Minneapolis Mayor and candidate for governor R.T. Rybak, fresh off a win in the DFL gubernatorial caucus but also facing an inexplicable surge in his city's homicide rate, is the subject of a long feature in the latest issue of Governing magazine. Under the headline "Radical Renewal," it says Rybak -- "a bundle of contradictions" -- has fostered economic growth in neglected parts of Minneapolis, and has stepped on some toes to bring about better fiscal discipline.
Midtown Global Market, which has had its ups and downs, is held up as emblamatic of Rybak's success:
At 6 a.m., Marty Seifert looked like the leader of Tuesday night's Republican gubernatorial caucuses. With 95.91 percent reporting, Seifert led the GOP field of seven with 50.1 percent. His closest rival was Tom Emmer, with 39.7 percent. On the DFL side, with 77 percent reporting, R.T. Rybak emerged with a narrow lead over Margaret Anderson Kelliher, 21.8 percent to 20.3 percent.
Here's what we know so far, including number of votes, and percentage of votes:
T-Paw's political action committee, Freedom First, raked in $1,279,906.36 during the final three months of 2009, according to papers to be filed with the Federal Election Commission this weekend. Over 2,750 donors chipped in. You can read all about this, and more, at timpawlenty.com's "Freedom Feed." (The only reason we plug that here is because we derive a sick pleasure from retyping a phrase as hypnotic and empty and moronic as "Freedom Feed.")
Who is this mysterious "R.T." and what does he want with the city of Minneapolis?
A letter writer thinks there's a conspiracy afoot:
I think it is absolutely ridiculous not to be able to find out the mayor of Minneapolis' real full name!
What does the R.T. stand for?
Why does he hide his name? To vote for someone I want to know his name , not just his initials. It's juvenile on his part and is not fair to the public that might think about voting for him.
Hat tip to the folks at The Uptake: U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum's official Web site was among dozens hacked yesterday by a group or someone posting an anti-Obama screed: ""FUCK OBAMA!! Red Eye CREW !!!!! O RESTO E HACKER !!! by HADES; m4V3RiCk; T4ph0d4 -- FROM BRASIL."
The screenshot below, via The Uptake, appears taken from Louisiana Rep. Spencer Bachus's Web site. His, McCollum's and the others' affected all appear to be inaccessible this morning.
Basel dated neither the young woman with seashells covering her breasts nor the one in the barely-there bikini in this family portrait. Our boy Joe had bragged on Facebook that he had a date with Arianna (the one without the shells), which turns out to be just the product of his fevered imagination.
"Absolutely not true," Brown's spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom told the Boston Herald.
"No one here knows him and Arianna never heard of the guy. It sounds like he
needs a good lawyer."
Minneapolis Council President Barb Johnson was before a three-judge panel in St. Paul today, defending her use of campaign funds for expenditures such as dry-cleaning and haircuts.
Johnson's attorney, Corey Ayling, led her through a series of questions about expenses that were called into question after a City Pages story last fall. Also called to the stand were Sarah Janecek, publisher of Politics in Minnesota, and former city council president Louis DeMars. Both said appearance was of the utmost importance and a legitimate campaign cost.
"One bad public appearance--one bad hair day--and it gets on the Internet," Ayling said.
Ayling argued that state campaign law is not as stringent as federal, and that under it Johnson's expenses are allowed. The three-judge panel must rule on the campaign expenses 30 days after final briefs are filed. A decision is expected by mid-March.
Hey, if it worked for the Packers, maybe it'll work for the Vikings. (Oh, wait, didn't we just try that?)
Joe Repya, a longtime Republican now running for governor as an Independent, says he has an answer for the long-running battle over whether the Vikes should get a new stadium funded by taxpayer dollars: Yes, as long as the the state gets a controlling stake in the organization.
As your next governor, I would agree to public financing of a new Viking stadium only if Ziggy Wilf and the NFL agree to sell a 51% equity of the Vikings to the State of Minnesota with a never to relocate iron clad clause. Ziggy could run the team as long as he wishes and without state interference. We will increase state revenues by allowing Minnesotans to purchase one share of non-voting, non transferable interests (like the Green Bay Packers "stock" program") in the Minnesota Vikings. If Green Bay can own the Packers, Minnesota can own the Vikings.
Not a good week for liberals, folks. First, Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown wins the "Kennedy seat" in the U.S. Senate. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi all but pulls the plug on health care reform for the time being. And now, there's radio silence where the liberal talk network Air America use to be.
At one point or other since its 2004 launch, Al Franken, Rachel Maddow, Ron Reagan, Arriana Huffington, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, Chuck D, Jerry Springer, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Earle and a host of other lefties all spent time behind Air America's microphones.
Franken was one of Air America's original hosts, and brightest stars, and his position gave him a platform to discuss politics -- and build a new audience -- after a career as a comedian and author. He parlayed that experience into Minnesota DFL politics, and a seat in the U.S. Senate at the expense of GOP incumbent Norm Coleman.
The irony is irresistible: The Republican National Committee, which along with Michele Bachmann has been leading a campaign of criticism and mistrust regarding the 2010 U.S. Census over allegations of corruption because of ACORN, now appears to be sullying the reputation of the survey itself with a political mailing it labels as a "census" and an "official document."
Dennis Johnson, regional director for the U.S. Census in Minnesota and several other states, said the forms from the RNC had been sent to at least one other state earlier this month.
"There are some organizations that try to take advantage of the extra publicity surrounding the census," Johnson said.
While Johnson said that raises concerns, he said U.S. Census officials plan a major public awareness campaign in the next few months to make sure people know what the real census form looks like.
Former DFL Sen. Mark Dayton made his official entry into the governor's race on Wednesday, so we thought it would be useful to publish a list of all the major party candidates who have officially announced similar intentions -- because it's getting longer all the time. Along with each candidate, we've linked to their homepage, and their Campaign Finance Board registration.
Minnesotans, Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey wants to be our governor. He's running on the Vampyres, Witches, and Pagans ticket. Read the story here, and check out his first campaign video. The dead bodies hanging from wooden stakes are a nice touch.
The question of how and when Gov. Tim Pawlenty can balance the state's budget on his own is headed to a March showdown in the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Two weeks ago, Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin ruled that Pawlenty abused his power when he cut the funding of a state program that aids low income Minnesotans with diet issues. The cut was part of $2.7 billion that Pawlenty sliced out of the state's budget for the coming fiscal year using an obscure rule called unallotment.
She ordered the program's funding to be restored, and in the process threw Pawlenty's budget-balancing tactic into legal limbo.
Washington, D.C. lawyer Marc Elias, who led Al Franken's legal team in a bitter, bruising and ultimately victorious recount battle against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008-9, has set up shop in Massachusetts in the event that a crucial special election held there today ends up too close to count.
Politico reports that Elias will head up a Democratic legal team ready for a fight for Martha Coakley against a similar squad of lawyers being assembled by her Republican challenger, Mark Brown, the Republican. The two candidates are competing to replace the late liberal Democratic icon Ted Kennedy, who died last year of cancer.
Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton will make his candidacy for governor official on Wednesday at the State Capitol, when he holds a press conference and then heads out on a road trip that will take him to all 87 Minnesota counties in 87 days.
"This tour will allow me to listen to and learn from Minnesotans in every one of our counties. People everywhere are facing very serious hardships," the DFLer said in a press release. "Our state, which used to rank near the top in economic growth, has now fallen near the bottom. We need a new governor to lead this state to its future greatness."
Tim Pawlenty recently told Newsweek that it might be hard to be a presidential candidate in 2012, since nobody knows who he is. That's why, of course, he keeps showing up at big conservative and Republican shindigs around the country. One of them, the annual fund raising gala put on by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, has just named him their headliner for this year's event.
In February he'll speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. The Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans follows in March.
Margaret Anderson Kelliher's campaign for governor and the DFL party are getting a $24,000 slap on the wrist.
In November, Kelliher accepted donations that had been made to the DFL party but intended for her. The money was used to pay for Kelliher's access to a voter database.
It's illegal to earmark party funds for a specific candidate, but Kelliher says she got bad advice from a DFL Party officials, who later realized their error. A GOP complaint was filed with the state's campaign finance board. The board fined Kelliher $9,000 and the DFL Party $15,000. Here's what she had to say about it, from Minnesota Public Radio:
"We've corrected everything that we could do to correct that mistake and we obviously knew that we were going to face a consequence by the Campaign Finance Board," she said. "I accept that consequence. We've paid our fine and we made sure there was a new system in place so we don't have anything like this happen again."
Rasmussen Reports is out with a new poll that says former Sen. Norm Coleman leads among Republicans in the race to replace retiring Gov. Tim Pawlenty, even though Coleman isn't even officially running -- yet. Meanwhile, another former Senator, Mark Dayton, now leads the Democratic field.
Some politicians say serious things that end up sounding funny. Think, for example, of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who once worked a crowd of fellow teabaggers to a froth by mistakenly invoking one of the worst blunders in military history, the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Some politicians used to be funny in their previous lives. Think of Sen. Al Franken impersonating Mick Jagger singing Under My Thumb, for example.
Other politicians say stuff that's actually meant to be funny. And that is evidently why Sen. Amy Klobuchar has been tapped to give one of two keynote speeches at the National Press Club's annual gala in Washington D.C. on Jan. 30.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty acted unilaterally -- and controversially -- last year when he bypassed state legislators and balanced the state's books by wielding his unallotment pen to cut $2.7 billion out of the state budget for the coming fiscal year.
Now he's looking for a friend in the court system, after Ramsey County District Court Kathleen Gearin ruled two weeks ago that Pawlenty abused his authority in the way he applied the unallotment rule.
Pawlenty's appealing Gearin's decision directly to the Minnesota Supreme Court. In the event that gambit fails, he has also asked the state Court of Appeals court to be ready for a quick consideration.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty poses with state Senate hopeful Mike Parry in a photo from Parry's Web site.
Mike Parry, a Republican Party-endorsed candidate for the 23rd district state Senate seat in southern Minnesota, is under fire, first for posting that President Barack Obama is a "Power Hungry Arrogant Black Man," and then for deleting his tweets after critics discovered the thinly-veiled racist post. The storm of criticism finally got his attention, and he issued an apology -- of sorts -- yesterday, right before a DFL press conference was scheduled to rake him over the coals.
Democrats--who, a few short years ago, were a ragtag opposition party ostensibly devoted to restoring transparency to government--are insisting that a critical piece of legislation be hashed out beyond the proles' prying eyes. And Republicans--long considered political/PR foot soldiers for the financial and military elite--are clamoring for more transparency in government.
R.T. Rybak was sworn in for another term as mayor of Minneapolis on Monday, even as he turns his attention to running for governor. In a sign of the overlap, he posts this tweet on his campaign Web site: "Swearing in for third term as Mayor today. It's a tremendous honor to be Mayor of Minneapolis." It appears alongside links to attacks on Tim Pawlenty and appeals for campaign cash. Striking that balance as mayor v. candidate will be interesting to watch as Rybak moves forward.
In the same Monday morning ceremony, Barb Johnson was elected to serve another term as City Council president, and three new council members were also sworn in: Kevin Reich, Meg Tuthill and John Quincy. Evidently council members don't care too much that Johnson will be before a judge on Jan. 26, defending her decision to use campaign money for haircuts, dry-cleaning, her cell phone, and a line at her lake house. That hearing follows a City Pages investigation of her creative accounting.
A couple of weeks ago we wondered out loud how self proclaimed "Vampire King" Jonathon Sharkey was going to carry on with his planned campaign for Minnesota governor, since he was in a Marion County, Ind., jail.
"I've got my Rochester apartment all set," he said. "I should be back in the state by February," after visiting family in Florida and New Jersey, and a trip overseas to Russia.
That "most intriguing" Newsweek with Tim "nobody knows who I am" Pawlenty has seriously pissed off a national transgender rights organization with his assertion that little kids are going to be "confused" because of legislation he once signed.
"When asked by Newsweek how his views have evolved over time, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (and possible GOP 2012 Presidential candidate) responded by turning his back on the anti-discrimination ordinance he himself had voted for in 1993," says a post on the National Center for Transgender Equality's blog. (Hat tip Minnesota Independent.)
Former Sen. Dayton is one of 11 DFLers in the hunt for the governor's job being vacated by Republican Tim Pawlenty.
Power Line barked openly and caustically a few years ago about Dayton as "an otherwise colorless, inept, demagogic artifact of alcoholic if not psychiatric rehabilitation." This morning, Scott Johnson uses the Dayton news to take a hard whack at the Star Tribune for allegedly burying Dayton's personal problems for years. (John Hinderaker was not the author of the post, as earlier reported.)
Low down in the Star Tribune's Sunday story about former Sen. Mark Dayton's struggle with alcohol and depression was a quote from Minnesota Republican Party chairman Tony Sutton suggesting that, at least for now, the DFL gubernatorial candidate's disclosures were not fodder for political attacks.
He'd heard talk about Dayton's mental health issues as far back as 2000, but, "it's not relevant," Sutton told the Strib. "I am more troubled with what he wants to do to businesses in this state than I am about his private mental health issues or his struggles with drinking."
Peace on Earth, good will toward men? Bah humbug. This health care debate has a way of bringing out the Scrooge in a lot of angry people. Take a look at this confrontation caught on video as protesters gather outside the swank Lake Minnetonka home of Stephen Hemsley, president and chief executive of UnitedHealth Group.
The commentary posted along with the video by socialalt reads: "Before we we walked down to Stephen Hemsley's house (CEO of United Health Group) to protest outrageous HMO CEO salaries at the expense of people who need and cannot afford health care, we were confronted by an angry neighbor of his. He was outraged that we would protest the man near his home at Christmas time. I wonder if Hemsley gives a rat's ass about people who died and did not get to see another Christmas when his company denied their claims?"
We've said it before, we'll say it again: Michele Bachmann is crazy like a fox. No matter the gaffe, lie or hypocrisy, she still enjoys a solid majority in the conservative northern suburban district she represents in the U.S. House: Public Policy Polling says she's in a comfortable lead there over her nearest DFL challengers, Tarryl Clark (55-37 percent) and Maureen Reed (53-37 percent).
Those results prompted crowing in Republican circles, but the results are hardly surprising. The sixth district has been in the GOP column since 2003, and most of those in the new PPP survey identified themselves as either moderate or conservative Republicans. Most of them also said they voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin, don't think highly of Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, don't think Bachmann's an extremist, don't approve of President Barack Obama and disapprove of the health care reform bill nearing passage in Congress.
But there's more to the poll results than the "Bachmann leads DFLers in new poll" headline. First, while the two-term congresswoman may be crazy like a fox, she may also be a little too in love with Fox:
Minnesotans can expect a campaign announcement on the "Ides of March" from a vampire currently behind bars in an Indiana prison for threatening a judge -- he wants to be our governor.
Sharkey says he's not through with politics here Up North. Apparently he placed a call to Rochester Post-Bulletin News Editor Mike Klein on Tuesday morning "to tell him he plans to announce he is running for Minnesota governor on 'The Ides of March.'"
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