So – Tina Smith is retiring from politics. <\/p>\n
The rumor mill has it that the Walz camp is pressuring Smith to resign early, so he can appoint himself – setting himself up as an incumbent in the Senate race (and Flanagan in a hypothetical governor race), and giving him and Gwen that “inside the beltway” view they clearly lust for.\u00a0 Flanagan entering the race changes that equation, maybe. <\/p>\n
But let’s put a pin in the rumor, and talk about what we do\u00a0<\/em>know:\u00a0 there are five DFL candidates so far saying they’re running, or thinking strongly about it:<\/p>\n Who’s gonna get the nod in the end?<\/p>\n We’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n SOP<\/strong> – One thing Ken Martin has always been good at is concealing the metro DFL’s insanity to the state at large.\u00a0 He’s sought, I think it’s fair to say, to convey the image that the DFL isn’t thst\u00a0<\/em>different from the Humphrey\/Mondale DFL that everyone’s grandparents voted for while listening to WCCO and talking about Bud Grant over a Hamms and some walleye.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n See also 2018<\/a> – when the DFL convention was well on its way to endorsing Erin Murphy and Erin Maye Quade for the top of the gubernatorial ticket, as well as radical Matt Pelikan for Attorney General.\u00a0 Martin stepped in, marshalled the party’s resources, attached Walz to Peggy Flanagan to keep the progressive base happy(er), and dragged him across the. primary finish line with barely a 40% plurality.\u00a0<\/p>\n With Ken Martin in charge, one might presume the machinations would end up something like…<\/p>\n If Ken Martin were in charge, I’d guess he’d throw the state DFL behind Walz, offer to get behind Flanagan for Governor, promise resources to soften and broaden Omar’s image for a future Senate run whenever A-Klo leaves office.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that was Ken Martin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swerve: <\/strong>Persistent rumor has it that Ken Martin will be replaced by Richard Carlbom<\/a> – former head (however briefly) of “Protect” Minnesota<\/a> (remember them?) and before that the architect of the Same Sex Marriage amendment push. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the one hand, he’s more openly allied with the “progressive” wing than Martin.\u00a0 <\/p>\n On the other, he’s smart enough to have sold same sex marriage as a “moderate-enough” issue to win a statewide vote.\u00a0 <\/p>\n If I had to predict…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So – Tina Smith is retiring from politics. The rumor mill has it that the Walz camp is pressuring Smith to resign early, so he can appoint himself – setting himself up as an incumbent in the Senate race (and Flanagan in a hypothetical governor race), and giving him and Gwen that “inside the beltway” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89264","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=89264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89268,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89264\/revisions\/89268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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