Category: Campaign ’10
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A Matter Of Choice
As I’ve written in the past, single-sex marriage is not my marquee issue, personally. Oh, I know what I believe; that marriage is about having kids, and kids grow up best with functional parents of both genders. It’s a belief that should inform a lot of family-law issues (which is why I support gay adoption;…
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A Not So Modest, Utterly Pragmatic Proposal
It’s go time for Republicans in Minnesota. And by “Republicans”, I mean conservatives, and people who can be convinced that Minnesota’s liberal traditions and Barack Obama/Mark Dayton’s takeover of society will leave us all the worse for wear. If you live in the Third Congressional District, you are in a semi-competitive race – but Jim…
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It’s All About Numbers
The latest SurveyUSA/KSTP poll has Dayton up by five – with a margin of almost four points. After a steady stream of TV ads and roughly two dozen debates, Minnesota’s race for governor remains without a clear front-runner. DFLer Mark Dayton is the leader in the latest KSTP/SurveyUSA poll with 42 percent. He’s five points…
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Love That Sixth
My predication that Michele Bachmann would win the Sixth District race by ten points is sounding better and better as we go: Today, it’s Bachman 49%, DFL State Senator Tarryl Clark 40%. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released 2 months ago, little has changed: each candidate is up 1 point. If my theory is correct…
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Could This Be The Day?
I’m of Scandinavian descent. I’m not naturally wired for optimism. But down in my gut, this feels like it could be Chip Cravaack’s year. Maybe it’s the fact that Oberstar’s got so many friends in high places, and yet so few in his district. Maybe it’s that poll from two weeks ago. I dunno. I’m…
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Open Letter To All Inner City Parents
To: All Inner-City Parents with kids in the Minneapolis or St. Paul School Districts From: Mitch Berg, who’s been there, pretty much. Re: An Invitation All, I’m Mitch Berg. I live in Saint Paul. A few years back, I pulled my kids out of the St. Paul Schools, and went into the charter system. And…
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Unauthorized Biography
Sheila Kihne – whom I christened the Minnesota conservative blogosphere’s “Rookie of the Year” at an event the other night – unleashes a Scott-Johnson-caliber take-down of Mark Dayton’s entire biography over at Activist Next Door and True North, tying together his years as a radical hippie/”School Teacher”, his lamentable Senate career, and his mental health…
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How Big Is Your Tent?
Over the past few weeks, the MNDFL and the Dayton campaign have been trying to hammer on the fact that Tom Horner – who voted for Obama, and hasn’t publicly supported a conservative Republican for office in years – is “A Republican”, just like Tom Emmer. They also note that former governor Arne Carlson and…
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Mark Knows
Mark Dayton’s latest ad claims that, while Minnesota schools have “failed”, that “Mark Dayton was a teacher”, and that he “knows what needs to be done” to fix education. Does he, then? By that, do they mean teachers should only show up 1/3 of time when they’re teaching, and quit in the middle of the year?…
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Underdogs
John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson responded to my story last week about the internal polling in District 32B. Scott adds a note of cautious sobriety: Over the weekend John noted Mitch Berg’s assertion regarding a possible Republican surge in a part of Minnesota’s Third Congressional District (House District 32B). The poll in 32B that Mitch…
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I’m Not A Reporter
But if I were, I’d have a bunch of questions of Mark Dayton, his campaign, and the maze of PACs and organizations that are bankrolling his campaign. Let’s start at the top: Settle Me This: So how much did you pay in your settlement to Brad Hanson? Since you were employed by the Senate, is…
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The Real Liberal
Tom Horner may have been a Republican – 20-30 years ago – but he’s a candidate only a tax-and-spend liberal could love. His “plan” – like Mark Dayton’s – is chock full of holes, and will need to jack up taxes a lot more than he thought, says the State Department of Revenue: Since announcing…
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Buyer’s Remorse
The DFL – and their national benefactors – went all-in on Tarryl Clark against their bete noir, Michele Bachmann. Clark is getting clobbered. Hammered. Beaten like a cheap steak. She’s going to lose by 10 points, and I actually starting to think I’m being conservative. And the regional left is starting to have second thoughts…
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Mark Dayton: “Truther” Hero
I’d almost forgotten about this: Mark Dayton is a hero to the 9/11 Truther community. In 2005, from the well of the Senate, Mark Dayton claimed that NORAD and the FAA were hiding something big about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. And the 9/11 Truther movement was a big, happy…
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I Guess We’re Gonna Test That Approval Rating!
Supposedly President Obama’s approval rating is far higher in Minnesota than nationwide, according to the Rasmussen poll. Well see; he’s coming to town to stump for Dayton: Obama’s confirmed that he’s coming to town on Oct. 23. (Obama’s visit has been general knowledge for awhile, but details have been scant (and still pretty much are). According…
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Turning The Third Purple: The Emmer Surge?
Earlier, we talked about the internal poll that shows Kurt Zellers leading Kate Rodriguez by 24 points in a district where the DFL has staked a lot of mojo – with Margaret Anderson-Kelliher going so far as to say that the district was in the bag for Rodriguez. But there’s more good news. The Tarrance…
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Turning The Third Purple: The Flop
One of the state legislative races the DFL’s been hitting hardest this cycle has been 32B, in Hennepin County. It’s Kurt Zellers’ seat. Zellers is the House Minority Leader – one of the MNGOP’s pack of young conservatives, Brod and Emmer and Seifert and the others that have made such an impact at the State…
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Everything You Believe About Minnesota Is Wrong
This post was largely written for the national audience at Hot Air’s Greenroom, where it is posted. My radio colleagues Ed Morrissey (with the A-squad Hot Air) and King Banaian (of SCSU Scholars, also found in the Green Room) will post on occasion about politics in Minnesota, where the three of us live, work, blog…
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Too Close To Call
The latest Rasmussen Poll confirms what many of us conservatives have suspected; the gubernatorial race is way too close to call: Democrat Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer are still in a virtual tie in Minnesota’s gubernatorial contest. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Dayton picking up 40% of the…
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Much Ado About Not Much At All
The regional leftybots are a-buzz over… …some really, really mundane news. Tom Emmer is the subject of a legal malpractice lawsuit by a former client. Given the typical leftyblogger’s understanding of the law, many of them are making a lot of this “story”. However, the facts are these: Legal malpractice suits are far from uncommon.…
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Chanting Points Memo: The Mythical Moderate Republican
Remember the mid-summer of 2009? When people first started talking seriously about the gubernatorial campaign? When Republicans just started talking about the race, and when Mark Dayton started pawning his Renoirs? You remember the phalanx of moderate candidates who came out to the various party get-togethers, like the SD54 picnic in August of 2009, and…
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Tired
Mark Dayton’s sons are “tired of the negative attacks” on their father. It’s touching. It’d be a lot more touching if the two of them weren’t giving money hand over fist to “Alliance for a Better Minnesota“, which has been running the most fact-free smear campaign in Minnesota history against Tom Emmer.
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No More Pencils, No More Books
Sheila Kihne, writing at Activist Next Door and True North, is one person who wasn’t been cowed into silence about Dayton’s, er, spotty record as a high school teacher. Far from being a “lazy-ass activist“, Sheila’s been digging through old microfilms of the various metro papers – of which there used to be many more…
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The Shorter Mark Dayton
The bad news: While I got through the screener for Mark Dayton’s chat with Gary Eichten on MPR this morning, I never got on the air. The good news: It was probably because Eichten stole my thunder on the question I gave the screener, and even the followup I had if they’d still put me…
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Chanting Points Memo: Republicans For Horner
The Dems have turned up the “heat” on the idea that Tom Horner was a Republican this past week. My theory is that the DFL has internal polling showing that Horner is taking more – a lot more – Democrat votes than Republicans. First, it was the big endorsement from Obama-voting, tax hiking, free-spending “Republicans”…