Contrast this ad with the scabrous, fact-free, ad-hominem tripe Alliance for a Better Minnesota was foisting on us over the past few weeks:

Who’s the actual governor, here?

I’ll be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything” show on KZFG “AM1100 The Flag” in Fargo at 6:35 Monday morning to talk about the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s role as a front for Dayton family money in trying to buy the election.

I’m including the UStream feed here:
Streaming live video by Ustream

And here’s the chat feed:

So tune in!  You can also listen via the AM1100 website. Call in at 888-598-8464, or email rob@sayanythingblog.com.

Tom Emmer is having a town hall meeting with restaurant and bar workers today.  It’s at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville, and the doors open at 2:30.  If you’re a restauranteur or publican, it’d be a great idea to be there early with bells on.  I’m trying to find if anyone is live-streaming the event.

Here’s what’s cool about the event; despite the fact that the whole “Tip Credit” kerfuffle is a manufactured controversy as the media tries to help the DFL run out the clock until Mark Dayton wins the primary, and that the whole fracas is a red herring (focusing on a virtual non-issue at a low level to ignore the larger point – that the Mininum Wage is a job killer, especially in hospitality, one of Minnesota’s most important industries), Tom Emmer isn’t shuffling away from the issue; he’s not trying to sweep it under the rug. 

He’s attacking it head on, like a defenseman checking the snot out of a winger. 

And if I know Tom Emmer, 100 people may walk into Ol’ Mexico unconvinced – and 75 will walk out converted, or at least saying “hmm – the guy’s got a point and, by the way, all that stuff Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota has been saying is crap“.

Because that’s Tom Emmer’s big strength; while he speaks in terms of principles – big-picture ideas that are easy for the DFL’s professional deceivers to pervert – he’s also the best politician in the state explaining to people, regular schmucks in the street, why those principles matter to them.  Why they keep jobs in their towns and money in their wallets.

I’m looking for Emmer to stomp the tip credit issue into history today (not that the DFL, media and leftyblogs won’t try to keep flogging it); more important, I’m looking for him to start showing people the truth behind the kerfuffle; cutting taxes, regulations and other bureaucratic overburden creates jobs, makes entrepreneurship viable, and brings more wealth to individual Minnesotans.

The sort of thing Chris Christie is doing in Jersey today.  The kind of thing Norm Coleman did in Paul and Brett Schundler did in Jersey City in the 1990s.  The kind of thing Ronald Reagan did for the whole nation thirty years ago.  The kind of thing that leaders do to make their cities, states and nations great.

Look for the DFL and media to bend over backwards to try to keep the word from getting out.

The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.

Can a little known newspaper publisher author a different ending for Tom Horner’s campaign?

If there truly exists a halfway point between gadfly and contender in the realm of politics, Independence Party gubernatorial hopeful Rob Hahn has staked his long-on-moxy and short-on-funds campaign on finding just such an electoral sweet spot. A distant undercard to the expensive heavyweight battle royale occuring on the DFL side of the ballot, the IP’s primary focus on promoting erstwhile liberal Republican Tom Horner has been complicated by the would-be William Randolph Hearst. 

While Hahn might be unknown to most voters (I passed one of the few visible signs of his campaign – a billboard near Rockford – this past week), the man claiming to be the “only real independent running for governor” has gained minor traction with the only section of the electorate paying close attention to politics in general – the media.  From announcing his running-mate selection, to calling on Horner to drop out of the race, and even his policy proposal of using riverboat gambling to enhance the state’s coffers, Hahn has been granted a level of legitimacy seemingly far surpassing his likely ability to wrest away the IP’s nod this August.  The real question may be why?

Part of the answer may have less to do with Hahn’s media background and more to do with an agenda that leans heavily on the credible side of his credible fringe candidate persona.  While Hahn’s riverboat gambling concept has received far more press than an idea that at best would only generate $400-600 million a year should get, Hahn has put forward solutions on the budget deficit that sound far more detailed than many of his opponents.  Hahn’s call alone for phasing out LGA funding and a 5-7% across-the-board cut in state government is more intricate and conservative than anything Tom Horner has publically committed to other than tax policies that are apparently to the left of even Matt Entenza.

But what may really fuel the coverage of Rob Hahn’s campaign is his willingness to attack Horner’s most publicized weakness – his unwillingness/inability to release his client list – coupled with the uncertainty of turnout for an August 10th Independence Party primary.

Horner’s lobbying with his now former firm Himle Horner has proven to be the bête noire of his campaign, leading even the Star Tribune to momentarily put down their promotion of Horner’s Republican past to wrap his knuckles over the lack of disclosure.  The issue is a classic political conundrum; Horner is legally bound to keep his clients’ identities hidden while the Strib and Hahn maintain every right to question the inherent conflicts of interest such a past entails.

Can such an issue – or any – prove powerful enough for Hahn to win?  It depends on how exactly hotly the primary will be.  The IP has come a long way since the dog days of the summer of 2000 when party officials publically worried that IP U.S. Senate nominee James Gibson might not be able to defeat the Harold Stassen of the environmental set, Leslie Davis, in the party’s primary (Davis was considered “strong” enough to be included in pre-primary polling questions).  A whopping 5,600 votes were cast that September between four candidates, leaving Gibson – and the party’s fledgling respectability – intact. 

Higher profile races since then have done little to drive turnout.  The IP’s 7 candidate U.S. Senate field in 2008 that featured former appointed Sen. Dean Barkley only saw 11,000 votes.  It would be little wonder then if at least a few political beat reporters believed Hahn capable of gaining the necessary 5,000 or 6,000 votes to pull off a mildly noticed upset.  With Horner and even long-time politicos like Doug Grow floating theories of cross-over mischief, such an outcome hasn’t been completely discounted.

More likely, Hahn’s wrath will be felt in 7-second MPR soundbites and tiny column inches buried in the metro section.  Enough perhaps to provide a respectable margin of defeat 30 days hence but not enough to provide the party’s biggest upset since their candidates wore feather boas.

GREETINGS MERCURY RISING “Reader”/”s”:  “Phoenix Woman”  (has anyone ever noticed that her and Ken “Avidor” Weiner have never been seen in the same place?) apparently thinks that any reference to Bradlee Dean is not only a) a wholehearted endorsement of every minute facet of his worldview, and b) since I am a Republican, proof that Bradlee Dean really really double-dog is is is is is an honest-to-Pete “GOP insider”.

And “her” “point” is that Dean and the “You Can Run…” crew aren’t really “obliquely involved in politics”.  Which I wrote because, in 2010, they were pretty, well, obliquely involved in politics.  Sure, they did a political talk show; but unless “Phoenix” can show us some evidence that Brad and Jake actually particpate and are involved in some sort of party activity on a regular basis, “she” is really talking out her ass – or as we conservative bloggers put it, “Phoenixing”.

Further proof that

a) if logic were gasoline, “Phoenix Woman” couldn’t drive around the inside of a cheerio, and

b) if you read Mercury Rising, you’ve either had  a stroke, or are trying to give yourself one.

On to the actual article

——–

With the backmarkers out of the way, it’s time to recognize the middle of the pack – the Minnesota conservatives that are the eleventh through twentieth most-hated by Minnesota liberals.

Just as explanation, I weighted all votes by their position on the voters’ lists.  Thus a first-place vote got ten points, second-place nine points, and so on down to tenth place, for a point.   I also calculated a “passion index”, which is just a fancy way of saying the average points the subject got per vote; the higher the “passion index”, the more high-point votes the subject got.  Rankings are in descending order of point totals.

So without further ado, here we go!

20. King Banaian: My long-time NARN cohost, conservative economist and candidate for the Minnesota House in district 15B, Banaian squeaked onto the Top 20 with three votes and the second-lowest passion index in the group, barely ahead of Erik Paulsen.  I suspect he’ll do much better in the election this fall.

19. AM1280 The Patriot: The station that broadcasts such controversial fare as Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved – also the NARN – is hated by many for being a dissenter at all.

18. Taxpayers League of Minnesota: The group behind the “No New Taxes” pledge, the TPLoMN has been blamed for everything from the 35W bridge collapse to full wastebaskets in state offices. Tied for the highest passion index in the 11-20 group.

17. Bradlee Dean: Host of “Sons of Liberty”, minister at the controversial “You Can Run ButYou Can Not Hide” street ministry, and Andy Birkey’s constant stalkee, the regional leftymedia has turned Dean into a strawman representing all that is evil about Minnesota conservatism, notwithstanding the fact that he’s only tangentially involved in politics.

16. Scott Johnson: The Powerline blogger pummels lefty figures from Dan Rather all the way down to Nick Coleman without breaking a sweat.  Liberals hate that.

15. Rep. John Kline: He wins the Second District with the same kinds of margins Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison get in the Fourth and Fifth.  Unlike the dim McCollum and the always-frothing Ellison, Kline is a competent congressman.

14. Rep. Laura Brod: One voter commented “the left hates conservative women more than anything”, and Laura Brod has become one of the strongest figures in Minnesota conservatism – a “prairie Sarah Palin”, said one voter.  And that adds up to votes!  Youtube videos of her running verbal rings around DFLers in the house are a favorite among Minnesota conservatives.  Lefties hate fun.

13. John Hinderaker: My NARN cohost and Powerline contributor is widely, but mildly, detested; he got the most votes of anyone in the 11-20 group, but also drew the lowest passion index – lower than his blog partners Johnson and Mirengoff, lower even than Banaian or his NARN 1 co-host Brian Ward.  This is, however, a great base from which to improve for next year.

12. Phil Krinkie: Former “Doctor No” of the legislature and then head of the Taxpayers’ League, Krinkie has stood in the way of DFL spending, which is like getting in a Christian’s path to heaven, or a Packer fan’s access to beer – it’ll get people exercised.

11. Carol Molnau: Pawlenty’s lieutenant governor and former Transportation Commisioner, Molnau has been conservative and female – two words that act on liberals like holy water on vampires.

Tomorrow at noon – the Top Ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals hate!

Earlier this week, I took a poll – what Minnesota conservatives do Minnesota liberals hate the most? 

I collected responses via the comment section, my facebook page, and email – and got a pretty fair bunch of responses.  There were some surprises and at least a couple of foregone conclusions.

I’m going to publish 11-20 over the noon hour today, and 1 through 10 over noon tomorrow. 

But first, I’m going to give some recognitionto that mass of Minnesota conservatives that give Minnesota’s liberal establishment just a little to hate.  These are the people and institutions that got one vote each:

• The DFL – One wag apparently believes the left believes Minnesota’s dominant party is liberalism’s worst enemy.
• The Cans – No idea.
• All Minnesota Conservatives
• Mitch Pearlstein – Longtime head of the Center of the American Experiment
• Bill Cooper – Former MNGOP chair, CEO of TCF Bank, and pwner of Nick Coleman.
• Cosmo Insolocco – No idea.
• Mary Kiffmeyer – the former MN Secretary of State was a lightning rod for…ACORN.
• Freedom
• Pat Anderson – The former and future State Auditor
• Mac Hammond – The megaminister from Maple Grove
• Brian Sullivan – Tim Pawlenty’s convention opponent in 2002, and arguably the person we can thank for the conservatism of Pawlenty’s administration.
• Denny Hecker
• Conservative Bloggers – should be self-explanatory.
• Tony Sutton – The current chair of the Minnesota GOP
• Randy Kelly – Former Saint Paul DFL mayor who doomed his shot at a second term by endorsing George W. Bush in 2004.
• Regular Coffee
• Alan Quist – the first hardcore social conservative I can remember in Minnesota politics; endorsed for governor in 1990, he lost to Arne Carlson in the primary.
• Learned Foot – former Kool Aid Report blogger.
• Marty Seifert – Tom Emmer’s convention opponent and, now that he’s suddenly not running for office, a “reasonable, common-sense Republican” to all the DFLers that were calling him an extremist two months ago.
• Henry Ford
• Tom Pritchard – longtime chair of the Minnesota Family Council
• Kermit – blogger from Anti-Strib
• Rod Grams – former one-term Senator
• The Suburbs
• Captain America

Congratulations to everyone on the list that’s, er, human.

Now, the people with more than one vote, with their standings in the final poll:

30.  Katie Kieffer: The blogger, former college-press gadfly and up-and-coming pundit got two votes, including from one voter who added every conservative woman she could think of; “that’s who they really hate…”

29. Swiftee:  The of Bruce Springsteen of button-pushing, the Charlie Parker of chain-yanking, perhaps the most banned person among Twin Cities leftyblogs, the only surprise is that he didn’t come in in the top twenty.

28. Twila Brase:  Tireless healthcare crusader and my neighbor.

27. Entrepreneurs: Except when they can serve as ATMs for social spending, of course.

26. Joe Soucheray: Souch’s social curmudgeonism is often called “conservative”, and it was certainly something Minnesota liberals detested.

25. Tracy Eberly: Three years past the “Dirt-Worshipping Heathens” flap, Tracy still gets ’em frothing.

24. The Tea Partier: The “boogeyman” of the Minnesota left.

23. Paul Mirengoff: Not a Minnesotan, but when groupblogs got votes, I spread the votes among their contributors, and Powerline got two group votes.  Which is also why…

22.  Brian “Saint Paul” Ward got on the list as well.  My long-time NARN co-host scored two votes as  a member of the NARN.

21.  Rep. Erik Paulsen: With three votes, Paulsen is the only Republican in Minnestoa’s congressional delegation not to make the top twenty with a bullet.  As it were.

Top Twenty coming up at noon!

Eric Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project complains about John Kline:

Kline is notorious for rarely if ever appearing in public.  Kline only appears at events where the contact is either with pre-screened, conservative-only audiences or the questions are screened in advance.  Kline doesn’t debate.

Either do Keith Ellison – a prickly little man who can’t tolerate dissent – or Betty McCollum, who would be overmatched  debating Anna Nicole Smith.

Pusey is writing on behalf of “Powers“, the DFL’s endorsed victim in the 2nd CD.  Powers, a construction worker who beat Shelly Madore in the “unified” DFL in the 2nd CD, is on his way to getting maybe 30% this November.

“Plus, we’re getting lots of hits on our website after every parade or event,” he continued.  “People are checking me out further after they first meet me.”

To be honest, I’d like to see debates in every district for every race – but I can see why Kline doesn’t take the chance in a district where he has a crushing advantage, in a city where the media will wrench everything he says out of context.

Not sure that Ellison and McCollum have the same excuse…

As noted last week, my pal and radio colleague Ed Morrissey made it onto the list of the top 100 conservatives the left loves to hate. Morrissey earned his #49 spot, beating out Governor Pawlenty (#86) and Ted Nugent (who cares).  Glenn Beck was the winner, naturally, with the usual suspects – Limbaugh, Rove, Hannity, Malkin, Savage – up at the top of the list (and, oddly, the not-very-conservative, liberal-friendly David Frum at 99).

But it started me to thinking:  Who are the most hated conservatives in Minnesota?  Who does the leftysphere in Minnesota detest more than anything?

Thus, it’s time for a poll.  Everyone give me up to your top ten Minnesota conservatives that Minnesota liberals love to hate, in descending order – in other words, put your “Most Hated” at #1, the tenth most hated at #10.  I’ll use your rankings to weight the results.

I want everyone to vote – conservatives, liberals, don’t cares, Tea Partiers, Libertarians, the works.  Just leave me your top ten, either in the comments or at the email address “feedbackinthedark”, which is a Yahoo dot com email address.

You have until Thursday midnight to get your votes in.  This post will likely be bumped up or reprised during the week.

Mike Maguire, the DFL mayor of the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan, is

Hoping to preserve “the sanity of our citizens and the beauty of our community,” Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire called on candidates of all political stripes to pledge not to clutter his and other communities with unnecessary political campaign signs through the whole summer.

Maguire, who is running for reelection in November, was disappointed to return home from a family visit this weekend only to see his city already posted with campaign signs for candidates with no elections until November.

“It’s not even the 4th of July yet! Its just too early,” said the Mayor, “Through the summer these signs serve no real purpose but to clutter up our community and subject our citizens to a whole summer of political signage.”

I have a hunch his motive might be a tad more cynical than that; Eagan’s two House and one Senate seats fell to DFLers during the past two elections – but second-tier suburbs like Eagan (where AM1280 The Patriot, the station that broadcasts my show, is located) are hotbeds of the Tea Party in Minnesota.   Eagan’s seats are prime opportunities for GOP pickups this fall.

And the best way to prevent that, if you’re a DFL mayor, is to make sure your citizens aren’t aware that there are any challengers until the last possible moment.

It’s hard to look at the MN House of Representatives’ own wrapup of the 2010 session (WARNING:  PDF

How can the first paragraph of this press release be read as anything other than a complete and total vindication of Governor Pawlenty’s budget stance last year? 

 Despite court challenges and ceaseless partisan attacks, he held firm until the DFL itself introduced the very law that not only ratified the un-allotments but made even MORE cuts in programs intended to help poor people, the heartless bastards!

 The media is already working hard to try to slander Pawlenty’s legacy.  It’s because if more people nationwide knew the real Pawlenty story, he’d be a headache for the Democrats nationwide.

Last week, we discussed the media flap over what amounts, in the end, to Tom Emmer’s not releasing details on how he plans to change Minnesota government until he actually has an opponent.

Politics In Minnesota Weekend summed up the details:

On Monday, Tom Scheck reported a piece for MPR that digs into Emmer’s publicly stated plans to downsize state government.

The Emmer campaign responds via an “Emmer Truth” section of its website, implying that claims made by Sheck’s story are inaccurate and cherry-picked.

Enter Dave Mindeman (mnpACT!) and Eric Black (MinnPost), who call EmmerTruth “pretty weak” and “winging it.” Jon Tevlin at the Strib also gets his two cents in, basically repeating the cries for Emmer to get specific.

Mitch Berg (Shot in the Dark) and Gary Gross (Let Freedom Ring) hit back, generally with two points: Scheck’s and Black’s reports wereinaccurate/mangled the context, and it’s a legitimate and sensible strategy for Team Emmer not to give up the “master plan” so early in the campaign season.

Charlie Quimby (Across the Great Divide) comments on Berg’s blog: “I think if you put Emmer’s full statement in front [of] 100 voters, not many would find it definitive or conclusive or clarified.” And Berg in reply: “As to how 100 random users would perceive Emmer’s statement … I don’t disagree; presentation counts … But is it the media’s job to relate the actual facts, or to reinforce confusion?”

A terrific question, if a little antagonistic in the wording.

Antagonistic?  Moi?

The piece, by…well, I never got the name, but it’s someone on the Politics In Minnesota staff – summed up the issues pretty well, so far.

But perhaps more to the point, there was nothing confusing in the MPR piece. In fact, both EmmerTruth and the conservative blogs skip the entire point of Scheck’s reporting while digging around in the semantics: Emmer, as a candidate, has promised major redesigns of government, but the programs and agencies he’s highlighted so far are playing with thousands or millions of dollars, not billions. The “could not should” distinction is sort of absurd.

To be fair to Gary and I, we were reacting to the presenting issue; we had leftybloggers and the media chanting “Emmer said he’d hack a third of State Government!”. 

But the real issue is the beef.

Now, to most of the Twin Cities media, that question is…:

 If the media’s job is to relate actual facts, then it’s perfectly reasonable — no, responsible — for the media to ask Emmer, the candidate for Minnesota’s highest office, what he would do if elected. If the answer is, for now, that he’s not sure, then it’s the media’s responsibility to say so.

True. 

But it’d be useful for the media to also note that Dayton (and Kelliher, Entenza and Horner’s, not that it matters) plans are no more articulate; if Emmer is saying “Cut Cut Cut!”, as John Tevlin wrote, then the Four Stooges are responding “Tax Tax Tax!”, with no more articulation.

I hate to repeat myself, but I think I summed up my most serious response to this in my response to Erik Black last week:

Black:  And [Emmer] owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)

Let me get this straight:  the DFL candidates have been “unclear”, but Emmer “owes” everyone an explanation now …?

Why does the MinnPost hold Republicans to a different standard than the DFL?

When Mark Dayton and the other three soon-to-be-chum contenders appear on Midmorning with Keri Miller, will Miller press any of them for details on how their “Tax, Baby, Tax!” agenda is going to lead to more (non-public-employee union) jobs?  How they lead to recovery?  How they will defy history by actually improving the economy?

Will Nick Coleman and John Tevlin and Lori Sturdevant demand more details amid their inevitable victorian vapours?

Will Erik Black and Tom Scheck write pieces noting how vague they’re being?

So there are two questions for everyone that’s demanding answers from Emmer, the Tom Schecks and Erik Blacks and John Tevlins and Charlie Quimbies:

1. Where is the scrutiny of Dayton and the other three?  The double standard was plain as day in the Black quote above; why do you, as a group, observe it?  Or does supporting the status quo (only more of it) get one a pass with the media?
2. I asked this before, I’ll ask it again:  What is in it for Emmer to put his entire platform out there six weeks before the DFL has a candidate, for the DFL-leaning media to spin and soften up while the DFL goes through its primary contortions?  How would that benefit Emmer and the MNGOP in their quest to win the race?  Because this race isn’t about making the media’s job easier, or making the DFL’s job easier; it’s about saving Minnesota.  Why does Emmer “owe” Minnesota any more than his opponents do?

 A listening tour is a fine populist idea, but with Minnesota accumulating red ink in Deepwater Horizon-like volumes, a candidate — from any party — should be able to talk state finances in real terms. We don’t buy the idea that campaigns for office build policy proposals around a master plan that remains absolutely secret until the last possible moment.

“Last possible moment?”  Of course not.   What’s unreasonable about waiting until he faces the real opponent, as opposed to the opponent’s legions of ringers?  Because Mark Dayton isn’t his only, or even his most serious, opponent in this race.

The Tea Party and the avalanche of dissatisfaction that are at Emmer’s back are driven by a fairly articulate demand for real answers; if Emmer doesn’t do better than the “Tax Baby Tax!” crowd, that’ll be a big problem.

I”m pretty comfortable he will have the goods on August 11, when Mark Dayton finally starts his campaign.

Back during Desert Storm, Saturday Night Live – which still had Phil Hartmann, Dennis Miller, Jan Hooks and Dana Carvey, and was hence still funny at the time – parodied one of the military press conferences that were such a staple of the coverage of that war, way back when.

In it, a stoic military officer (played, if I remember correctly, by Kevin Nealon) stood, trying to remain unruffled, as “journalists” asked a series of increasingly absurd questions:

REPORTER:  “Tell us, Colonel:  what will be the targets, strike times and units involved in any air raids today?” 

OFFICER:  “Um, I am afraid I can’t, er, discuss that…”

ANOTHER REPORTER:  “Colonel, when exactly will the ground attack take place, and where?”

OFFICER:  “Um…”

The media’s coverage of Tom Emmer’s gubernatorial campaign reminds me of that skit.

I noticed this bit in Erik Black’s piece in the MinnPost that I covered yesterday (and that Black’s old colleague John Tevlin, in true “Circle The Wagons!” style, also covers today, in nearly identical thoughts if not words):

[Emmer] owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)

I asked yesterday – Emmer “owes” the people “straight talk”, while the DFLers merely get a mild joshing nod?

Still, I’ve heard this from a few people; “If Emmer’s so great, and if he’s going to rebuild government, then where is his master plan on how he’s going to do the whole thing?”

I gotta confess sometimes, I”m curious myself.

But it doesn’t take a political consultant or an especially curious journalist to see that…:

1. We are still two months away from having a DFL candidate.
2. We do, however, have a huge pool of establishment journalists, “alternative” media figures who are dying for material, and…
3. …a legion of DFL hacks and flacks whose mission it is to try to take the battle to Tom Emmer during these two months, to try to derail any momentum he builds while the Dems are noodling around with their primary process (and, let’s be honest, most of the “establishment” media in #2 above is at the very least sympathetic with, if not actively working to promote at some level, the DFL).

So with that in mind, tell me – what sense would it make for Tom Emmer to release “the master plan” for his administration, two months before there is an alternative to compare it to?  All that would do is give the DFL and the media (that is, let’s be honest, largely on the DFL’s side) time to define, frame, and re-spin it, long before the Dems ever have a candidate, much less a “plan” to “scrutinize”.  Which I put in scare quotes, since I’m not willing to take it on faith that anyone in the Twin Cities’ establishment media will “scrutinize” the DFL’s “plan” so much as run cover for it; that’ll be, as usual, the job of the conservative alternative media.

What’s Emmer’s plan?  I dunno.  His rhetoric is certainly building up expectations; if he’s not swinging for the fence, he’s at least aiming for the outfield. He’s be nuts not to, in my humble opinion; this is a year when people want to see results, and are showing everyone who cares how sick they are of arrogant, rapacious, thud-witted goverment and the bills it leaves us.

But is he wrong to sit on that plan until it matters?  Even if , horror of horrors, it leaves the state’s chattering classes and the designers of the DFL’s Chanting Points less material for the time being?

I’ll give you my answer when I see Mark Dayton’s plan.

(more…)

Back during the 2008 race, a local leftyblogger called the NARN in a state of high-dudgeon over my statemenat Erik Paulsen was running a conservative campaign for the Third Congressional District.

The caller bellowed “You’re a Liar!!!”, which is leftyblogger-speak for “I disagree with you, but I can’t coherently articulate why”.

My point at the time:  the “Conventional Wisdom” (a fancy term for “the current of thought among the DFL and their friends in academia and the media”) was saying that the Third was “purple”, and that any Republican hoping to win would have to “run to the center” and be a “moderate Republican” (which is again DFL/media/academic code for “willing stooge of the DFL”) a la the departing moderate Jim Ramstad to have any hope of riding out the rising Obama tide – and yet Paulsen was solidly center-right on all the issues that mattered.

So it’s kinda fun to look at the American Conservative Union ratings of our current House delegation.   Betty McCollum, Al Franken, Keith Ellison all get “0” on a 1-100 scale; Oberstar and Walz tie at a nearly-Trotskyite “4”.

On the other hand, Michele Bachmann has a lifetime “100”;  “Extremist” John Kline also dialed up a 100 this past year, better than his lifetime rating of a thoroughly respectible 88…

…which happens to be exactly the same as Paulsen’s rating this past year.

Which is twenty points better than Jim Ramstad’s rating of 67.

Further proof that the only real information comes from the right.

 There are two ways to look at today’s PiPress/Horner “Decision Resources” poll.

One of them is accurate.

Option 1:  The sky really is falling in on the Emmer campaign, and Tom Horner – a government insider whose very face screams “slick operator” – really did post a nine point gain by selecting a nobody for a running mate and promising to raise taxes in the most anti-tax year in Minnesota memory.  Honest.

Option 2:  Worried that actual reputable polls were showing Emmer pulling into leads over all three DFL stooges and the would-be spoiler Horner, alarmed by a record surge in MNGOP voter ID and trying to forestall wholesale demoralization among a DFL rank and file that has to look forward to  two more months of brutal campaigning followed by getting behind one of three of the least interesting characters in recent Minnesota political history,  the left – Horner and the DFL – commissioned a fairly transparently bogus poll to keep their troops’ morale up.

I’m gonna bank on #2.

So is the MNGOP, who has just filed a complaint in the past hour with the campaign finance board over the fishy-looking conflicts of interest between Horner and the polling organization involved in the PiPress poll. 

Relax, conservatives.  The Minnesota Left is calling in its markers with the consulting class and the media.  They’re doing it because Emmer scares the crap out of them.

In the 2000 Presidential election, it’s entirely possible that George W. Bush was put into office by Ralph Nader, who stole just enough votes from the radical fringe of the left to make it close enough for the freakish electoral college result we got.

And it’s very likely that we dodged the spectre of “Governor Hatch” because mushy liberal Dean Barkley squatted on enough moderate-left votes to keep Governor Pawlenty in office.  Thank God.

The Dems would very much like to repay the favor.  The Indyparty candidate this year, Tom Horner, is a former Republican – in the same way that Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger were Republicans. 

Only worse. 

And while the media has been strongly hinting to undecided conservative voters that “Horner is the moderate Republican”, Derek “Chief” Brigham at Freedom Dogs has been following the Horner candidacy with a two-part series (One and Two) running down Horner’s supporters.

Hint: with his years as a “PR consultant”, it’s mostly big-government special interests, including the MN Vikings (although as the Strib noted in an editorial last weekend, we dont’ knwo for sure – Horner’s firm “Himle and Horner” won’t release a client list), and big-government “Republicans” like Carlson.  And the DFL, naturally. 

Which means Horner is not only no more “conservative” or “fiscally responsible” than the most crack-whore-with-a-stolen-Gold-cardish DFLer, it also means Horner is a raft of conflicts of interests.

“But wait a minute, Berg – Emmer’s a lawyer!  He might have represented people who might give him a conflict of interest if he’s elected!”   Well, no – there are fairly strict rules for lawyers when it comes to conflict of interest; the rules are a lot less clear-cut for PR flaks. 

And it doesn’t matter.  Horner will get three percent of the vote, and the Independence Party will likely lose major-party status this year.  The DFL and Media’s (ptr) only interest in the subject is to make sure that those three percent come more from Emmer than from one of the Three Stooges.

Because they’ll need all the help they can get.

I read a Tweet from State Senator Taryll Clark, the endorsed DFL candiate running against Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District this fall.

The Bachmann Agenda: More media less legislation

And I thought I should thank Senator Clark for illuminating the difference between liberals and conservatives as thoroughly as anyone possibly could.

Do we judge our legislators by how much legislative manure they shovel through the grinder?  Or can we go for something a little deeper?

The tweet linked to this bit on her website:

Minnesota congresswoman and conservative darling Michele Bachmann has mastered the art of bypassing the mainstream media in favor of more ideologically friendly outlets, according to a long profile in today’s Washington Post.

Oh, goodness.  We’re back to that old chestnut?  Goody.

The first time this accusation came out – from Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent”, no less – that Rep. Bachmann shied away from liberal news outlets and favored conservative ones, I took the liberty of asking RT Rybak, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Dane Smith and a few other prominent DFLers to come on the Northern Alliance – the Twin Cities’ flagship conservative media outlet.  Only Smith and Rybak appeared and, for that matter, paid us the courtesy of a response.

So since Taryll Clark is so into across-the-aisle communication, I invite her to come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I.  We’ll talk for 30-60 minutes.  It’ll be fun – ask RT Rybak!  I’ll make sure she gets this invite, but if you’re a member of Sen. Clark’s staff (or one of her St. Cloud-area gadflies), feel free to forward my cordial and sincere invitation.

But that appears to have come at the expense of her legislative activities.

Washington’s got all kinds of legislators who shovel legislative manure into the hopper.  Bachmann is leading a movement, and doing spectacularly well at it.

And if Bachmann beats Clark by less than eight points in November, I’ll be amazed.

Arne looks to be Revered.

During the 1980s, the growth in state government exceeded the growth in people’s paychecks by 15 percent.  Since then we have frozen the number of state employees, held the growth of government to the growth in personal income, implemented a wage freeze, and cut welfare for able-bodied adults…

In the process, we quickly became the target of nearly every entrenched and powerful spending system in Minnesota.  And as we were being attacked by all the forces that resists change – it was then that I knew we were doing something right.  — Gov. Arne Carlson’s 1994 State of the State Address

As former Governor Arne Carlson begins his much media ballyhooed “Paul Revere Tour” doing largely what he’s done for the past eight years – needle the Pawlenty administration – it’s not hard to look back at his 1994 comments and wonder which “side” the Arne Carlson of the 90’s would view his 2010 doppleganger.

Whether Carlson’s tour caused him to be revered or tarred and feathered, the former governor is indirectly experiencing his largest political relevance since leaving office.  Between the candidaces of self-described “former Republican” Tom Horner and former Carlson finance director Jon Gunyou, Arne’s old “Independent-Republican” brand (which the party called itself from 1974-1995) will be a subject of hot political debate and historical revisionism.

But how much are Carlson and others engaging in euphoric recall?  For most of Carlson’s eight years, the relationship between the chief executive’s office and the legislature looked as cozy as an Israeli/PLO summit.  Despite Carlson’s recent shot that Pawlenty “lacks leadership” due to his vetoes and inability to compromise with the DFL legislature, it’s Carlson who maintains the lead in the veto count.  In fact, it’s not even close as Pawlenty’s 96 vetoes are dwarfed by Carlson’s record 179.

Until at least 1998, when Carlson’s State of the State address read like an heiress’ shopping list amid his bid to buy a legacy, Arne had a far different reputation that his current incarnation as putting the ‘I’ in ‘IR’.  The Beta version of Arne Carlson was known by his liberal opponents as a tax-cutter, a supporter of vouchers, and a proponent of reducing funding to cities and counties.  He publicly rebuked the federalism of HillaryCare, decrying the would-be mandates on the states.  Carlson even tepidly backed the idea of a TABOResque constitutional amendment that would require voter approval before raising taxes.  Combined with his penchent for spending, especially later in his term, Arne’s dig at Pawlenty that “what the governor wants to do is to say no to taxes, yes to spending” seems apt to describe Carlson’s tenure as well.

Arne Carlson and his current supporters can definitely argue that circumstances were different in the 1990s when he professed such conservative positions, although Minnesota (like most of the nation) saw largely languid growth and recession for most of Carlson’s first four or so years in office.  But what may truly gall Carlson is that his Republican predecessors actually believe the rhetoric Carlson and his IR-brand of Republicanism once spouted.

Despite the invective hurled at Carlson during most of his term by the very same political and media institutions that now champion his public criticisms, most of the fiscally conservative positions that Carlson took were politically expedient. Rhetoric towards smaller government, tighter welfare rules and tax cuts were not just en vogue for most of the 1990s, but politically necessary for a governor viewed as boardline illegitimate by activists in both major parties.

Democrats and conservative Republicans groused at Carlson’s last-minute entry into the 1990 governor’s race following Jon Grunseth’s attempt at a Hot Tub Time Machine that would get him under the swimsuits of three teenaged girls. From the-then Republican perspective, Carlson had already lost the endorsement and the primary to Grunseth and had been trying to undermine the party with a write-in candidacy in the general election. 

Democrats hated that Carlson had narrowly beaten incumbent Rudy Perpich despite only being in the campaign for days and tried to steamroll Carlson’s early days, forcing a number of vetoes. Thus for Carlson, while it could be argued whether or not he viewed fiscal conservatism as good policy, it was certainly good politics.

16 years after his political highwater mark, Carlson still knows how to practice good politics – at least for himself.  Gaining nothing by defending Pawlenty or the GOP, which would in essence be defending many of same fiscal practices and positions he said he held while governor, Carlson can hold some media limelight by embracing his former opposition.  Whether that involves doing political gymnastics worthy of Nadia Comaneci – from now backing nationalized health care, to his views on vetoes and budget shifts – perhaps matters little.

Carlson believed he was fighting the status quo in 1994 and still believes it today.  Considering the Minnesota budget has expanded since he left office from $10 billion to $34 billion, Arne might seriously wish to question if he’s fighting for or against the dominant attitudes in St. Paul.

Last week, someone asked “what about Rochester”.

Interesting questions.

The “Big Three” – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth – are interesting cases in that they have all been run by more-or-less DFL-dominated regimes for all of recent memory; the Norm Coleman/Randy Kelly years in Saint Paul were an anomaly in that you had moderate DFLers (Coleman eventually became a Republican) running the show. 

All three cities have been represented by various flavors of DFL – from moderate to crypto-maoist, with a huge “progressive” preponderance – at all levels, from Washington DC all the way down to city council.

Rochester is a lot more interesting.  It’s a stereotypically Republican town – although it certainly has a powerful DFL involved in the city and region’s politics, being represented by Tim Walz as part of the First Congressional District.

 And Rochester gets significant Local Government Aid – although in 2009 it amounted to $71 per Rochester resident, as opposed to $343 per Duluther.

But the big difference is in population:  Rochester is actually the third-largest city in Minnesota now, and has grown 14% during the Pawlenty years, as the Twin Cities grew slightly and Duluth shrank.

As a result – while the Twin Cities “tax Capacity” has been fairly stagnant (less due to collapsing property values than to the fact that the Cities have no place to grow; surrounded by ‘burbs, they can’t annex anything), while Rochester’s has grown 53% during Pawlenty’s administration.

Rochester is expanding physically, of course, and that helps the tax base (and helped shrink the city’s LGA by about 30% during the Pawlenty years).  But the demand for the space it has is growing, and the health of the local and regional economy plays a role; the city wouldn’t be expanding if there weren’t jobs for people to do.

 Correlation doesn’t equal causation – but the fact that Rochester has a functional two-party government certainly can’t hurt its prosperity, compared with the stagmant one-party miasma of the Twin Cities.

Still – notwithstanding the fact that Local Government Aid, which was instituted to help move money from the state’s wealthy urban/suburban areas to the stagnant outstate area (call it “municipal welfare”), it currently awards the state’s Big Four cities, where just over one in five Minnesotans live…

…with well over half of the Local Government Aid…

…which means twice as much Local Government aid per resident goes to Duluth, the Twins and Rochester…

…as to the rest of the state, even with Rochester’s proportion shrinking by almost a third.

——–

On a related note, someone from the League of Minnesota Cities has been discussing my series on Twitter.  He notes that LGA has not risen or fallen in a straight line over the Pawlenty years; if you look at LGA statewide and for individual cities, it bounced up and down quite a bit. 

That is a fact. It also doesn’t change my conclusions, which are…

• …that for all the left’s caterwauling about Pawlenty “leaving a mess” after eight years by cutting LGA, that local governments have seized far more of this state’s wealth via property tax hikes than they ever lost from LGA cuts, and…
• …even if you accepted the initial necessity of a “municipal welfare” program like LGA to transfer wealth from the once-wealthy Metro to the once-stagnant-to-impoverished Greater Minnesota, the program has reversed itself, and become a program to launder the profligate spending of the Metro DFL through the rest of the state’s taxpayers, as well as…
• …a political cudgel the DFL uses to squeeze voters, by simultaneously holding hostage programs that directly impact the taxpayer (firefighters, libraries) even as they jack property taxes far beyond any actual LGA cuts

Most worrisome?  If a DFL governor is elected and the DFL retains control of both houses of the Legislature, you know that while the Metro’s property taxes will not budge significantly downward, the statewide taxes to cover the promised “restoration” of LGA (with “cost of living” increases) will zoom upward for all Minnesotans as well. 

Thursday – what about the parts of the state that don’t get in on the LGA gravy train?

In the first three parts of this series, I showed that the example of government fiscal starvation Jeff Rosenberg used in his plaintive plea for more Local Government Aid (LGA) – Brainerd shutting off some of its streetlights – was not borne out by the numbers.  I also showed that the DFL’s claim that cities are raising property taxes to make up for LGA cuts isn’t even half the truth – indeed, it’s more like 1/7th the truth, as property tax levy increases have outstripped LGA cuts by a factor of 7.5 to 1  – and that’s after Governor Pawlenty’s “unallotment”, without which the disparity would have been more like 16 to 1.

On Tuesday, we’ll be looking at LGA in Greater Minnesota – on the many, many cities that get no LGA, and on one city that receives it, but has run its fiscal shop much more responsibly than the DFL-clogged Big Three cities.

That’s next week.

For today, though, I just want to answer some questions.

A couple of people, on blogs and in the comment sections, sniffed “but you’re not controlling for inflation”, with one suggesting if I didn’t use constant dollars the whole exercise was moot. 

Inflation is a factor, and as I noted people need to take it into account when considering the numbers. 

But as I noted the other day, property tax levies have risen 59% in the past eight years.   Even with the cuts to LGA, the total amount of LGA plus levies has risen 34%. 

Inflation during the same period was 21.94%.

“But the government inflation rate is higher!” 

Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?  Government is more expensive than most things – mostly due to labor.  The median government job pays much better than the median private sector job; add in benefits, and the fact that government is the most-unionized sector of the economy (thus immune to the salary contraction that we in the private sector have dealt with in recent years. and “government inflation is higher” is a key reason to cut, not raise, the amount we spend on them.

And it brings up a key question that ties into liberals and conservatives’ views on what government really is: should government be immune to hard times in the private sector?  More to the point – should the taxpayer be required to keep government immune at all costs, when they themselves are suffering in a way that government employees are not?

This will be an especially important question next year, when the current “recovery” grinds to a halt under the avalanche of new Obama administration taxes; indeed, stagnancy or a double-dip recession will likely be tied directly to the growth and voracity of government.

So not only is the complaint about inflation numbers wrong, but it completely avoids the real point; government should not be immune to hard times in the rest of the economy.  Government is not a family member that we are obligated to support; it is at best an employee.  Not much different than the millions that are getting laid off, although the worst government can expect is that they’ll get a pay cut, and it’ll be temporary, and that when things do turn around (when the grownups are in control again), they’ll bounce back just fine.

More next week.

There are a little over five million Minnesotans. 

About 4.3 million of them live in “cities” of widely-varying sizes and government types, from plucky Montevideo up to metropolitan Minneapolis, from conservative Mound to neo-Wobbly Duluth.

These cities have a few things in common.  They levy property taxes to pay part of their municipal bills – and many of them spent much of the past forty years laundering their spending through the state via “Local Government Aid”. 

In their approach to the next election and the run-up to this November (which, for the DFL, will almost surely be as  much a matter of running against Pawlenty as anything), the DFL is banging on the ideas that…:

• cuts to Local Government Aid shredded budgets and gutted infrastructure throughout Minnesota, and
• Minnesota cities need to “pay their way”.

So let’s look at how Minnesota “pays its way”, according to data from the League of Minnesota Cities.

From 2002 to 2009,. Local Government Aid to all Minnesota cities fell 15%. 

 You might ask “what about the changes between 2002 and 2009?”  It’d be a fair question; while I am focusing on the big picture here – the gross movement during the Pawlenty Administrion, the fact is that LGA started at $564 million in 2002, dropped to $464 million in 2003, dipped into the $430-million range through ’05, and held in the $480-millions until 2009, when the original amount ballooned back up to $526 million, before Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment shaved it back into teh $481 million range, roughly where it’d been throughout his second term.

But check out the second line – the total property tax levies from all cities.  In every year of the Pawlenty Administration, they rose by at least $100 million. 

As a result, while total LGA was off 15%, or about $83 million, for the period (and maybe $3 since the start of Pawlenty’s second term, even with unallotment and the removal of the “Minnesota Value Homestead Credit” (in which the state stopped paying cities and counties back for a credit on taxes for high-value homes – which affected suburbs with high property values vastly more than the Big Three cities of Minneaoplis, St. Paul and Duluth – of which more in a bit.

Those numbers are for all cities.   And throughout Minnesota, hikes outstripped cuts by a factor of 7.5 to 1 (683 milion to 85 million), even after unallotment.

Now, let’s look at the Big Three – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.

Minneapolis’ population grew by 2% during the Pawlenty years – while property tax levies rose 93% to cover a post-allotment drop of 28% in LGA payments; the city’s total revenue zoomed up 35% during the Pawlenty years.  Hikes outstripped LGA cuts by almost 4 to 1.

 Saint Paul didn’t fare quite as well; nearly doubling the property tax levy to its stagnant population  only compensated the 22% drop in LGA with an overall quarter hike in LGA/property tax revenue.  Hikes outstripped cuts by almost 3 to 1.

 Duluth’s LGA, with unallotment, dropped by one percent over the Pawlenty Administration, and supplies more of the city’s budget than the property tax levies – which rose 70% – do.  Note that while Local Government Aid was virtually unchanged even with Pawlenty’s unallotment, and the loss of MVHC revnues had little effect given the city’s depressed housing values, property taxes went from about a third of the total LGA/tax venue mix to a little less than half; the overall take rose by 15%, even though Duluth’s population shrank.

So let’s compare the state’s Big Three cities with the rest of the state.

The population of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth grew by about a percent during the Pawlenty years, while all the rest of Minnesota’s cities grew by 8% – greater than the population of Saint Paul.  The Big Three cities’ state of the state’s population shrank by 1.2%, to just under 18% – less than one in five Minnesotans:

 But how do the finances break out?

The big three, even with a 22% post-unallotment cut, get a third of the state’s Local Government Aid – double the population’s proportion of the revenues:

Divided up by resident, this means that residents of the Big Three get, even after the unallotment cuts, two and a half times as much Local Government Aid per-capita than the rest of the state’s cities.

And the Big Three’s property tax revenue hikes – 93%,  almost $164 million over the Pawlenty years – outstripped their net LGA cuts (almost $48 million) by 3.4 to 1. 

What does this mean?

The Hikes Beat The Cuts: While the DFL caterwauls endlessly about the damage the cuts in LGA did, the hikes in property taxes statewide outstripped the LGA cuts by 7.5 to 1.   Without unallotment, that would have been closer to 16 to 1.  Bear in mind that this is money that goes to government – not merely to maintain it but to grow it – as opposed to anything useful, like growing our private sector or putting your kids through college.

Pay Your Own Way?  While Local Government Aid was originally intended to subsidize smaller, poorer governments in outstate Minnesota, so that their schools and infrastructures could compete with those of the once-wealthy Twin Cities, that’s been totally stood on its head during the past generation.  Minneaopolis, Saint Paul and Duluth get 2.5 times as much Local Government Aid per capita than the state’s smaller cities.

Why?

Because the Big Three cities are basket cases after generations of unfettered DFL control.

The DFL would have you believe there’s no alternative.

We’ll look into that on Monday.

Say what you will about Matt Entenza.  The current #3-runner in the DFL primary race knows what makes liberal voters (as opposed to DFL activists) swoon.   He ended a couple of days of speculation yesterday by picking Channel 9 anchorette Robyne Robinson as his running mate.

In a news release from the Entenza campaign, Robinson said: “Whether it’s his vision for the clean energy economy, his dedication to reinvesting in schools, or his commitment to civil rights, Matt has spent his career standing up for Minnesota families. I am humbled and honored that he asked me to join his campaign. I look forward to traveling the state over the next months on the campaign trail and then getting to work making Matt’s bold vision a reality.”

Entenza’s “bold vision”, of course, is the same as that of Margaret Anderson-Kelliher and Mark Dayton (and his “Independence” Party rival, crypto-liberal Tom Horner); more m0ney.  More money for PC boondoggles, more for the Minnesota Federation of Teachers (with fewer strings attached), more money for molding Minnesota to the DFL’s vision.

But Entenza has differentiated himself, and perhaps shrewdly, by picking Robinson.

Unlike Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s faux-bipartisan mock-reach-across-the-aisle to died-in-the-wool liberal John Gunyou (who is “bipartisan” because he was budget director for Arne Carlson, which is like saying Meier Lansky wasn’t a mobster because he wasn’t Italian), and Mark Dayton’s dreary shoring-up-with-the-activists choice of Yvonne Prettner-Solon, Entenza has shown that he understands the real lessons of the Obama victory; go shallow.  Play for surface effect. 

The mere possibility of an Entenza-Robinson ticket generated more heat for Entenza’s campaign than he’d been able to produce on his own, despite his year long campaign and his first-in-the-race television ad presence. While Fox 9 isn’t seen in every corner of the state, she has fans all over and adds star power to his campaign.

“This reinforces our message; we’ve got to do things a new way and we have to get refocused as a state. The old ways aren’t working,” Entenza said Thursday.

Robyne Robinson; bringing that vaunted TV Anchor rigor and knowledge to the Entenza ticket.

I wrote about it yesterday:  the regional left wants to make Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to the “Local Government Aid” program a major issue in the campaign.

If there is any justice – and if Minnesotans can read numbers – it should backfire badly on the DFL.

I wrote yesterday about a piece in Twin Cities leftyblog MNPublius written by Jeff Rosenberg, which led:

As Tim Pawlenty tries to walk into the sunset, he’s got one small problem: He’s left Minnesotans a complete mess.

He went on to quote heavily from a WCCO TV report that showed how grievously cities around Minnesota are suffering because of Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to LGA.

We’ll address the “cuts” later in this series. 

———-

But for today, let’s just talk history. 

“Local Government Aid” was a scheme hatched in the late sixties and early seventies.  There are really two ways to look at it:

“Political Welfare” – Just as “welfare” in its purest, most generally-accepted form seeks to put a safety net over the abyss of poverty, and “corporate welfare” tries to help businesses create jobs in communities that might not otherwise exist (often for good reason), LGA started out as welfare for cities; the state’s taxpayers would subsidize the less well-off parts of the state by redistributing wealth from the parts of the state that were prospering.  At that time, of course, it was the wealthy metro area  subsidizing relatively poor outstate Minnesota.  

But forty years of DFL mismanagement have turned the major cities – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth into fiscal basket cases; outstate Minnesota is holding its own; the suburbs, especially the Twin Cities’ booming southern and western ‘burbs, are absolutely booming.

And like the original intentions of the personal and corporate welfare systems, Minnesota’s political welfare system, Local Government Aid, has been perverted far outside its original scope.

Which means LGA really more closely resembles…

Money Laundering: Originally intended to give small, poor outstate governments and schools a hand, it now subsidizes DFL-dominated city governments to a vastly disproportionate degree.  And it allows those city governments to diffuse the accountability for their own wasteful, featherbedded spending.

Look at it this way:  A city spends 10 million dollars.  They want to spend fifteen million dollars.  What do you suppose is going to be an easier pill to shove down the city’s taxpayers’ throats?

• A 50% hike in property taxes?
• No change in property taxes, and a five million dollar subsidy gotten from the state’s three million taxpayers?

Because when you’re a politician, the best kind of accountability is the kind you fob off on someione else.

And while the DFL caterwauls about the losses that LGA cuts have supposedly inflicted on the cities, the numbers show a very, very different story;  LGA cuts have been far outstripped by property tax hikes.

More, including numbers – lots and lots of numbers – tomorrow.

Two weeks after caterwauling that Tom Emmer had “stuck to his extreme right-wing agenda” by selecting Annette Meeks as his running mate, two of the three DFL gubernatorial candidates have…

…stuck with their extreme left-wing agendas in their choices of running mates.

Last week Margaret Anderson-Kelliher selected John Gunyou:

Gunyou served as state finance commissioner during the first term of Republican Gov. Arne Carlson. He’s also worked as finance director for the City of Minneapolis and most recently as city manager of Minnetonka.

In other words, he ran the budget for a governor whose answer for everything was to raise taxes, then for a city that is falling apart, and finally as a manager for a third-tier suburb with a huge corporate and business tax base that can keep even the most megalomaniacal budget afloat…for a while.

And today came word that Mark Dayton has picked Yvonne Prettner Solon.  Prettner Solon is a legislator from Duluth who has a lifetime 14 out of 100 rating from the Taxpayers’ League – and only a 7 in this past session.

The lesson for average Minnesotans is clear; elect Tom Emmer, or just attach your wallets to a shop-vac and save everyone the trouble.

The latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll shows Dayton leading the DFL field:

A new Minnesota Public Radio News/Humphrey Institute poll shows former Sen. Mark Dayton with a comfortable lead over the other two candidates competing in the DFL gubernatorial primary.

This is good news for Tom Emmer; Dayton is a national laughingstock with negatives just south of Anastasio Somoza.  If he wins the primary, I’m seriously looking forward to November.

The DFL primary race isn’t all that close at the moment:

The poll of 701 Minnesota adults, which was taken May 13-May 16, shows Dayton is the favorite among likely DFL primary voters by a 10-point margin: 38 percent to 28 percent over House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

Dayton, Kelliher and former state Rep. Matt Entenza are competing for the DFL spot on the general election ballot. Entenza received just 6 percent of support in the poll. Whoever wins the August DFL primary will face Emmer in the November election.

Perhaps this is further proof that the DFL endorsement is the kiss of death?

Kelliher received the DFL party endorsement last month. Dayton did not seek it and DFL Party leaders punished him for that by barring him from the state convention. Still, Dayton is getting more support from Democrats.

It wouldn’t be a major-media story about Minnesota politics without a long series of quotes from Larry Jacobs:

“This poll is a real slap in the face to the Democratic Party,” said University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs, who oversaw the poll.

Jacobs, who heads the Humphrey Institute’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, says it’s not just that Dayton has a big lead over Kelliher among likely DFL primary voters. The poll shows Dayton is considerably more popular than Kelliher with women in the party…Kelliher has campaigned aggressively on the notion that she could become Minnesota’s first woman governor.

“DFLers, are you ready to make some history? Are you ready to make history together?” she said the party’s convention in Duluth.

This being a Humphrey Institute poll, you can expect passive-aggressive context-free sniping at the GOP:

When it comes to the general election, the poll shows only Dayton would win against Republican Tom Emmer. But Dayton would win by just 4 percentage points, well within the poll’s margin of error of 5.8 percentage points.

The poll shows Emmer beating Kelliher or Entenza, but, again, not by enough to be statistically significant.

The MPR story doesn’t indicate if the poll was of registered or likely voters – which is a fairly key bit of context to omit, in that it allows the inescapable Jacobs to have his way with context:

While Emmer has no primary battle on the Republican side, the poll indicates he faces a challenge in uniting the GOP behind him.

A third of the Republicans who responded to the poll said they were either undecided, supporting a Democrat or backing the Independence Party-endorsed candidate Tom Horner.

Jacobs says for the sole Republican candidate to have only two-thirds of party members backing him is extraordinary, and not good news for Emmer.

“Emmer, perhaps because he’s too conservative, is struggling at the outset to rally and unite Republicans,” Jacobs said. “Now, there’s a lot of time to campaign and Emmer, unlike other Republicans who’ve run for governor, is really a new name for many Minnesota voters, so we’ll have to see how that develops. But at this point, the [result] is a red flag.”

Emmer faced a similar hurdle winning the endorsement.  And let’s never forget that he’s alreadty facing the Twin Cities’ media’s usual slur of anyone running to the right of Arne Carlson, the “Too Extreme” meme that the media is doing its duty to help spread (along with a fair chunk of the media’s concerted effort to paint Tom Horner as Republican enough to soak up votes).  Horner eats up 10% in the poll, although the IP is always overepresented in these polls (or has been since 1998, anyway).

But outside the 35% of Minnesotans who will never ever ever vote for a Republican of any sort, there are three dynamics at work:

First:  When people meet Tom Emmer, they stand a good chance of becoming converted.

Second:  When people meet Mark Dayton, they stand a fair chance of falling asleep.

Third:  The media will be doing its best (and the DFL’s bidding) to keep voters from doing either 1 or 2.