My congressional “representative” here in the Fourth CD is Betty McCollum.

She is – I’ll be charitable, given the respect due her as an elected member of Congress – not the brightest light on the creator’s Christmas Tree.

Mark Heuring at True North has her pretty well dialled in:

If Betty were running for Congress in many of the other districts in the state, she’d have been hooted off the stage long ago. Betty managed to best a primary opponent in 2000 after Vento died and has held the seat without a serious challenge ever since. Since that time, about the only thing she’s managed to do is regularly issue especially shrill denunciations of the president. Her list of legislative accomplishments is slight.

Mark is right – although we had high hopes for Obi Sium in ’06, it was a lousy time to run anything as a Republican.

But oh, lord, does something need to be done about this woman:

An example of Betty’s legislative prowess and judgment came a few years back, while Arden Hills was negotiating with the federal government to gain control of the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP). Arden Hills had a number of ideas ready to go and the feds were working with local officials to get things done, in the usual painful bureaucratic way. Enter Betty. Betty had a brainstorm — why not use the land, which when developed has enormous potential, to build a giant post office processing facility for the Twin Cities?

There were a few problems with this idea — it would have scuttled any plans that Arden Hills had; it would have inundated an already truck-clogged area with many more massive trucks; and, most importantly, the postal service didn’t want to build in a location that is across town from the airport, preferring instead to expand their existing facilities in Eagan. In other words, Betty’s plan had zero support from anyone who had an interest in the future of the TCAAP site. Eventually Sen. Coleman quietly got invovled and stopped McCollum from pursuing her ridiculous idea any further. Those of us who live in the area haven’t heard much from Betty since, except for the shrill denunciations of Bush she sends periodically by franked mail. I guess we can count that as a benefit.

Other than signing on to absurd anti-war resolutions and yapping like an lemur on Red Bull about education funding, she is really as close to worthless as a Congressperson can be.  Indeed, she is everything that the Twin Cities’ deranged-left imagines Michele Bachmann to be; imperious, disconnected, not very bright.  It’s wishful thinking with Rep. Bachmann; with Betty McCollum – who is too gutless even to respond to media requests from people who might dissent from her point of view – you’re talking the real thing.

Heuring:

The upshot of all this is pretty simple — if the Republican Party could field a qualified, intelligent candidate, he might have a shot at beating ol’ Betty. And this time, the Republican Party has found just such a candidate. Ed Matthews is his name. Ed is a practicing attorney and has an extensive financial background as well. He’s young, smart and understands the issues very well. I suspect that Betty will do everything possible to avoid sharing a stage with Mr. Matthews, because she would suffer greatly from any direct comparison. I met Ed briefly at the 50B BPOU and was very impressed. My guess is that you will be, too.

I also met Ed, at the 66B meeting.  He’s sharp, works a room well, and – unlike McCollum – doesn’t give you the impression that there are wires connected to his limbs and jaw controlled by the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, controlling his every move.

Count on hearing much from Mr. Matthews in coming months.  It’s always an uphill fight for Republicans in the Fourth (AKA “The Venezuela of the North”), but so was Iwo Jima.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 6:19 am and is filed under Campaign '08, Republicans, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.