Briefing - January 24, 2006

Posted at 6:31 AM on January 24, 2006 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

All sorts of neat political factoids today.

First, gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch is at the center of two stories. The Star Tribune has an article with Hatch suggesting he'll go to the primary even if he doesn't win the endorsement. Not surprising since Hatch has never been the darling of DFL insiders. It's been 1990 since the DFL endorsed candidate has beaten an incumbent in Minnesota and most of the quotes in the story suggested the DFL has recognized that endorsing a candidate who has not pledged to honor the party's endorsement is not a crime against nature. It is, however, an admission that the endorsement doesn't mean anything anymore.

The St. Cloud Times is reporting that Patty Wetterling has met with Hatch about a spot on the ticket. She also denies being pressured to drop out of the Senate race by supporters of Amy Klobuchar.

That was some kind of stinging rebuke -- delivered in a judicial sort of way -- from Russell Anderson yesterday, the new chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. It came at his swearing-in ceremony, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court ruling that allows judicial candidates in Minnesota to seek contributions, and participate in party politics like any other politician.

"Justice in Minnesota is not for sale," Anderson declared. If you didn't hear it, just click here (Real Audio required).

Some blogs ripped Polinaut last week for daring to cite a Zogby poll, so we have no clue how they'll like his methodology this time (of course, we don't know how they liked his methodology last week either since they wouldn't discuss it), but a new poll shows a sharp drop in the number of people favoring legalized abortion in the U.S.

The survey shows that 52% favor abortion, including 10% who saying they believe it should be available, but that the government should not pay for it.

Forty-three percent oppose abortion, though most of those believe there should be exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, or when the pregnancy posed a grave threat to the life of the mother. A total of 9% said they “always oppose” abortion.

The blog DFL Senate has a humorous note about the National Republican Senatorial Committee breakdown of Senate races in the country. Click on the map for Minnesota and you get this message:

Senate Races 2006 No information is available at this time or there is no Republican challenger.

Which is odd since the blog Kennedy vs. the Machine reports on Liddy Dole's assessment of the Minnesota Senate race. Stay tuned. Maybe there is a candidate the NRSC doesn't know about yet.

Minnesota Democrats Exposed carries details of a breakfast GOP boss Ron Carey hosted this morning with Republican bloggers.

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