance promptly, it probably would have come with a marching band and a presidential visit.

Behold the exposed id of liberalism, and of the DFL.  As with the gay marriage debate – where one week liberal pols solemnly intone “we don’t play politics with civil rights”, and the next week they whinge about the President’s politics of civil rights harming their poll numbers – government is all about doing what it takes to get and keep power.

As a 21-year combat veteran of the Marines, I know that our community needs a combination of focused leadership and policy changes.

And again to be fair:  Ellison’s leadership is focused – on keeping Keith Ellison in the national media:  posturing intently over the Middle East, furrowing his brow at “Occupy” meetings, seeing his mug on MSNBC.

Dear North Minneapolis:  Are you better off the you were two, four and six years ago?

Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result – in this case, sending Keith Ellison to Washington.

Time to hope for some real change.

You want bipartisan action that actually benefits the taxpayer?

Here’s your chance.

There is one more chance to stop the Vikings Stadium and send the bill back to the Legislature; convince the Minneapolis City Council to vote against the larceny of their Convention Center budget.

There are two votes that are considered swing-y on this issue:

Ward 1 – Kevin Reich
(612) 673-2201
kevin.reich@minneapolismn.gov

Ward 10 – Meg Tuthill
Meg.Tuthill@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673-2210

Call ’em.  Politely ask them to reconsider the organized pillaging of the state Constitution and the Minnepolis city charter by Zygi Wilf and his well-heeled friends.

If we can win this, then we can get this back to the Legislature…

…where we can then tell our GOP legislative leadership to grow some cojones and tie the tax reform bill to the stadium, or not bother coming back to work in February.

There is opportunity, here.  Let’s make the most of it.