Category Archives: Campaign ’10

Articles about the 2010 Gubernatorial, US House, and State races.

For Your Convenience

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Democrats: pre-marked ballots in Nevada:

Some voters in Boulder City complained on Monday that their ballot had been cast before they went to the polls, raising questions about Clark County’s electronic voting machines.

Voter Joyce Ferrara said when they went to vote for Republican Sharron Angle, her Democratic opponent, Sen. Harry Reid’s name was already checked.

Ferrara said she wasn’t alone in her voting experience. She said her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing happen.

“Something’s not right,” Ferrara said. “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five minute period of time — that’s wrong.”

The voting machine technicians?  SEIU employees.  What could possibly go wrong?

The get-out-the-vote effort? Reads just like a conservative’s wisecrack.

Isolated incident?  Nope:

A Craven County voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended.

Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff.

“They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.”

M. Ray Wood, Craven County Board of elections chairman, issued a written statement saying that the elections board is aware of isolated issues and that in each case the voter was able to cast his or her ballot as desired.

And between Hennepin and Ramsey County along we have 75 charges of voter fraud from 2008.  That’s 1/4 of Al Franken’s margin of victory, in counties totaling 10% of Minnesota’s population.

But remember – according to the DFL, all of you who want to bring integrity back to our election system are racist thugs.

Helps keep things in perspective, doesn’t it?

Dateline: March 26, 2011

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The following scene presumes – heaven forfend – that Mark Dayton wins the election.

SCENE:  Office of Governor Mark Dayton.  Dayton is sitting in his chair, idly twirling a nut back and forth on a bolt.

DAYTON: (Continues to twirl bolt for about five minutes, back and forth and back and forth…)

(Esme Murphy – the Governor’s communications director – bursts into the room)

MURPHY – Sir, we have a problem.

DAYTON:  Is it time for you to paint my toenails again?

MURPHY: No, sir, that was only during interviews during the campaign.  We have a serious problem here.

DAYTON: (stares into distance, idly spinning nut on bolt) Oh.

MURPHY: The House Republicans have blocked your budget proposal.

DAYTON: (looks up from nut and bolt, looks wordlessly toward Murphy without really focusing)

MURPHY: Sir, this is a bit of a political emergency.

DAYTON: (Focuses, just a bit)

MURPHY: Shall I summon your advisers, sir?

DAYTON: (Nods.  Maybe.  Kinda.)

MURPHY (leaves room)

DAYTON: (goes back to idly spinning nut on bolt)

Three minutes pass.  Then Murphy re-enters, with Secretary of State Ritchie, House Minority Leader Rukavina, Senate Minority Leader Marty, Budget Director Denise Cardinal, and Representative Phyllis Kahn.  Chief of Staff Mike Hatch enters last, as Murphy starts to speak.

MURPHY: The rest will be here shortly; Rachel Stassen-Berger is working with a photographer on making them better-looking on camera.

(Group assembles in front of DAYTON’s desk)

MURPHY: So the situation is this; the House Republicans have blocked…

HATCH: Shut up.  (Murphy falls instantly silent) The House Republicans have blocked your budget proposal, “Governor” (HATCH coughs theatrically as he makes the scare quotes with his fingers in the air; a little glob of spittle flies through the air and lands on…) Dayton.  First things first; the Republicans should never have taken the House or Senate back.  We know whose fault that is, don’t we?

(Hatch turns to Ritchie, who visibly flinches)

HATCH: Assume the position.

(Richie falls limply to his knees)

HATCH: Lori!

(Swanson places a ball gag in Richie’s mouth, ties it securely around Richie’s face, and pushes him, face down, to the ground.  Swanson then stands on Richie’s back)

HATCH: With that out of the way – this is an emergency, “Governor”.  Even the DFLers that survived last November are rebelling, calling your tax bill “suicide”, and still we are six billion dollars short…

TOM DOOHER: (the head of the Minnesota Teachers’ Union enters, speaking) That’s Nine Billion, Governor (he says, looking at Hatch).

HATCH: Right, nine billion dollars short.

JAVIER MORILLO: (representative of SEIU enters, speaking) ELEVEN billion, Governor

HATCH: Right, eleven billion dollars short… (Hatch, Murphy and the rest stare at the door for a moment before continuing)  …for now.  We need to come up with a plan, and we need it NOW.  (He gestures at Swanson, who grinds a stiletto heel in the small of Richie’s back, as Richie squirms in pain)

DAYTON: We shall…

(twirls nut)

MURPHY: Sir?

DAYTON: …sell another Renoir.

HATCH: Good idea, sir, but a Renoir is worth a few million; we would need about a thousand of them…

CARDINAL: Actually, five thousand five hundred of them at current sale prices

HATCH: (spins on heels, pulling a dagger from under his jacket, screams hysterically) SHUT UP! IF I WANT YOUR OPINION I WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHT TO HAVE ONE!.   (Cardinal flinches)  I WILL RIP OFF YOUR HEAD AND CRAP DOWN YOUR THROAT.  DO YOU READ ME?  (Cardinal nods, meekly)

HATCH: Yes, sir, five thousand-odd Renoirs to close the budget gap…

DOOHER: Er, that’s gonna be six thousand.

HATCH: Six thousand Renoirs to close the gap.

DAYTON: (Nods, twirling the nut on the bolt)

HATCH: Sooooo, we need a political solution.  Marty! (John Marty snaps to attention) Throw a party for the GOP caucuses in both chambers.  Open bar!  And then have the Highway Patrol waiting for them!  We’ll catch ’em all driving drunk!  Hah!

SWANSON: Already tried that, sir.  Didn’t work.

DAYTON: (idly spins nut on the bolt as head bobbles idly back and forth)

HATCH: (pounds hand on Dayton’s desk) DAMMIT! Maybe we should get photoshopped pictures of all of them in a bathroom stall at the airport.

KAHN: Seems a bit implausible, sir.

DAYTON: (puts bare right foot up on the desk)  My toenail needs painting.  Esme?

MURPHY: No, sir, not now…

DAYTON: Oooh.  Then I’ll get Keri Miller to do it.

MURPHY: (sighs). I’ll put in a call, sir. But we have to figure out this eleven-billion dollar gap…

DOOHER: Thirteen billion dollars.

MURPHY: …this thirteen billion dollar gap first, sir.

DAYTON: (nut falls off bolt).

(Room falls silent)

DAYTON: Close the office.  I’m going to Vail.

HATCH: “Governor” (makes scare quotes with fingers), we can’t “close the office” (makes scare quotes with fingers).  You have to “Make a decision” (makes scare quotes with fingers).

DAYTON:  (Puts head down on desk)

HATCH:  Oh, christ.  OK, get him outta here.  (Marty and Kahn carry Dayton from room as Hatch continues with scarcely a pause). OK, Murphy?  Start the new ad campaign; “Minnesota – where everybody’s rich!”  Bill it to Alita. Again.  And Tom? (Rukavina snaps to attention)  Submit a bill that’ll increase taxes on “the rich” to 15%.   Lori?  Put out a release saying we’re investigating – er, you’re investigating Majority Leader Zellers for witchcraft.  Let’s move, people!

(Group exits, leaving Richie face-down on the floor, whimpering)

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Now, I believe, as I have since May, that Tom Emmer is going to win by three.  But just in case people are undecided, the above qualifies as “fiction” only because it hasn’t happened yet.

In Case There Is Any Doubt

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I was, to the best of my knowledge, the first blogger in Minnesota to publish predictions to which he has stuck through the campaign (other than the traditional “I’m gonna vote for the party with which I’m identified!” that, let’s be honest, is pretty much de rigeur among partisan bloggers).

So while I reserve the right to do another round of ’em before the election (because, yo, it’s my blog, at least until the Democrats sic the FEC on us all), there’s how the race looks to me, so far:

CD 1:  Demmer is going to trip Walz in the home stretch.  It’ll be close – maybe within a point – but Demmer’s going to win.

CD 2: Kline by a conservative 25.

CD 3: Paulsen by 12.  Meffert has run a fairly inept campaign.

CD 4: See below.

CD 5: See below.

CD 6: Bachmann by ten over Clark, who has run an utterly inept campaign.  Indeed, it could be said that when it comes to running a district-wide race, Clark doesn’t know $#!+.

CD 7:  See below.

CD 8:  I believe Chip Cravaack is going to win this thing.  Oberstar’s performance in the Duluth debate was so arrogant, so self-absorbed and scolding and condescending and tone-deaf, that I believe this is the year.  Cravaack has run a flawless campaign, and if there is a story where the backstory is shaping up to spell “Cinderella”, it’s Cravaack’s.

Which is not to say Cravaack don’t need help.   Volunteer. Knock doors.  Drive people to the polls.  Every legal, legitimate vote counts.

Attorney General: I think incumbency gives Lori Swanson a huge advantage over Chris Barden.  I also believe that if even half of the allegations Barden and the WCCO I-Team have surfaced are true, Swanson (and her puppetmaster, Mike Hatch) will be so damaged that the office is assailable in four years.  Will Barden pull it off this year?  I think it depends on tsunami-like GOP turnout and diminished DFL response.  If there was a year that this could happen, this would be it.

But I think a late surge of people who feel betrayed by the Obama/Reid/Pelosi axis of failure could help put Barden over the top.

Secretary of State: Dan Severson has run a campaign almost as intense and energetic as Cravaack’s.  Overcoming incumbency in these constitutional office races – which are usually painfully low-profile – is usually very difficult.  If anyone can do it, it’s Severson.   I’m calling it a tossup, dependent on turnout.  Huge GOP turnout?  Severson wins.  Your mission is clear, people.

State Auditor: I think Pat Anderson has stated her case pretty impeccably.  I think she wins by 2-3.

Governor: :I’ve been predicting Emmer by three points all along.  I am going to stay right there.  I think it’ll be dead-on for a number of reasons; over the past two weeks, there’ve been indications that independents are breaking powerfully to the right, just as Emmer needs.  The Dayton campaign, its putative lead in the last few polls notwithstanding, is campaigning  like it’s behind, leading me to think that the DFL has internal polls that show a different story than the public numbers.   I suspect that the polling will be driven by the “leaner” questions – the economy, gay marriage – that the polls downplay at this state in the election (Rasmussen doesn’t release ’em at all).  I suspect DFL turnout – especially for the off-putting stiff Dayton, who’d be a loser of a candidate even in a good DFL year – is going to be disappointing, and there is evidence that GOP turnout, especially in the Third, Sixth, Eighth and perhaps First and Seventh districts, is going to be really, really intense, in a sense that none of the current polls have the mechanism to model properly.

So I say Emmer by three.

Below: The 4th, 5th and 7th CDs are tricky.  Which, in and of itself, is a very good thing; they used to be the simplest districts to predict; they’d always be DFL blowouts by 30-50 points.  And they still could be.  In a normal year, I’d shake my head and predict that Teresa Collett, Joel Demos and Lee Byberg would be doing well to get over forty points.

And yet.

If Chip Cravaack is genuinely threatening in the 8th CD, then truly anything can happen.  And Collett, Demos and Byberg have all run tough, hard-working campaigns, and all of them have raised vastly more money than their predecessors.   If there is an avalanche of independents ready to vote conservative (not necessarily Republican), then Cravaack’s tide could help carry them all, plus Emmer, over the top.

Betty McCollum and Collin Peterson are having to actually campaign in their districts for the first time in years, and while neither of them have humiliated themselves as badly as Oberstar did in last Tuesday’s debate, they’ve both committed gaffes (Peterson’s “my voters are crazy” quip, McCollum’s “Mission Accomplished, now let’s get the Marines working on global warming!” remark) that show they are now residents of Planet Beltway.

In this case, truly, hedging is the honest answer.  Collett, Demos and Byberg are all in admittedly extremely tough races against well-entrenched incumbents; under normal circumstances, getting within twenty points would be a moral victory for any them.  And I believe they will all score that moral victory.

And I’m not going to rule out bigger and better things.  Not yet.

———-

Of course, all of these depend on turnout.  Which means if you’re a conservative and/or Republican, this is go time.  Volunteer for a campaign.  Get out there and knock doors, man the phone banks, update databases, replace vandalized signs, go to rallies – help out.

The good guys can win this one.  Let’s make it happen.

Hatch And Swanson: Peas In An Authoritarian Pod

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If you haven’t watched Chris Barden – GOP candidate for Attorney General – and his indictment of Attorney General Swanson and the man who pretty much pulls her strings, Mike Hatch, watch this:

The stuff about using staff to file grandstanding lawsuits that publicized his office but played fast and loose with the law?  We’ve run into this on this blog before; back in 2003, I wrote a five part series on one of these suits, on Hatch’s watch, against “American Bankers”, a Florida company that ran afoul of state regulators.  It was one of Hatch’s sleazier moments – and that of the media, too.

Part 1 – During the closing days of the Ventura Administration, the state Commerce Department, under Jim Bernstein, a former DFLer and radical anti-business commissioner, reaches a settlement as part of a multi-state action.  And then American Bankers backs out.

Part 2 – American Bankers sends a check to the Minnesota GOP – coordinated by a DFL rainmaker with a long, cordial relationship with Hatch – which was illegal at the time.  An automatic “thank you” letter goes out…

Part 3 – …which Hatch uses to ambush Pawlenty’s commerce commissioner, to push for an illegal diversion of settlement money to a Hatch-controlled charity.

Part 4 – Hatch springs one of his pet reporters on the MNGOP, creates a canned controversy.

Part 5 – The lack of media attention to the unravelling of Hatch’s story, back in 2003.

Watch the video.  Read the five part report.

Tell a neighbor; Lori Swanson’s gotta go.

Now.

Chanting Points Memo: Numbers

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The DFL’s been trying to make a lot out of the last few polls released on the Minnesota Gubernatorial race.  Most of them show Dayton leading Emmer by one margin or another – from the tight to the ludicrous.

Ed and I were discussing the polls on our show over the weekend, and we noticed something.

Look at the likely voter percentages in the last few “major” polls”

  • Strib/”Minnesota” Poll – D+4 (meaning they figure that Democrats will make up four percent more of the electorate than Republicans on election day.
  • Rasmussen Poll: D+5

Now, this is a function of how these polls determine “likely voters”.  This formula varies among polling services, but – since it’s a form of science, however imprecise – is hypothetically based on some kind of math, derived from experience.

And what has “experience” been in Minnesota, especially recently?

In the 2008 election, Minnesotans’ spread was D+4.

In other words, Democrats made up 4% more of the electorate than Republicans did.

The pollsters are honestly suggesting that Democrats are going to turn out in the same number as in the Democrat landslide of 2008?

Or that Independents are going to break the same way they did two and four years ago?

Behold The DFL Jobs Plan

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After decades of control by the ultraliberal DFL and a GOP that was merely center-left until probably fifteen years ago, Minnesota has had business and corporate tax rates that rivalled some of the nation’s worst tax hellholes – New York, California, New Jersey.

Liberals inevitably respond “well, look at all the companies that have their headquarters here!”.  And it’s true – Minnesota has more Fortune 500 companies per capita than any other state in the union.   And if you were the CEO of, say, Best Buy or Ecolab or 3M, I’d bet you’d rather live in Minneapolis than, say, Mississippi.

But a company is more than just CEOs.

The good news; 3M, based in Saint Paul, is creating new jobs!

3M today announced the expansion of its manufacturing facility for its 3M Ultra Barrier Solar Film. As a key component supplier to the solar industry, this expansion will support the growing demand for high efficiency flexible PV modules.

And where are those jobs?

The majority of the facility expansion, located in Columbia, Missouri, is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Minnesota’s corporations are not creating manufacturing or distribution jobs in Minnesota.  Even their research and engineering work is being farmed out to out-of-state or offshore companies at an accelerating rate.

You can thank the DFL (and the old, pre-Pawlenty-era GOP that the DFL’s sock puppets are always babbling about) for this.

It’s time to lower business tax rates in Minnesota, and for the government programs that depend on them to suck it up and count on the revenues rising when Minnesotans actually start going back to work.

And that pretty much inevitably means voting for Emmer, and your local GOP candidate for the Legislature, next Tuesday.

The DFL Morale Builder, Part II

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The Star Tribune‘s “Minnesota Poll” continues to serve its primary function – manipulating voter turnout.

As always with the MNPoll, the marquee numbers are nearly meaningless;

Dayton has strengthened his lead to 41 percent, according to the poll, followed by Emmer at 34 percent. Horner, who has struggled to get out of the teens in all public polls, is at 13 percent. That’s down from a peak of 18 percent last month.

The poll was conducted between Oct. 18 and 21 among 999 likely Minnesotans voters on both land-line and cell phones. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

No, it’s the crosstab numbers that matter  It’s buried on the second page of the online report, naturally:

In this poll, the sample of likely voters consisted of 34 percent Democrats, 31 percent independents and 30 percent Republicans.

Four percent overpoll of Democrats?  This year?

The poll is of 999 “likely voters” – and it’s there that the methodology goes from “reporting” to , as David Brauer puts it, the “secret sauce”.

[the poll is] based on 804 land-line and 402 cell phone interviews conducted Oct. 18-21 with a representative sample of Minnesota adults. Of that sample, 999 were deemed to be likely voters, and the poll results are based on those respondents.

And there’s the detail in which the Devil is.  How does Princeton Research (the company that actually does the Strib’s polling) take those 1,200 likely voters and “deem” 1,000 or so of them to be “likely”?

We don’t know.  None of the major pollsters will say.

The article, by Rachel Stassen-Berger, goes on to squeeze in a puff piece for Dayton.

We really know two things:

The Minnesota Poll has, for a generation, always shown Republicans behind the week before the election, sometimes by ludicrious amounts, when they went on to win.

And the Minnesota Poll’s errors immediately before elections inevitably appear designed to drive down Republican turnout in elections that every other pollster in the business shows to be incredibly tightly contested.

It is time for someone to investigate the Strib’s polling operations, both under Princeton Research and, before 2007, under Rob Daves.  If Emmer wins – and I predict he will, by a three point margin – it’ll be further proof that the Minnesota poll is nothing a get out the DFL vote/suppress the GOP vote effort.

The deniablity is plausible – but only just.

The Unthinkable: Duluth Paper Endorses Cravaack

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The Duluth News-Tribune – a traditionally left-leaning paper in a traditionally left-leaning district – Ou endorses Republican challenger Chip Cravaack over 18-term incumbent DFLer Jim Oberstar.

While giving a nod to Oberstar’s “achievements”, and acknowledging his vote for Clinton’s  “debt reduction” bill in 1993 (that relied on tax hikes more than spending cuts), the DNT notes that these are different times:

But there’s also no escaping the chilling reality of our nation’s economic state. Unemployment hovers around 10 percent, despite stimulus and other efforts to turn the tide. Health-care reform has companies warning employees of the likelihood of increased health-insurance costs. A pair of wars rages. And the national debt stands at a staggering $13.6 trillion and is increasing at an alarming rate of $3.8 billion a day.

The brake pedal of fiscal responsibility is needed in Washington now as much as ever. Although Oberstar voted in 1993 for the biggest debt reduction in post-World War II history, the 17-term incumbent is hardly the embodiment of financial restraint and new direction.

And they figure – as I do – that Chip’s the guy for the times, and the job:

His opponent, on the other hand, Republican Chip Cravaack, represents what Congress, including Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, needs at this critical crossroads in American history. A pro-business, fiscally conservative, former Navy captain, with a master’s degree in education, Cravaack has smarts. He is articulate, reasoned and composed. More critically, he has specific and promising strategies to pull the nation out of its financial funk.

“This is clearly unsustainable,” Cravaack said last week of our nation’s mounting debt and free-spending ways. “The best thing to correct the situation is to create a business-friendly environment where the private sector creates jobs.”

This is huge – justifying a rare Sunday posting from me.

I’m going to be releasing my election predictions tomorrow.  And while I’ve believed for a week that Cravaack was could pull off the upset of the year – nationally! – this is another log on the fire.

Obama At Northrup

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President Barack Obama spoke at Northrup Auditorium to a crowd of about 11,000 people today.

This is Lenin, speaking to the Communist Party Congress. It has nothing to do whatsoever with todays pep rally for Lord Fauntelroy. Pure coincidence, honestly.

This is Lenin, speaking to the Communist Party Congress. It has nothing to do whatsoever with today's pep rally for Lord Fauntelroy. Pure coincidence, honestly.

That’s 9,000 fewer than Bill Clinton drew.

Clinton Packed The 19,000-Seat Target Center. “President Clinton used to refer politely to Bob Dole as ‘my opponent.’ But over the last two days, Clinton has stopped doing even that, and in what appears to be an act of supreme confidence, he barely acknowledges that he is facing any opposition at all in this reelection campaign. At a boisterous rally that packed the 19,000-seat Target Center arena here yesterday, Clinton tried to ride above partisan politics just a week before the election.” (Brian McGrory, “Buoyed By Polls, Clinton Tunes Out Dole; Campaign ’96 / The Incumbent,” The Boston Globe, 10/29/96)

Mark Dayton, seen in public for the first time in a week, apparently stood by attentively…

Not Mark Dayton

Not Mark Dayton

…while the President “helped him” by cheerleading for…the Obama Administration.

A Japanese plane, shot down by antiaircraft fire, plunges to the sea in flames. What, you think Im using this as a metaphor? Get a life!

A Japanese plane, shot down by antiaircraft fire, plunges to the sea in flames. What, you think I'm using this as a metaphor? Don't be all paranoid!

Dayton’s campaign has apparently figured out that their best bet is to keep Dayton out of the public eye, and away from things like microphones and cameras.

Rumors that he’s been in hiding with Betty McCollum are strictly unconfirmed.

Being from North Dakota, the sea fascinates me. What, you think Im writing about the Alita Messinger camp...er, Mark Dayton campaign? No, no no no. No relation.

Being from North Dakota, the sea fascinates me. What, you think I'm writing about the Alita Messinger camp...er, Mark Dayton campaign? No, no no no. No relation.

Wish I coulda been there.

News Flash?

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From Blois Olson’s “Morning Take“: word has it that the Duluth News Tribune is doing to do the unthinkable:

Sources close to the CD8 campaign of Republican Chip Cravaack are telling people that on Sunday the Duluth News Tribune will endorse his candidacy to replace Democrat Rep. Jim Oberstar.

I’m not going to write “Developing…” at the end of this post – good lord, what kind of hapless dork do you think I am? – but I’ll be following this very, very closely.

I’m starting to feel really optimistic about Cravaack’s shot, here.

Chanting Points Memo: They Hate You. They Really Really Hate You

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It’s about jobs and the economy, stupid.

Let me repeat that: Jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy, jobs and the economy.  That sorta sums it up.

Well, not to the DFL and their various paid, unpaid and indirectly-paid hangers-on on the left.   Over there, it’s about “dirt”.  Because it’s all Mark Dayton – bumbling underachieving trust-fund baby and former Worst Senator in America – has.  He was a failure as an Economic Development director. He was non-entitity as Auditor.  He was a spectacular failure as a Senator.

“Dirt” is all these hamsters have.

Now, Sally Jo Sorenson isn’t one of the dumber, more venal leftybloggers in Minnesota.  Indeed, in and among the various bits of moral and intellectual cat-box effluvia one meets at “Drinking Liberally”, she may well be one of the better ones.

But the DFL machine needs dirt:

Last month, Sally Jo Sorensen posted on her Bluestem Prairie site that Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer had taken out seven mortgages on his Delano home since 2002.

[Yesterday], the Minnesota DFL gave that tidbit a much bigger megaphone, blasting Emmer in a press conference for unconventional borrowing that most Minnesotans wouldn’t recognize.

So what exactly is the problem, here?

It appears that Emmer bought his Delano home in 2002 for $425,000 with the help of a $300,000 mortgage. He then took out a series of (very) short-term mortgages,each to pay off the previous one.

Ah.  So in other words, he used the financing the market made available to handle financing his house.  Just like a huge preponderance of other American home owners did, via one means or another.

At one point, he was threatened with foreclosure.

So he’s unique, then?

And this is…what?  Illegal?

Nothing illegal is alleged. But the DFL, and Sorenson, have pointed out that the creative financing runs counter to Emmer’s sloganeering about state government having to live within its means.

And the DFL and Sorenson are wrong.

Emmer’s finances are between him and his family.  We the people are not paying Tom Emmer’s mortgage.  If Tom Emmer comes up short on his payments, it’s up to him; give the house back, or solicit more business at his law firm, or get the kids out there working.  It’s his business.

The state budget is not a personal matter.  It’s all of our money.  And if Emmer has had to do some juggling to make the mortgage work…

…well, he can join the damn club.  Many of us are doing the same these days; working harder, scrimping, doing what we have to to keep the roof over our kids’ heads.  Wealthy Minnesotans, poor ones, and whole lot of us in the middle…

…who are not a bunch of trust-fund babies who inherited real estate from grampa, anyway.

Emmer spokesman Cullen Sheehan in a teleconference insisted that his boss’s refinancing deals were nothing unusual for a Minnesotan and that he’s paid his bills.

Unmentioned in any of Sorenson’s or the City Pages’ intrepid reporting:  is Emmer paid up now?  Has he shafted anyone?

And how is that different that what tens of thousands of Minnesotans are doing to make things work out?

And how is Brian Melendez’ little scorched-earth attack anything but a finger in the eye of all of us who weren’t born to the manor, like the hamster his party is stuck trying to prop up?

Has Emmer, indeed, done anything in his personal finances quite as dim and incompetent as release two consecutive budgets that on their face fail to resolve the budget issue, and have absolutely zero chance of ever passing the Legislature?

Because as near as I can tell, while his family may have had to do some mad fiscal juggling over the past eight years, just like the rest of us, Emmer’s got his family’s budget balanced today.

Has Dayton managed the same, even on paper?

If you think so, you may be qualified to be a City Pages reporter.

Indictment

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Chris Barden, GOP candidate for Attorney General, states his case against Lori Swanson – the latest in a two-generation uninterrupted chain of one-party domination of the AG’s office.

I urge you to watch the whole thing. A few “highlights”:

1:07 – Channel 4 tries to interview Swanson about the irregularities Barden found – and gets turned away.

1:45 – Part of the meat of the story – WCCO reports AG lawyers reporting being pressured to work cases primarily for Swanson’s political gain as well as that of her predecessor, Mike Hatch, especially by filing high-profile cases designed to pressure defendants into cheap fast settlements.  This isn’t completely news, if you’ve been reading Shot In The Dark;

2:30 – WCCO’s ITeam gives vital background on the allegations against the AGO.’

Watch the whole thing.

Tell a neighbor.

Remember it on November 2.

Chanting Points Memo: “Anti-Gay”

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One of Big Left’s attacks against Tom Emmer in this election is that he’s “anti-gay”.  It drove the most egregious tempest in this election’s teapot – the mass PR mau-mauing of the relentlessly-“Diversity”-hugging Target Corporation on behalf of Big Gay for donating money to “MN Forward”, a PAC that promotes pelting gays with rocks and garbage.

No, no, no.  I’m a kidder.  I kid.  MN Forward was a purely pro-business PAC, supported by businesses alarmed at Mark Dayton and Tom Horner’s anti-business policies.  But you’d never have known that from the hype surrounding the incident.  (And comparing stock prices with other major retailers, you’d never know there was an incident.  I did call it a tempest in a teapot for a reason).

The case for Emmer being “anti-gay” is based around two pieces of “evidence”:

  • He supported, along with a wide swath of legislative Republicans, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a dude and a chick.
  • He voted against a bill that would have banned bullying.  Really.  It purported to enjoin all “forms of harassment based on actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, disability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, physical characteristics, and association with anyone with one or more of these characteristics”

As to the former?  Most Minnesotans oppose same-sex marriage.  Most Minnesotans oppose allowing courts to mandate its legalization.  The way to jump ahead of the courts is to enact valid, sound law which, in theory, the court has no legislative authority to overturn.  That’s how separation of powers works, even when it’s inconvenient to your beliefs.

The latter?  It’s a stupid law that, as written, would have made bullying against Black or Zoroastrian or Buddhist or female or blind or poor or gay or transgendered or elderly or amputee-Minnesotans really really double-dog bad , as opposed to the merely single-dog bad act of bullying, say, a white, straight able-bodied straight 19-year-old Methodist boy.

It’s just plain bad law.  Of course, it was never intended as law.  It was introduced so that conservatives could vote against it, thereby to give lefties a cite when they bellow “TOM EMMER WANTS GAY KIDS TO GET KILLED” on their cowardly, illiterate, lobotomized little blogs.

But let’s cut the crap.  Who do you think is more anti-gay?  Is it:

  • Tom Emmer – regular guy, who reflects the point of view of the vast majority of Minnesotans, but freely admits that the focus of his governorship is jobs, the economy, jobs, the economy, and more jobs and the economy some more?  Or is it…
  • Barack Obama, who, like Paul Wellstone before him, actively courted the gay vote in the most cynical terms, and then supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which is no further to the left of the MN House GOP Caucus in point of fact?  Or is it…
  • The vast majority of black and latino voters, who vote Democrat but oppose gay marriage much, much more vocally than even conservative Republicans?

I love asking this question of liberals in face to face discussion.

You can practically see the gears stripping in their heads as they try to process a conundrum that can not be processed via any means short of stuffing logic down the garbage disposal.

Chanting Points Memo: Garbage In, Garbage Out

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Mark Dayton has run one of the single dumbest campaigns in Minnesota history.

Dayton himself has been a virtual non-entity, relying on the Twin Cities’ media’s inability and/or unwillingness to question him on  his background, the immense gaps in his budget “plan”, his history of erratic behavior…anything.

His surrogates have been another matter entirely; “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – whose financing, almost exclusively from big union donors and members and ex-members of Mark Dayton’s family of trust fund babies – has run the slimiest, most defamatory campaign in Minnesota political history.   From mischaracterizing Emmer’s “DUI” record and slandering his efforts to reform Minnesota DUI laws, to their outright lies about his budget, ABM has profaned this state’s politics in a way that I only hope can be salvaged in the future – although I doubt this will happen until the DFL decays to third-party status.

If it were a Republican group doing it, the Dems would be whining about “voter intimidation”.

The Dayton campaign, in short, has been not so much a campaign as an attempt to orchestrate negative projected PR, social inertia and the ignorance of most voters to their advantage.  It hasn’t been a dumb campaign, per se;  when your job is to sell Mark Dayton, “The Bumbler”, desperate situations call for desperate measures.  And as we saw in 1998, there are enough stupid people do make anything possible.

A big part of Dayton’s under-the-table campaign has been to portray the impression that Dayton’s coronation is inevitable.  If your nature is to be suspicious of institutions with long, arguably circumstantial records of bias, one might see the Minnesota Poll as an instrument toward that aim – given its three-decade record of showing DFLers doing an average of 7.5% better than they ended up doing.   (If you favor the Democrats, you might say the same about Rasmussen – if you ignored the fact that they’ve been consistently the most accurate major pollster for the last couple of cycles.  Other than that, just the same thing).

The latest chapter in this campaign has been the regional DFLbloggers’ chanting the latest results from Nate Silver’s “Five Thirty Eight”, a political stats-blog that was bought out by the NYTimes a while back.

Silver’s latest look at the Minnesota gubernatorial race gives Dayton an 83% chance of winning, in a six point race.

And that’s where the Sorosbloggers leave it.

Of course, Silver’s analysis on its face has a margin of error of a little over eight points – which is  – considerably larger than the forecast margin.

Of course, with any statistical, numerical output, you have to ask yourself – “are the inputs correct?”

Here are Silver’s inputs:

Courtesy 538/New York Times

Courtesy 538/New York Times

The important column is the “538 Poll Weight” column, the third from the right.  It shows how much weight Silver gives each poll in his final calculation.  The number is at least partly tied to time – but not completely; for some reason, the five-week old Survey USA poll gets 20% more weight than the four week old Rasmussen poll; the October 6 Rasmussen poll that showed Emmer with a one point lead gets about 3/4 the oomph of the latest Survey USA poll, which showed Dayton with a five point lead…

…and whose “likely voter model” seemed to think that Democrats are four points more likely to show up at the polls that Republicans.  This year.

Pollsters – and Silver – are fairly cagey about their methodology.  I’m not a statistics wiz.  I dropped the class after one week, in fact.  But I can tell when something isn’t passing the stink test.  Any poll that gives Democrats a four point edge in turnout this year may or may not be wishful thinking (we’ll find out in less than two weeks, won’t we?), but does seem to be based more on history than current behavior which, I should point out, involves a lot of hocus-pocus to predict during a normal election.

And this is not a normal election.

I’m not going to impugn Nate Silver, per se – if only because I haven’t the statistical evidence.  Yet.

I will, impugn the NYTimes, but then that’s what I do.  They very much do want to drive down Republican turnout.

And that is the main reason the DFL machine – including the ranks of more-or-less kept leftybloggers in this state – are parrotting this “story” so dutifully.  They want to convince Republicans that all is lost.

Pass the word, folks.  We’re gonna win this thing.

Work To Be Done

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Being a wanna-be wonk who writes a political blog and does a show at a talk radio station whose audience is frighteningly well-informed and follows politics pretty obsessively.

And while they didn’t obsess on the subject, I certainly grew up in household where politics was an occasional subject of discussion.  I have been more or less aware of politics and how they work for a long, long time (albeit I didn’t become aware enough to be a conservative until I was 20 or so).

So it’s always a mild culture shock to realize not everyone is the same.  In an intellectual sense, I know this, because probably 90% of the people who actually bother to vote at all make up their minds about their decision in the weeks, if not hours, before they go to the polls.

Still, it astounds me how out-of-touch some people are.

No, not the people who don’t follow politics.  I’m talking about those of us who do.

I was talking with a business associate the other day.   He’s a small businessman – one of the people at whom the Dayton tax hikers are directly aimed.   He’s successful at what he does. He makes over $150K a him and his spouse  for a couple of thousand dollars a year.

And he asked me what I thought about the campaign.  And who the GOP candidate was.

Now, some wonks would roll their eyes – but I know business people  who work 70-80 hours a week, and raise families, and try to save a little some mental headspace for themselves; politics doesn’t make the final cut on their schedules, any more than following the NBA or the PGA does on mine.

And so I told him all about Tom Emmer – especially what’s in it for small business people if Emmer wins.

Now, there was little danger the guy was going to vote for Dayton.  He remembers Dayton’s disastrous run in the Senate.  And he’s gonna vote for Emmer in two weeks, and I suspect his wife will too.

But I walked out of there thinking that it’s a travesty that there is so much as a single small businessperson in this state that has been left in any doubt which candidate is going to help them, and which one is going to screw them blue.

The MNGOP and the Emmer Campaign have some work to do.

Oberstar Breaking The Law?

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The other day Politico did a piece about Jim Oberstar’s fundraising, and how little of it comes from within the Eighth District.

And one of his staffers apparently knows something the rest of is don’t.  Or didn’t.   Emphasis added:

“They are taking lawn signs, putting up lawn signs, making voter-contact calls, door-knocking, distributing campaign [literature],” [Oberstar staffer Jim] Schadl told POLITICO in an e-mail. Moreover, Schadl, says, there are another 527 waiting in the wings to help out in the final run-up to the election.

Er…campaigns aren’t supposed to act in collusion with 527s.

Because that’s how they get money out of politics.  Y’know.  By preventing politics from being polluted by money.  From businesses or unions.

If we had a functional mainstream media in this state, full of bright, curious people whose job it was, say, to dig into stories like this – people like, I dunno, Pat Kessler or Erik Eskola or Tim Pugmire (not to keep picking on Pugmire; I just don’t want to have to wing it trying to spell Mark Zdechlek) – perhaps the people of Minnesota might find out if there was there, there, story-wise.

Emmer Rally With Mitt Romney

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I’m live at the Ramada in Bloomington to cover Tom Emmer’s appearance with Mitt Romney. I’ll be doing a joint live-blog with Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed;click on the player below to watch and participate.

Coleman: “Shut Up, Peasants”

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From the Strib endorsement of “Indpendence” Party former-Republican-who’s-turned-into-a-moderate-DFLer-who-had-to -join-the-IP-because-the-DFL-has-become-so-freaking-extreme Tom Horner:

Not since Elmer L. Andersen in 1960 has a successful business owner and CEO left a prominent Minnesota firm to seek the governorship. Like Andersen, Horner, the cofounder of the Himle Horner public-relations firm, is doing so for the best of reasons: He loves Minnesota; he’s a serious student of government and economics, and he feels called to service. At age 60, Horner seeks to apply the lessons of a lifetime spent working in and around public policy to the restoration of this state’s vitality.

Nick Coleman, on Twitter:

Mr. Horner: I KNEW Elmer Andersen and (my father) SERVED with Elmer Andersen and you are NO Elmer Andersen. Not sure Elmer would vote 4 you.

Listening to DFL holdovers from the sixties, like Coleman and Lori Sturdevant, yammering about what the politicians of Minnesota’s putative golden age reminds me of scholars cloistered in a medieval back room debating how many angels could sit on the head of a pin.

How The Hell Does Emmer Win This Thing, Part II

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In this past week, Minnesota has been presented with four different polls on the Minnesota governor’s race; the risible Minnesota poll, the oddly-disconnected Humphrey Institute Poll, the Rasmussen Poll (which may or may not have overpolled Republicans, as opposed to the MN and HHH polls, which certainly overpolled Democrats) and, late last week, the SurveyUSA (SUSA) poll.  These polls showed a smorgasbord of results.  You can pick the one you prefer, really – as, indeed, most Minnesota political junkies have done.

I prefer Rasmussen.  Not because it showed Emmer in the lead – that fact made me happy, but then so would a “Berg Institute” poll that showed Emmer leading 100-0; the BI poll has no real track record, so I’d put no real stock in it – but because Rasmussen has been the closest pollster on the past couple of elections.

Still, the SUSA poll sort of splits the difference between the two.  It shows Dayton with a lead just outside the margin of error.

But it shows two other things that should be hugely encouraging to the Emmer campaign.

Peoples’ Hearts In Right Place – With Their Wallets: While the poll shows Emmer slightly behind, it asks the question “how should we resolve Minnesota’s budget deficit?”

And here are the answers:

Minnesota likely voters – however measured -prefer raising taxes over “not sure” by less than the margin of error.  38% favor some combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.  And 53% favor cuts in spending.

Given that there is only one candidate who favors getting government spending under control, the target of Emmer’s next two weeks should be fairly clear; reaching the 53% of Minnesotans who support Emmer, but just don’t know it yet.

Is The Big Break Here?:  The week before last, I reported on the landslide taking shape in District 32A, Kurt Zellers’ district in Maple Grove.  The DFL’s been targeting that district all year, but it’s just not working – Zellers is clobbering Katie Rodriguez by 24 points, even though Margaret Anderson-Kelliher proclaimed the district to be prime upset territory bare weeks earlier.

But the real development in that story, as I noted, was that independents – people who are non-GOP-affiliated in that GOP-leaning district – are breaking toward Emmer by a 4-1 margin.

And in this SUSA poll, we see for the first time in this cycle that Independents are trending toward Emmer, 37-35 (with 19 for Horner).  Independents tend to make up their mind at the last possible moment; this next two weeks is Go time.

It’s inside the margin of error, to be sure – but it’s trended up in since the last SUSA poll, while Dayton’s support has trended down.

So how does Emmer win this thing?

Show them that he’s got an actual plan: As this campaign has progressed, it’s become painfully clear that Dayton’s budget “plan” is nothing but wishful thinking; its entire focus is on taxes (barring a few ludicrous putative spending cuts that flunk every stink test from here to MPR), as opposed to the spending cuts a majority of Minnesotans favor.  Emmer’s plan is real, it’s rational, the numbers check out (unlike either Horner’s or Dayton’s).  Emmer must hammer this.  53% of Minnesotans, say SUSA, are ready and waiting.

Point out that Dayton and Horner’s “plans” are vaporware. There is no there there.  The plans don’t pass any fact-checks.  And Dayton’s is utterly dead on arrival with the legislature.  (“But so is Emmer’s”, the leftybloggers bleat, ignoring the fact that Emmer’s plan can virtually pass on pure inertia, as opposed to Dayton’s, which will require a legislative miracle – and to paraphrase Monsieur Ferrari, the Tea Party has outlawed legislative miracles that involve hiking taxes or spending).  In a legislative cycle where voters want things to get done, Dayton and Horner’s plans are both complete wastes of time, doomed from inception.

He Rides The Tide: It’s not just a, er, shot in the dark on my part.  Rasmussen notes a bit of recent history:

“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.

The Republicans’ strong position three weeks before midterm elections began, Rasmussen recalled, “when every Republican [in the House] said they would oppose the stimulus package…And support for it never recovered.”

“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.

So that’s how Emmer wins this thing; show that 53% of Minnesotans that he’s got the answer.

We can all, help, of course. Pass the word.  I don’t remotely believe that the major polls’ likely voter models accurately predict likely voter turnout – but there’s no reason not to make sure everyone gets the facts.

Emmer’s going to win this thing.  Suck it up and let’s make this happen.