Sheila Corbett Kihne from the excellent blog “Activist Next Door” did something nobody else in the Twin Cities media seems to feel the need to do; she started asking questions about Mark Dayton’s biography:

Mark Dayton’s current website biography reads:

After college, I taught 9th grade general science for two years in a New York City public school. It was the toughest job I’ve ever had!

Sheila thought she’d do a little simple fact-checking, and sent a “Freedom of Information Act” request to the New York Public Schools:

This was my request (in addition to standard template language for a FOI request)

Please email the following records:

confirmation of employment of:

Mark B. Dayton (birthdate 1/26/47) by the New York City Dept of Education/NYC Public Schools

dates of employment (believe them to be approximately July 1969-July 1971)

job title at the time of employment

school of employment

home address during the period of employment

The NYC Dept. of Education came back zilch; Sheila has scanned the NYCDOE’s response.  Follow the link and check it out.

Now, it’s quite possible that Mr. Dayton never took a salary while teaching, however there would still be some record of his employment. Why doesn’t the NYC public schools have any record of Mark Dayton working there when he says he did?

With an insanely left-leaning Minneapolis media establishment– with long-standing ties to the Dayton family– it’s unlikely that any will bother to ask Mark Dayton about it nor likely that this post will make any news.

I’m certain it’s just a bureaucratic snafu.

Perhaps the Dayton campaign could release some sort of documentary evidence to put this to rest?

It’s just an MPR poll.

But we’re just about two months from the election – so we’re getting to the point that a well-done poll is getting to be worth something.

The poll – which focuses on likely voters, whom conventional wisdom says tend to break for the GOP – shows that the money Dayton’s spent on his soft-money smear campaign so far is just keeping things close in a year that’s going to be terrible for Dems, even in Minnesota.

It also shows that Emmer is losing some of the “base”.  Part of that is that the “base” is so ill-defined; I’m not sure how MPR identified “Republicans”; there’s a big difference between someone whose total identification is having voted for McCain in 2008 versus someone who went to the precinct caucuses.  The former is much more likely to defect, I’m going to guess.  More to the point, a fair chunk of respondents showed some degree of “Pawlenty fatigue” – while they may have voted Republican, these are not the kind of voters who are motivated by principles and policy specifics; they vote on the sort of surface-y things that the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” campaign has focused on.

And yet for all of Dayton’s family’s millions in the race, it’s deadlocked, in a poll that has trended slightly Dayton so far.

Expect a Star Tribune/Minnesota poll shortly that shows an implausibly-large Dayton lead from a poll that oversamples DFLers by five percent.  The Minnesota Poll largely serves as a morale-building tool for the DFL; they may need one after this MPR poll.

I thought this part of MPR‘s piece on the MPR/Humphrey Institute poll was interesting:

While Democrats in Minnesota often rely on the lopsided support of women to win elections, a significant gender gap has not materialized in the 2010 gubernatorial race. Women favor Dayon and men favor Emmer by similar margins as in the education gap.

The education gap shows a slim lead for Emmer among college-educated likely voters, and a similar margin for Dayton among people with less than a college education.

Women not breaking overwhelmingly for the DFLer?  Watch for major efforts to stanch that particular wound; if the DFL loses women in the long term, they’re toast.

It’ll be interesting to see what form the DFL’s effort to solidify women takes…

Reading through MPR’s piece on the latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll:

Both Dayton and Emmer are seeing the effects of voter backlashes as both President Obama and Gov. Tim Pawlenty appear to be hurting their party’s chances. Of likely voters in Minnesota, 64 percent say the U.S. is on the wrong track, while 53 percent say the state is on the wrong track. Likely voters who disapprove of each executive’s performance are decidely breaking for the opposing party.

Read literally, that means Minnesotans are about 20% more likely to disapprove of Obama’s job than Pawlenty’s (and it’d be interesting to find out how much of that 53% disapproves of Pawlenty or of the DFL-controlled Legislature).

Nearly 40 percent of likely voters said an endorsement by Pawlenty for Emmer would weaken their support for Emmer. A quarter said they would be more likely to support Emmer. Similarly, 44 percent of likely voters said an Obama endorsement for Dayton would mean they would be less likely to support Dayton. Thirty percent said it would increase their likelihood of support.

This is an interesting stat.  After eight years in office, some form of Pawlenty fatigue is inevitable.

Obama’s been in office a year and a half, though.  It’s interesting that the DFL booth has absolutely no reference to the sitting President at the State Fair.

More on the poll as we go.

The latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll is showing a tossup

Tom Emmer and Democrat Mark Dayton are running are running even in the 2010 race for governor according to a new MPR News-Humphrey Institute Poll…

…Among likely voters, Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer are even at 34 percent support each. Independence Party candidate Tom Horner received 13 percent support.

It’s volatile, of course…:

A fifth of likely voters are undecided. Defections of both Democrats and Republicans from their party’s candidates and splits among key voting groups also contribute to the tight race…One-third of partisans are defecting from the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, draining usually reliable bases of support for each.

Some DFLers are crying foul over the crosstabs…:

Republican: 46%

Democrat: 41%

Independent: 13%

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t buy that. The oversampling of Republicans is yet another reason to suspect that this poll overstates the extent to which the race has actually narrowed.

…and the technology…:

Landline? Are you kidding me? I wonder how many younger voters were missed. Not having a landline, I could never have been contacted for this poll.

Although the pollsters tried to pre-empt the technical issue…

The survey data has also been weighted to accomodate for factors such as the number of telephone lines, cell phone usage, gender, age, race and ethnicity to approximate the demographic characteristics of the state’s population according to the Census.

…while a GOP activist notes that the poll might reflect the passion gap between Republicans and Democrats fairly accurately.

In the DFL “Unity” rally yesterday, Mark Dayton – who has funded, along with his family, the most expensive orgy of attack advertising in Minnesota history, unprecedented in both its cost and its fallaciousness –  complained:

“I expected the smears to start right away, and they have.”

He was complaining, of course, because after a month of carping on Emmer’s 20 and 30 year old careless driving arrests (and lying about his legislative record), the GOP – not the Emmer campaign – took out an ad highlighting Dayton’s genuine and recent erratic behavior.

Leaving aside that the MNGOP’s ad buy will be a tiny fraction of what “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” spent smearing Tom Emmer (on the Dayton family dime), one must ask; is reporting facts – something A4aBM never tried in re Emmer’s record – a “smear”?  How does Dayton feel about the “smearing” that his family-funded PAC has been funding for the past month?

This is the beginning of the latest chanting point from the left.  On Tuesday night, Jeff Rosenberg of the leftyblog MNPublius – a good guy, but as reliable a barometer of the direction of DFL spin as exists in the Twin Cities lefty “alternative” media since Dusty Trice exited the blogging stage in a welter of snark-splat – tweeted his vision of the upcoming discourse:

Dayton/DFL: “We should really solve the budget problem.” Emmer/GOP: “MARK DAYTON IS A POOHEAD.:

Which is an interesting take, given that while Dayton, his family and cronies have funded more attack ads in the past month than ran in the entire 2006 campaign against Pawlenty.

So let me ask you this, Jeff Rosenberg and, by the way, every single other lefty commentator: name and document one single attack that has come from Tom Emmer in this cycle, against anyone; against any of his convention opponents, or Kelliher, Entenza, Horner or Dayton.

You can not, of course.  Emmer has taken an utterly scrupulous high road – as has his main political action committee, MNForward, funded by Minnesota businesses.

But expect this narrative over the next week or two; that Dayton is a victim!

Indeed, I’m going to go out on a thick, strong limb and say Dayton will issue nothing substantial for the next week; he’ll whing about being “Targetboated”, and he’ll redouble the efforts of  his goons at A4aBM.

Enjoy this, Minnesota.  This is your 2010 model DFL in action.

OK, DFL.  You wanna bag on Tom Emmer from behind the cover of your little smear group?

Here you go.  It’s from that shadowy, mysterious group, the Minnesota GOP.

So here you go, DFLers.  After three months of flinging poo at Emmer’s 20 year old careless driving conviction, at his utterly accurate statements on the cost of minimum wage law  to both restauranteurs and lower-income food-service workers, and the free speech rights of corporations to combat the uncontested free speech rights of unions and plutocratic DFL supporters, we’re finally down to a real campaign here.

The astroturf campaign against Target really is emblematic of this campaign; like Target, Emmer is a home-grown guy whose mission is to bring people better stuff – bedding and appliances and groceries or government, respectively – for less money.  Like Target, the DFL and its big-money supporters, the unions and the Dayton family, need to destroy the notion that a homegrown company or guy can do that without government’s explicit blessing.

And you, plural, the DFL establishment, need to destroy Emmer (and his supporters, from Target all the way down to the regular schmoes in the street who speak out in his favor), because at the end of the day you are all now married to…:

A candidate with only one message: Raise taxes:  He (and, mostly, his supporters) gussy this up with talk of “fiscal responsibility” – but at the day the only responsibility it refers to is your “responsibility” to keep government fed, fat and happy.

A candidate who is lying about “The Rich”: If you’re in a two-income household with a successful auto mechanic and a nurse, or a cop and a store manager, or a computer programmer and a pharmacist, or a mid-level teacher and a project manager, or a successful salesman and an executive assistant, you may not think of yourself as “the rich” in the same sense as, say, Mark Dayton.  But according to Mark Dayton’s plan, you are.  You are the ripe sucks for his tax plan.

And to make matters worse, as we will explore in coming weeks, there is no way on earth taxing “the rich” – households making over $150,000 a year – will close the deficit; partly because there isn’t that much money in that pool, and partly because taxing that pool will drive down the revenue received.  And so Dayton will, inevitably, have to drive down the definition of “rich”; in a few years, it’ll be households making $100K.  And then $85K.  You get the picture.

A candidate who is going to destroy Minnesota’s already-ailing business climate: Minnesota’s business tax rates are already hurting Minnesota business.  Businesses have stayed here, more or less.  But most of the big corporations, your Targets and Best Buys and 3Ms, have been building most of their actual production facilities outside Minnesota for decades; our tax rates have been a boon for Texas, Mississippi, Mexico, and the Dakotas.  And many smaller business are on the bubble; they’re looking at this election and pondering moving to Texas, Arizona or the Dakotas if things get any worse than they are.  You haven’t heard of most of these companies; they’re little operations that employ dozens, maybe a hundred or two.  But those are jobs, especially outside the metro, that are slowly bleeding away and aren’t coming back anytime soon.

We’ll have more on this in the next week or so.

A candidate whose behavior has been, to say the least, erratic over the years: Mark Dayton has admitted to suffering from Depression.  So did Winston Churchill.

Dayton has admitted to being an alcoholic.  So were Ulysses S. Grant and George W. Bush.

Depression and alcoholism clearly don’t disqualify people from political office.

But the erratic behavior that accompany depression and addiction certainly need to be considered.

When one of history’s greatest terrorists threatened to bomb London (and followed through in spades), Winston Churchill didn’t shut down Parliament and flee to Kenwood.  He stuck a cigar in his mouth and threw Hitler a rhetorical middle finger and fought, and won, the war.

When the Union cause got incredibly difficult, and the equation came down to trading horrific casualties for the wearing down of the enemy – a commander’s worst nightmare – Ulysses S. Grant didn’t relapse, throw his hands in the air, and walk away from the job.  He gritted his teeth and won the Civil War.

So as Minnesota faces its biggest budget challenge in almost eighty years – maybe ever – can you honestly say you see that kind of response in Mark Dayton?  In any facet of his thirty-odd year record as a dissolute playboy political hobbyist?

Is it fair to even bring up alchoholism and mental illness?  Irrelevant; I’m not.  I’m talking only of Dayton’s long history of just plain strange behavior.  And since the DFL saw fit to make Tom Emmer’s two careless driving convictions from a generation ago into election fodder, it’s only fair that Dayton’s behavior be on the table as well.   Of course, Emmer’s last problem was 20 years ago; he’s gone on to become a pillar of the community in every sense.  What’s Dayton done?

What has Dayton done?

We’ll be talking about that for the next three months.

I stand by my prediction: after all of the Dayton family money is spent, and the unions have stomped and squealed, and all is said and done, Minnesota will atone for the madness of 1998 and 2008  and put Emmer into the Governor’s office by a four point margin.

Because I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it at least weekly until this election is tagged and bagged; when you meet Tom Emmer, even if you’re not fundamentally disposed to agree with him, you at least walk away liking the guy, and thinking he’s got something going on.  When you meet Mark Dayton, you feel…just a little off.

Go ahead, DFL.  Start defending the guy.

This oughtta be good.