I have my differences with Senator Norm Coleman.<\/p>\n
That should be no shock; the guy came up through the DFL. He even gave Paul Wellstone’s nominating speech at the 1996 DFL convention.<\/p>\n
But he was one of Saint Paul’s thin film of “good” DFLers, the tiny scree of Truman Democrats left in the increasingly loony Saint Paul party, along with his successor Randy Kelly; both represented what an eastside DFLer friend of mine called the “pro-life, assault-rifle-owning, pro-defense” wing of the DFL.<\/p>\n
Hence, the DFL couldn’t tolerate either of them, and Norm became a Republican. Not a perfect conservative, mind you – he never claimed to be – but the closest to one that we’ve got in the Senate at the moment.<\/p>\n
And so I voted for him, enthusiastically, in two mayoral races, and in 2002, and I’ll vote for him early and often this fall, too. Not because he’s the perfect conservative, but because he’s better than Al Franken or <\/em>Mike Ciresi or <\/em>the risible Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer – and because the MNGOP came nowhere close to showing us a vastly better alternative in this cycle.<\/p>\n And – more importantly – because while he’s not <\/em>the perfect conservative, he does the blocking and tackling of good government generally well. A former prosecutor, he and his administration had a solid role in helping Saint Paul have a vastly lower crime rate, per capita, than Minneapolis.<\/p>\n Which is one reason, I suspect, that the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Police Federations have endorsed the Senator against whomever<\/em> he’s running against:<\/p>\n The Saint Paul and Minneapolis Police Federations today joined forces to endorse U.S. Senator Norm Coleman<\/span>\u2019s re-election campaign. The Minneapolis Police Federation represents over 900 officers employed by the City of Minneapolis as well as Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The Saint Paul Police Federation<\/span> represents 620 sworn officers and 75 Emergency Communications workers in the City of Saint Paul.<\/p>\n Saint Paul Police Federation<\/span>. \u201cSince his time as Saint Paul\u2019s Mayor, when he worked hard to put more officers on the streets, he has always listened to our needs and responded. He knows that the strength of our communities depends on the strength of our officers and their abilities to do their jobs. He has consistently been there for us, and that\u2019s why we are here for him today and going forward in this campaign.\u201d\u201cThroughout his entire career, starting with prosecuting criminals across the state during his time in the Attorney General\u2019s office, to his work in the Mayor\u2019s office and now in the Senate, Norm has responded to the needs of law enforcement. His efforts have made a real difference in how we do our jobs. We need to keep Norm in the Senate working with us in the law enforcement community because he gets it,\u201d said John Delmonico, President of the Minneapolis Police Federation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now if Coleman could only sic some of those cops on the UN, he’d redeem a few of his mistakes…<\/p>\n (And perhaps give him a warning about his apparent support for the “Cap and Trade” bill.\u00a0 Maybe a tazer).<\/p>\n I have my differences with Senator Norm Coleman. That should be no shock; the guy came up through the DFL. He even gave Paul Wellstone’s nominating speech at the 1996 DFL convention. But he was one of Saint Paul’s thin film of “good” DFLers, the tiny scree of Truman Democrats left in the increasingly loony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}