(SCENE: Denise CARDINAL, head of Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair of the Minnesota DFL, wallks into her office, sits in an overstuffed chair)

(KEN MARTIN walks in to room).

MARTIN: “Hello…”

(MARTIN stops abruptly as CARDINAL motions downward with her index fingers.  MARTIN sighs, gets on hands and knees in front of CARDINAL’s char.  CARDINAL puts feet up on MARTIN’s back).

(REP. JOHN LESCH, who is minding the phones, buzzes in) “Mizz Cardinal, the party from the legislature is here to see you”.

CARDINAL: “Send them in please”.

(Tom BAKK, Paul THISSEN and Ryan WINKLER walk in.  Each bows deeply toward CARDINAL).

CARDINAL: Rise!

(All three take seats in overstuffed chairs around the room).

CARDINAL: OK.  What do we have?

BAKK: We think we have a plan!

THISSEN: Yes!  A plan!

WINKLER:  Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Let me hear it!

(THISSEN motions to WINKLER)

WINKLER:  Well, there’s this group, the “American Legislative Exchange Council“, or “ALEC”.  They are your run of the mill conservative activist group, run by Grover Norquist…

(BAKK, THISSEN and CARDINAL hiss theatrically)

WINKLER: …and they propose legislation and stuff, and lots of Republicans legislators have signed up with the group…

BAKK:  And if we can spin them as some big, shadowy conspiracy that tells affiliated legislators do to Grover Norquist’s bidding…

THISSEN:  Yeah! Grover Norquist!

WINKLER: Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Silence!  I like it! Winkler?

(WINKLER bows deeply)

CARDINAL: Start telling people that ALEC is a powerful, unaccountable group that wields boundless resources to pull the strings at the Minnesota State Legislature…

LESCH (Buzzes in) Mizz Cardinal?

CARDINAL (enraged) WHAT?

LESCH:  The Gentlemen are here.

CARDINAL:  Thank you. Send them in.

(CARDINAL makes a hand gesture to BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER, all of whom get up from their chairs and lie, face-down, on the floor, head-to-foot, from the door to CARDINAL’s chair)

(CARDINAL rises as Tom DOOHER enters the room in a long, black cape.  He is accompanied by Javier MORILLO, who is wearing a long purple cape.  DOOHER steps across WINKLER, THISSEN and BAKK’s backs to walk to CARDINAL, to whom he offers his hand.  CARDINAL kisses his pinky ring).

DOOHER:  Well?

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey.

MORILLO:  You heard the man! SOUND OFF!

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey!

DOOHER: Very well.  Stand up, for Minnesota’s students.  (As BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER stand, DOOHER takes BAKK’s seat.  BAKK takes THISSEN’s, THISSEN takes WINKLER’s, who stands awkwardly).

DOOHER: Let us talk of the 2012 session…

(And SCENE).

The New York Times opts to toss facts under the bus in yesterday’s editorial about the Minnesota Shutdown:

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year.

Well, no.

The GOP refused to raise taxes.  Period.  Dayton chose to make it about “millionaires”, and before that “the rich”.  Had Dayton chosen to raise, say, the gas tax (like the DFL majority in 2009 did), a terribly regressive tax that squats all over working-class prosperity, the GOP would have opposed that, as well.

For the Times to turn the GOP’s opposition to a tax into “protecting millionaires” is a craven bit of rhetorical dishonesty.

Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase.

Note the rhetoric: Dayton keeping a campaign promise?  Good.  The GOP? Can’t be good, can it?

Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.

The Times’ “editorial” was apparently written by the MNDFL’s chair, Ken Martin.  The GOP budget is the biggest spending increase in Minnesota history.

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs.

All of which the GOP compromised on, meeting Dayton much more than halfway.

The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The Times apparently believes the GOP should “negotiate” like a Saturn dealer; start with their “final offer” and work backward from there.

Also unmentioned by “the Times” editorial writer: Dayton walked out of the negotiations every time.  The GOP Legislature was waiting in the Capitol, ready to negotiate and/or pass a “lights on” bill, to keep govermment running

More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.

Unmentioned by the Times (or any of the Twin Cities media); the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Dayton rigged the shutdown to cause as much pain as possible, specifically to drive those dependent on state employment or services to try to push moderate Republicans into wobbling.

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country.

“Extremist ideology”.

The GOP ran very openly on a platform of holding the line on taxes and spending.  Perhaps you remember the Tea Party – it was in all the papers, including the Times.

Extremist?  Governor Dayton won with 43% of the vote; the GOP majorities had, by definition, over 50% of the state’s voters pick them (since the third-party challenges were virtually nonexistant in legislative races in 2010).  Can a policy chosen by over half the voters be “extemist?”

On the one hand, I guess conservatives should be happy the Strib actually published Michael Brodkorb’s a takedown of the Strib’s systematic bias in covering political rhetoric:

…I’m always impressed by the speed in which the Star Tribune editorial page will throw the foul flag on comments from [State GOP chair Tony] Sutton and me, while ignoring hyperbolic rhetoric from Gov. Mark Dayton, DFL Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk and Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin over a potential government shutdown (“Sutton’s boorish behavior,” editorial, May 28).

It’s nothing new, of course; exposing the Strib’s institutional bias and ethical perfidy has always been the seed corn of the Minnesota conservative blogosphere.

But the double-standard has shifted into high gear this year, as the Strib’s editorial board circles its wagons to try to protect Dayton.

In the final days of the 2011 legislative session, GOP leaders in the Minnesota House and Senate provided DFL Gov. Mark Dayton with an opportunity to speak directly to both legislative caucuses. It was a historic bipartisan meeting, filled with the discussion and debate that Minnesotans expect. In this private meeting, both Gov. Dayton and the GOP legislators were respectful of differing views.

How did Dayton reward this olive branch from the GOP leadership? He publicly attacked the legislators who politely asked questions of their governor by calling them “extremists” and by saying they “know little about government and care even less.”

Rather than using his powerful soapbox to rally Minnesotans together, he chose to take a swipe at the mothers, fathers, teachers, veterans, Cub Scout leaders and small-business owners who serve as citizen legislators. Dayton attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

Did I say double-standard?

Good:

[Senate Majority Leader Tom] Bakk, who earlier in the session flat-out refused to produce a budget solution, was speaking to the press, comparing these same hardworking GOP legislators to members of “cults.” It’s worth noting that while Bakk has time to stroll the halls of the State Capitol launching personal attacks on citizen legislators, his caucus hasn’t found any time to provide substantive budget solutions.

It seems the only “budget” work the Senate DFL Caucus has done this year is cashing in its legislative pay and per-diem checks. Bakk attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

Finally, Martin ended the week with a frantic news release, decrying Sutton’s and my political statements about Dayton’s “erratic” leadership style. This, of course, is the same Ken Martin who said on TV hours earlier that GOP legislators would have “blood” on their hands if state government shuts down. Martin attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

I’ve been writing this for months; the DFL is running the first-year law school play; “if the law is against you, argue facts; it the facts are against you, argue law; if the facts and law are against you, argue like hell”.  They’re stuck with a population that tossed them from office by the palette-load last fall, and a governor who has won awards for his political ineptitude.  They are desperate.

As home prices are falling, and as gas prices have risen to nearly $4 a gallon, Gov. Dayton is preparing to shut down state government for a tax increase that Minnesotans can’t afford — something that candidate Dayton said he wouldn’t do. I guess if I were the DFL, I’d distract, too!

As Michael points out, the GOP accomplished its mission – or close to it.  They raised the budget, without touching anyone’s taxes.  In addition, they passed some historic reforms to government.

What does the DFL minority and our isolated, embattled governor have to show?

Delaying.  Name-calling.

And the Strib is covering for them.

Yesterday, the Campaign Finance reports for the last Gubernatorial election came out.

And the media finally noticed – sort of – what you learned on this blog last July; Mark Dayton outspent Tom Emmer 2:1, and that most of the money came from “outside groups”.

MPR had the best report, at least compared to the rest of the Twin Cities media:

Democrat Mark Dayton and his allies spent significantly more than Republican Tom Emmer and his allies to win the race for Minnesota governor.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a group working to elect Dayton, spent $5.7 million in the race, helped by big contributions from labor unions and Dayton’s family. Most of Alliance’s money was spent on ads criticizing Emmer.

“Most of” it.  Heh.

I’m going to add some emphasis here:

Labor unions spent more than $2.2 million to help elect Dayton, with money coming in both before the election and afterward to help the recount effort. The Democratic Governor’s Association spent $1 million, and Dayton’s family and his ex-wife gave more than $900,000.

Tom Scheck’s piece yesterday included a sound bite from Ken Martin, the head of “Win Minnesota”, a PAC that funneled money to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (ABM):

Ken Martin, who ran the umbrella group that financed The Alliance for a Better Minnesota, says donors were energized to elect the first Democrat to the governor’s office since 1986.

“People invest in politics on all sides, and it’s not for any other purpose than to support the candidates that they feel are going to best represent what they believe in,” said Martin. “Frankly, the payoff is a better Minnesota, and they believe Mark Dayton was the candidate to make that happen.”

Martin’s statement implies that there was some huge groundswell of grassroots financial support in $20 and $50 donations from Ma and Pa Minnesota.  There was not; the money to run Dayton’s sleazy smear campaign came from big institutional donors, national Democrat sources, and Dayton and his family.

More emphasis added below:

Alliance for a Better Minnesota outspent the two groups backing Emmer — MN Forward and Minnesota’s Future. Minnesota’s Future, funded mostly by the Republican Governor’s Association, spent $1.4 million on the race. MN Forward, who received contributions from businesses like Target and Best Buy, spent nearly $1.8 million.

Catch that?  That, of course, is why the DFL spent six months caterwauling (with the help of their kissin’ cousins in the media) about the “corrosive effects of corporate money in politics”  Minnesota business managed to contribute all of 2/3 what unions did.

Can’t have that, can we?

By the way, it’s interesting that business donated $1.8 million to the conservative, pro-business Emmer, while…:

On the DFL side, companies including Kwik Trip, Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer and SuperValu gave a total of $88,000 to groups helping to elect Dayton and support him during the recount.

Unfortunately, I already patronize none of these companies.

Dayton’s campaign also outspent Emmer’s. Dayton spent $5.3 million in 2009 and 2010, helped by a $3.9 million in loans to himself. Emmer spent $2.8 million.

That’s a lot of Renoirs.

Naturally, the chattering classes’ objections about “the toxicity of money in politics” referred to corporate money.  Not labor unions, and not trust funds from South Dakota.

As we began the march toward the primaries, and I saw that Mark Dayton had (according to the KSTP poll) a 13 point lead in the race over DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher, I sat back in my seat and wondered “Why?”

Why Mark Dayton – a superannuated playboy with a 30-year habit of treating electoral office as a hobby?

“Because he can?”

Sure, but that explains a lot of people running for office.  Leslie Davis and Peter Idusogie and Ole Savior all ran for governor “because they could”.  They didn’t have the deep pockets of the Dayton and Rockefeller families to bankroll them, of course – but deep pockets alone don’t win primaries, much less elections; if they did, we’d be talking about “Governor Corzine”, and “Former California Governor Huffington”, for that matter.

It takes more than will, and it takes more than just money.  It takes skill and organization to spend all that money effectively in order to beat the combined brawn of the entire DFL machine to start a campaign, have it gain traction across this state, and take it through the primaries.

And that takes people who know the DFL; people who know the people whose palms need to be greased; people who know how to get out the people who get out the liberal votes; it takes people who know where the bodies are buried and how to put more there, as it were.

———-

One of those people is Ken Martin.

Martin is currently the director of “Win Minnesota“.  If you read this blog, you know who they are: they are a PAC that launders the Dayton family’s political contributions to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” and the “2010 Fund” and the other arms of the Dayton Campaign’s tightly-wound little money-laundering and distribution machine.

And in 2006, Martin was Mike Hatch’s campaign manager, orchestrating an epic smear campaign against Tim Pawlenty that came within a cat’s whisker of winning.

———-

Mike Hatch needs no introduction.  A longtime legislator, former head of the DFL, former Attorney General, and two-time gubernatorial candidate, Hatch could be quickly but fairly described as the Lyndon Johnson of Minnesota politics.

Mike Hatch

Hatch has never been bashful about exerting his power.  During the nineties, he essentially ran Minnesota’s healthcare industry from the Attorney General’s office, using the AGO’s power to force the likes of HealthPartners to insert his cronies into controlling positions (on “consumer protection” grounds, naturally).

In 2003, Hatch tried to use the power of his office to try to intimidate the Commerce Department into pushing for an illegal settlement with a Florida-based insurance company – an effort that involved a shady potemkin contribution that amounted in my opinion to virtual blackmail against his political opponents, including the Minnesota GOP.  I reported on this story in 2003 (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five).

After his failed gubernatorial bid in 2006, Hatch went on to “consult” at the Attorney General’s office, with his successor and longtime protegé, Lori Swanson.  It was, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, a potemkin consultancy; Swanson had served so long as Hatch’s understudy that the two were basically one and the same entity, for policy purposes.

It’s an open secret among Minnesota’s chattering classes that Mike Hatch is by no means ready to shuffle off into the sunset – at least when it comes to wielding political power.

And Hatch remains, by all accounts, close friends with Ken Martin.

———-

“So what?”, you might ask.

Here’s what.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are a superannuated playboy hobby politician with a reputation for being a blunderer.  You’ve been “serving” inside the beltway, or been out in the political cold.  Your last experience in state electoral politics was in 1995, when you left (hypothetically, mind you) the office of State Auditor.

What do you need to succeed?

A Chief of Staff who knows where the bodies are buried, and is dying to bury a few more.

And if you are – again, hypothetically – a long-time political majordomo who still thirsts for power, but has been rejected for the endorsement to get it via electoral means?  How do you find that power?  By latching onto a (hypothetical) administration led by an inconsequential candidate who is nonetheless capable of providing boundless funding to get elected, backstopped by an even less-consequential running mate (Yvonne Prettner-Solon, whose record is as negligible as her opponent’s, Annette Meeks’s, is impressive), that’s how.  And then getting appointed to a position to influence the weak-kneed top of the ticket.

Rumors are trickling around Minnesota political circles that Hatch  is angling for the Chief of Staff gig in a Dayton Administration.

A source with knowledge of capitol  politics tells me that her or his sources saw a group of key Dayton staffers in the back room at a south-metro Perkins restaurant not long before the primaries.  With them, according to the source, was Hatch’s pal and former campaign manger Ken Martin.

———-

Again, you might say “So what?  It’s just a staff gig!  A guy’s gotta earn a living!”

But Mike Hatch as Chief of Staff brings up all sorts of wrinkles.  It seems fair to conjecture, given Dayton’s ineffectiveness as a leader and inexperience at executive office, that a Chief of Staff Hatch would have a very strong influence on the policies of the executive office.  He also remains the de facto Attorney General; via his years at AG, he has an inordinate influence in the Commerce Department.

In other words, in a Mark Dayton administration, Mike Hatch would have unprecedented power for an unelected official in Minnesota.

“He’d be the King of Minnesota”, quipped my source.