The Minneapolis Star Tribune broke their pattern of only covering Michele Bachmann’s ethics scandal. They covered her statement regarding Edward Snowden and his leaking the NSA Surveillance story. During a House Intelligence Committee hearing (she’s on the Intel Committee), she called Snowden a “traitor.”
Bachmann doesn’t fit how the Strib covers politicians. She doesn’t “do” legislation and mainly makes media appearances. Bachmann primary concern has been building her national profile and the Strib hasn’t able to or willing to adapt their coverage.
Most readers would probably have the misconception that this is the first thing (outside of the ethics scandal and her retirement announcement) that Bachmann has said since the 2012 election. I can identify 33 stories that the Strib couldn’t or wouldn’t cover (list below the fold).
In 2006, Minneapolis passed Instant Runoff Voting. We Minneapolitans used IRV, also known as Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), in the 2009 city elections. But the Mayor’s race wasn’t competitive as nobody challenged RT Rybak and there were few competitive council races.
2013 will be different.
At this point I can count on 11 (maybe 12) candidates running for Mayor. All will appear on the November ballot. So how will this play out?
In an RCV election, the voters for the candidate with the least votes are redistributed to their second choice until a candidate has 50% +1 votes.
First of all, RCV elections tend to force candidates to play nice as they need to be the second choice of other candidates. However, judging by the fallout from the Minneapoils DFL Convention last Saturday, the Mark Andrew and Betsy Hodges campaigns are quite bitter toward each other.
I don’t see them playing nice with each other as they are the front runners. The reality is that they more than likely be the last two standing and don’t need to be each other’s second choices.
It will be interesting to see how the third place finisher at Saturday’s convention, Gary Schiff, approaches the campaign. If he can woo the supporters of the second tier candidates, he has a chance. The subsequent questions are whether he can raise the money necessary to push his message (his base in the 9th Ward is not wealthy like in SW Minneapolis) and can he build the volunteer base?
Anyway, it will be fascinating to watch Andrew and Hodges duke it out while at the same time trying to woo the voters supporting the other candidates? Will their fight turn off voters? This could provide an advantage to Schiff.
Anyhoo … only time will tell.
UPDATE
Gary Schiff has dropped out of the race. He’s endorsed Betsy Hodges.
This changes the dynamic the race. Now Andrew and Hodges will need to play nicer while courting the 2nd tier candidates supporters to become their 2nd choice.
List of all candidates that I am aware of below the fold …
Four-term Minneapolis City Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy just announced that she is withdrawing from seeking a fourth term. She announced on Facebook. Political newcomer Andrew Johnson now faces no opposition for the 12th Ward seat. Green Party candidate Chris Lautenschlager.
I am announcing today in a letter to friends and delegates that I have decided to withdraw from the race for the 12th Ward City Council seat. After much thought, consideration and discussion with my family, I have decided that the best thing for me, for them and for the Ward is to step aside.
I have felt, and continue to feel, that I have unfinished work on the Council. I talked with delegates about the effort and effective leadership I have provided for our environment, public safety, fiscal responsibility and support of our schools. While many of them agreed and supported me, many others felt it was time for a change and the Ward 12 convention ended with no endorsement.
Each of the four elections I have been engaged in has been hotly contested. I have won them all and the campaign this year is no different. I could run and win.
Being elected to represent the people of the 12th ward has been a privilege and honor that I will always treasure. But it is a hard job and takes a tremendous toll on daily life. I look forward to gardening again; to being home for dinner at a regular time; to walking into the grocery store or a restaurant without being stopped about an issue. Not that I minded any discussion with a resident, but it does take its toll. Most of all, I look forward to not having my motives and intent attacked whenever I make a decision.
I would like to thank my husband, Art, for his support through all the years and campaigns; my daughter Leah, who spent her young adult-hood sharing my very public name and the lack of personal privacy that comes with it; my aides in the ward office over the years – Dawn, Loren, Brette, Stephanie and Barb – who provided exceptional service to the ward and to me; and the dear friends that have campaigned, strategized and celebrated with me over the years. I appreciate all that you have done.
My decision is made after much consideration. Like every decision I have made during my time in office, I have weighed the options carefully and made the best decision I could, when I could.
I look forward to serving the residents of the 12th Ward during the remainder of my term. And to sharing our community for many years to come.
Here is more from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) interview with the Wing Nut Daily. She explains how the Trojan Horse House bill will have the “very bad” Senate amnesty provisions inserted into it in conference committee and how this will be the end of our Republic.
She and the other crazies in the House like Rep. Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert will be relentlessly fear-mongering about immigration up until a reform bill passes (and probably afterwards, as well).
“The Senate is going to pass a very bad bill. The House will pass what will sound like a pretty good bill. But I’m just here to tell you, it’s a Trojan horse.”
The lawmaker said the bill will say, “We’re going to secure the borders,” so all the Republicans will vote for the bill. Then the bill will go to a conference committee where it will undergo a dramatic change.
“The good guts of the Trojan horse bill will be pulled out,” she said. “The very bad amnesty provisions will be put in the bill. The bill will go to the House floor, and it won’t be Republicans that pass it.
“It’ll be Nancy Pelosi leading all the House Democrats to vote for it, and just enough Republicans will vote for the bill and you’ll have amnesty,” predicted Bachmann.
She said that’s been the strategy behind the scenes all along.
“I think the master plan of the ruling class that runs Washington, D.C., is to ram this bill through before the American people know what has hit them and before members of Congress even know what has hit them.”
(WND.com)
Same old Minneapolis DFL City Convention, same old result — no endorsement.
Former DFL Party Chair and former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew was leading with 50% when the convention fell apart. Andrew supporters are pretty bitter about current Minneapolis City Council Member Betsy Hodges convention tactics.
The real winner coming out of this stalemate is the third placer finisher current Council Member Gary Schiff. Schiff pledged to abide by endorsement but can now run to November. Team Schiff saw that they’d be eliminated by the aggressive rules and Schiff threw his support to Hodges.
As you’d expect, Schiff’s supporters didn’t all go to Hodges. Andrew got enough that he continued to lead by a percentage point.
Cue the counting cluster**** that added 1.5 hours to an already long convention.
And then Hodges and virtually all of her supporters walked after Andrew’s percentage rose while her numbers slipped on the 4th ballot. As a result, the convention lost quorum (minimum amount to continue) and ended.
This is just a quick post to say that I’m a delegate to the Minneapolis DFL city convention that takes place tomorrow. I’ll be busy tweeting and posting to Facebook.
Hopefully, the location isn’t a cellphone reception cluster**** and we’ll all get reception in the hall. Unless they have us stuck in the deepest, dankest room in the Minneapolis Convention Center, reception should be fine.
I was going to write a story earlier in the week about the Republican who was going to run against Rep. Tim Walz. But I ran out of time each day or had already written a bunch. Minnesota State Senator Jeremy Miller (R-Winona) was going to challenge Walz.
Miller said he has been approached by several people asking him to run against the four-term Democrat from Mankato, who faces reelection in 2014.
“At this point, I am considering it,” Miller said. I am exploring that possibility. It is something I will have to talk over with my family,” he said.
Miller emerged on the political scene in 2010, winning his first run for state Senate. Two years later, he held onto his seat in a tough year for Republicans. The 30-year-old is chief financial officer of the family’s business — Wm. Miller Scrap Iron and Metal Co. He said he expects to make a decision within the next two to three weeks.
(Rochester Post Bulletin)
Well … Miller is expecting twins in August. As a father of a 4.5 year old and a 18 month old, there’s no way in Aych-E-double-hockey-sticks I’d run. I have enough trouble getting any blog posts written.
So that was Tuesday. Briana Bierschbach of Politics in MN has today’s news:
Republican state Sen. Jeremy Miller says he will NOT run against Tim Walz in the 1st District in 2014. GOPers had been trying to recruit him
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) knows as well as everyone that the Republican’s Southern strategy dooms the party to irrelevance. The minorities will soon outnumber the majority. But Bachmann is a practitioner of strategery and she and the other members of Team Crazy will not stand idly by while justice, tolerance and irrelevance threatens their party.
The Minnesota Republican appeared on Beck’s show on TheBlaze TV on Thursday with Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) to talk about how Republicans “don’t even know” they’re in a fight over the bill yet.
“We’re losing badly. Why? Because members of Congress don’t even know this fight’s going on, so we need your viewers to melt the phone lines,” Bachmann said.
(Politico)
While I’m not sure that literally melting phone lines will help anyone, but she is fear-mongering to let her supporters know how serious a threat immigration reform is to Republicans.
Here’s the video of Bachmann explaining what it all means at World Nut Daily:
“We’re going to have amnesty, perpetual amnesty for illegal immigration and the whole political situation will change. Why? This is Barack Obama’s number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president ever if amnesty goes into effect.”
The first step in her strategery is to make sure they can’t become citizens:
We all know the Republicans’ game plan when it comes to election time. Push wedge issues that play to their racist, xenophobic base. It’s called the Southern strategy.
In the Southern strategy, Republicans recognize they aren’t going to get more than 10% to 20% of minority votes and just write off even trying to appeal to them. Initially, this just applied to writing off the African-Americans of America. But now it applies to all non-whites.
And they are doomed.
More than half of all babies born last year were members of minority groups, the first time in U.S. history. It’s a sign of how swiftly the USA is becoming a nation of younger minorities and older whites.
Hispanics, blacks, Asians and other minorities in 2011 accounted for 50.4% of births, 49.7% of all children under 5 and slightly more than half of the 4 million kids under 1, the Census Bureau reports today.
(USA Today)
So every year as Republican candidates get more and more extreme, their party will become more and more irrelevant. And this applies to Minnesota, too. As MN becomes more diverse, the MNGOP will keep appealing to a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. Right now, around 25% (max 30%) of Minnesotans identify themselves as Republican.
And this doesn’t account for the conservatives who can no longer stand how far to the right the party has gone and are now voting DFL.
The contrast between Minnesota and Wisconsin couldn’t be more stark. But we were 1 recount and 9,000 votes away from facing the same horrible economic fate Wisconsin now faces. Thank God Tom Emmer lost.
But instead of tax breaks for the wealthy and gutting the economy as Wisconsin under Gov. Scott Walker has done, Gov. Mark Dayton stepped into the breach and prevented the stupidity from happening when the Republicans controlled both Houses of the legislature.
Now that we have the DFL controlling all three branches, I expect to see our economy continuing to improve.
Despite continual warnings from conservatives that Minnesota is becoming dangerously anti-business, reality won’t seem to listen. According to a new Bureau of Economic Analysis report, Minnesota’s economy was one of the nation’s fastest growing in 2012.
(MN2020)
North Dakota is experiencing an oil boom. Sadly for them, they’ll crash once the oil runs out.
The continued growth in Minnesota is in large part to its diversified economic base. Real estate led the way, contributing about one-quarter of the state’s growth. Housing prices in the Twin Cities are finally rising after the recession, with prices in April 12% higher than the year before.
Durable goods manufacturing and finance & insurance also are reporting strong growth. Each of these has contributed about 18% of the total. Only a handful of industries did not grow. Mining, utilities, and educational services shrunk ever so slightly in 2012.
The State House has passed a bill that would raise the state minimum wage to $9.50/hour and index it to inflation so $9.50 in today's dollars is worth an equivalent amount in next year's. The State Senate is dragging its feet, insisting on legislator pay raises *first*. Tell them to get off the sidelines, stop dragging their feet, and help raise up the working poor!
The Minneapolis Star Tribune broke their pattern of only covering Michele Bachmann’s ethics scandal. They covered her statement regarding Edward Snowden and his leaking the NSA Surveillance story. During a House Intelligence Committee hearing (she’s on the Intel Committee), she called Snowden a “traitor.”
UPDATED: See below
Four-term Minneapolis City Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy just announced that she is withdrawing from seeking a fourth term. She announced on 
Here is more from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) interview with the Wing Nut Daily. She explains how the Trojan Horse House bill will have the “very bad” Senate amnesty provisions inserted into it in conference committee and how this will be the end of our Republic.
Same old Minneapolis DFL City Convention, same old result — no endorsement.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) knows as well as everyone that the Republican’s 
We all know the Republicans’ game plan when it comes to election time. Push wedge issues that play to their racist, xenophobic base. It’s called the 
The contrast between Minnesota and Wisconsin couldn’t be more stark. But we were 1 recount and 9,000 votes away from facing the same horrible economic fate Wisconsin now faces. Thank God Tom Emmer lost.
