Polinaut: April 11, 2006 Archive

Pawlenty on the session

Posted at 11:03 AM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins

MPR's Cathy Wurzer had Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Morning Edition for a bit this morning. Bonding, taxes, fees, and stadia on the agenda. Find it here.

New voting machines for Minnesota?

Posted at 11:08 AM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins

And apparently it's South Dakota's idea (well, by way of Omaha). They're intended to help voters with disabilities and Minnesota is required to provide assistance this year. (Story)

McCain's Minnesota schedule

Posted at 11:53 AM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins

Wednesday's schedule from the StraightTAlkAmerica.com folks.

9:30am
Press Avail with Gil Gutknecht
Ramada Hotel and Conference Center
1517 16th Street SW
Rochester, MN 55902

11:00am
Press Availability with Governor Pawlenty
General Aviation Terminal

St. Cloud Regional Airport
St. Cloud, MN

3:00pm
Press Conference with Governor Pawlenty
State Office Building 181
Minneapolis, MN 55155

Factoids

Posted at 1:12 PM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Looks like a pretty slow day today, so far. A couple of things have floated by starship politics.

Backbone MN has a post that it says came from a blog called NW Minnesota that explains the Molligator situation. But there's no link to the original blog so here's one to the repeating blog. Bottom line? The person behind the short-lived blog, Molligator, who wrote some posts critical of gubernatorial candidate Becky Lourey, was a paid employee of the Steve Kelley campaign.

She insists the campaign and the candidate didn't know anything about it. The candidate part may be true but when you're a paid member of the campaign, the campaign does know something about it.

Now, let's not mince words, here. In the old days, we called these "dirty tricks," and they reflect poorly on the offending campaign, regardless of whether the candidate knew about it or not.

That's why I asked the three questions a few weeks ago that caused such an uproar among, oddly enough, mostly Republican bloggers who thought it was aimed at them. Surprise, eh fellas? Perhaps they know something I don't. But a dirty trick is a dirty trick regardless of party and unless one advocates the use of dirty tricks in campaigns, three simple questions should cause no angst.

The offending party calls for an end to the controversy and maybe that's enough to make it go away.

Can and will more of this happen in the future? Yes. What will prevent it? People in the blogging community who think it shouldn't. While some bloggers were lambasting me for raising the possibility it could, others were rooting this particular incident out. Good job by them.

* * *

Johnsongate update.

The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility today rejected Greg Wersal's call for an investigation in the Supreme Court justices and any communication they may have had with Sen. Dean Johnson. According to the AP..

Betty Shaw, acting director of the Professional Responsibility office, wrote to Wersal that there wasn't grounds to investigate Blatz since it was unclear if the comments - if they were made at all - happened before or after (Kathleen) Blatz left the court.

Wersal says he may appeal.

* * * *

Press release file: Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga will be speaking and signing copies of their new book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, on Tuesday, May 2nd at noon at Arise Bookstore. Markos is the founder and editor of The Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com), the largest progressive blog in the country, with about 5 million unique visits each week. Wired magazine recently called it, " the most popular political blog anywhere on the political spectrum."

2441 Lyndale Ave S., Minneapolis, MN 55405.

Comment on this post

It's raining buckets of money

Posted at 1:54 PM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins

The AP is reporting...

Minnesota DFL Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar said Tuesday she raised $1.26 million in the first quarter of the year, a steep increase over her last reporting period. Klobuchar, the Hennepin County attorney, said she finished with about $2.5 million in the bank. Overall, her campaign said, she had raised $3.7 million in the election so far. Klobuchar's first-quarter numbers nearly doubled the amount she raised in the previous reporting period. In the fourth quarter of last year, she raised $700,000. Klobuchar's DFL opponent, Ford Bell, did not immediately release his figures Tuesday, nor did the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy. The filing deadline is Saturday.

Update (4:07 pm): Mark Kennedy outraised (did I just make up that verb?) Klobuchar with $1.475 million raised in the first quarter and still has $3.4 million on hand. In a release, the Kennedy campaign notes that $100,000 of Klobuchar's dough came with a visit by Sen. John Kerry.

So updating the money race:

BTW, I see that the FEC has asked for more information from the Kennedy campaign regading the '05 year-end report. Apparently the FEC is not satisfied that the identity of contributors was properly provided. The response date is Thursday.

The future of the conservative movement

Posted at 4:38 PM on April 11, 2006 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

This should be good.

Release issued today by MPR

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Representative Vin Weber will discuss the future of the conservative movement with Gary Eichten during a live Midday broadcast from The Forum on Friday, April 21st.

Event Details:
Friday, April 21st
Noon - 1:00 (participants must be in The Forum by 11:30 a.m.)
The Forum at Minnesota Public Radio

The audience for this event is by invitation only and will include members of our PIJ (public insight journalism) network, key community members, and Humphrey Policy Fellows. The broadcast will feature regional callers and online questions.

This event is hosted in collaboration with the Humphrey Policy Forum.

Comment on this post