Missions Stated And Unstated – Part I

Cam Winton is running for Mayor of Minneapolis.

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

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

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

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

And there’s the problem.

———-

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

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

The DFL ones.

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

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

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

This brings up a couple of questions:

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

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

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

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

I’ll have that part of the conversation tomorrow.

8 thoughts on “Missions Stated And Unstated – Part I

  1. Letter to the editor of St Paul PP last week. By local businessman about Dayton visit to Chamber of Commerce. Won’t copy/paste the whole thing, but I would reccommend you read it.

    Ends with:
    “I left that room with the opinion that Minnesota does not want my business located here and does not want the jobs I provide. I am small; what are the CEOs of Polaris, 3M and Cargill thinking?”

  2. Speaking of Mpls office running….the city recently instituted a $100 registration fee to run for city office. They said they did this to keep non-serious candidates from running.

    With the voter ID bill, the Democrats said that having to show an ID to vote is like a poll tax as many peoples of color can’t afford to get an ID, even if it is free.

    So isn’t a $100 fee to run for office kind of like a poll tax to keep peoples of color from running for office?

  3. The whole point of the registration fee was to try to prevent people from gaming the IRV system.

    Which is, to be fair, a system that’s extraordinarily susceptible to being gamed.

  4. What is the upside to having a Republican mayor of Minneapolis? The place is thouroughly infested with as virulent a leftist as you’ll find anywhere East of Berkely, so the only way anyone gets the job is by promising an uninterrupted stream of moonbat kool-aid.

    Right now, Minneapolis has the highest entertainment tax levy in the country. Add in all the rest of the city and county taxes and your sitting on a pile of confiscated cash that still doesn’t satisfy the current demand for more, more more.

    And the bloated government employee pension system is just about ripe enough to blow.

    You want the GOP holding that bag?

  5. swiftee, great points on the entertainment tax. Since it was announced nationally that Minneapolis gouges visitors more than any other large city, a couple of event planners that I know have informed me that there have been at least six large conventions that chose Chicago because of it. This should show the morons running the city that some companies would rather have their employees face a higher risk of being a crime victim at the hands of some street thug than be legally robbed via their taxes.

  6. Swiftee don’t worry about the Minneapolis pension system blowing up. Rybak and company will shift that burden onto the State with the help of Gov. Moonshine. Then at some point the State pension system will blow up.

  7. Interesting. Post on Leslie Davis’ FB page: Governor Dayton’s definition of “courage” is ridiculous. How in the world did Dayton ever become Governo [sic] of Minnesotar? [sic] I have no choice but to take him on in 2014 and rid Minnesota of him.

    (Hint: Leslie, bubbie. HE BUYS POLITICAL OFFICES FOR A HOBBY)

    And the comment below that said “You’ve been running or governor and/or U.S. Senator since 1998 and have yet to win. 2014 will be no different”. If I remember correctly, I believe his vote total at the 2010 MNGOP convention was something like 14.

    And I thought I read somewhere that he suggested a run against Franken as well. Good luck with that.

    If it gets down to Winton vs a liberal progressive leftist, and Winton gets more than 30%, I’ll be shocked.

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