{"id":62094,"date":"2017-02-09T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T17:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62094"},"modified":"2017-02-20T19:49:51","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T01:49:51","slug":"billcooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62094","title":{"rendered":"Bill Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Cooper, former chair of the Minnesota GOP and longtime CEO at TCF Bank,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/bill-cooper-builder-of-tcf-and-minnesota-s-republican-party-dies-at-73\/413166943\/\">passed away earlier this week <\/a>\u00a0at 73.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to leading the MNGOP during the Carlson years, Cooper did two things that made him a hero to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nick-Slapped<\/strong>: \u00a0Back in 2005, then-<em>Strib\u00a0<\/em>columnist Nick Coleman wrote a deeply dumb column wondering how Scott Johnson of\u00a0<em>Power Line\u00a0<\/em> managed to blog during his work day (Johnson was at the time TCF&#8217;s corporate counsel), and urging TCF customers to pull their money out of the bank in protest over employing an &#8220;out&#8221; conservative.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper pulled TCF&#8217;s ad money from the Strib &#8211; $250K a year &#8211; and followed up by cutting off the City Pages as well.<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/archives\/004997.html\">the whining and carping<\/a> lulled me to a sound, happy nap. \u00a0 I&#8217;d like to think that costing the Strib a cool quarter mill had a lot to do with Coleman&#8217;s retirement. \u00a0 For that alone, we should thank Cooper.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Friends<\/strong>: \u00a0In a more serious and productive vein, Cooper was one of the movers and shakers behind &#8220;Friends of Education&#8221;, a chain of charter schools that were focused on specific communities and educational models.<\/p>\n<p>Friends of Education schools were, and perpetually remain, among the top-performing charters in the state. \u00a0And that was in part due to Cooper&#8217;s business sense; &#8220;Friends&#8221; charters that didn&#8217;t succeed got shut down; the successful ones carried on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Cooper, former chair of the Minnesota GOP and longtime CEO at TCF Bank,\u00a0passed away earlier this week \u00a0at 73. In addition to leading the MNGOP during the Carlson years, Cooper did two things that made him a hero to me. Nick-Slapped: \u00a0Back in 2005, then-Strib\u00a0columnist Nick Coleman wrote a deeply dumb column wondering how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,19,72,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-memoriam","category-mngop","category-school-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62094","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=62094"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62097,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62094\/revisions\/62097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}