Capitol View: May 10, 2006 Archive

IP 5th review

Posted at 8:16 AM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

Minnesota's in the Middle has a review of yesterday's IP convention in the 5th District.

Oh, and Rasmussen has finally decloaked its poll.

How was your day?

Posted at 8:22 AM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

I love reading votes. They help me get an idea how much heavy lifting is involved in a lawmaker's day. Say what you will about the final result, but there's a lot in a Minnesota Legislature member's day.

I'm not so sure about Congress, where sometimes it seems like the goal is to have a couple of votes about issues that nobody disagrees with, and then race over to the RNCC or DNCC to raise some cash.

Yesterday's heavy lifting in Congress:

Heavy lifting

Posted at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Maybe I should take the comment in one of the earlier posts back. The Minnesota Senate today will consider naming the Honeycrisp apple as the official state fruit.

Seriously.

It's the branchild of Sen. Brian LeClair, who was persuaded by a 4th grade class' letter, apparently favoring the honor upon the apple (which, just for the record, is way too expensive).

11:16 Sen. Kiscaden: "Senator LeClair, honey, can you give us a crisp answer as to why this should be the state apple?"

11:18 Sen. Warren Limmer: "Thank you for bringing up this core issue."

11:18; We have some no votes on SF 2302. Bachmann, Betzold, Chaudhary, Foley, Frederickson, Koering, Limmer, Marty, Pappas, Moua, Skoglund originally. Then, a bunch of sudden switches to make the final something like 53-4.

Great, we now have a state fruit.

After this lengthy work -- amost 10 minutes -- the Senate recessed.

Comment on this post

Snagging some publicity

Posted at 11:29 AM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

By sheer coincidence, a bunch of reporters with cameras were in Joe's Sporting Goods when the governor came in to buy some lures for fishing.

Tinklenberg vs. Wetterling

Posted at 12:44 PM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

Elwyn Tinklenberg and Patty Wetterling, the two DFL candidates for the 6th District, were on Midday today. I've sliced up their comments on particular issues. These are also posted on the individual candidate pages on our Campaign 2006 Web site.

Abortion: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Guns: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Impeachment: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Iraq: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Iran: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Palestinians: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Immigration: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Gas prices: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Deficits: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Tax cuts: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Medicare: Tinklenberg | Wetterling
Health care: Tinklenberg | Wetterling

I'm putting together a Select A Candidate for the 6th District. With any luck at all, it'll be out next week.

What issues do you care about?

Posted at 2:32 PM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

This message from Andrew Haeg, who heads up MPR's Public Insight Journalism network.

* * *

A little while back (as previously reported here) we reached out to our audience (and beyond) to find out what issues people think are most important issues this election season, and why.

More than 2,000 people have responded, from across the political spectrum and from every established party, and have told us what their first and second choices are, and why . (We plucked all of the issues directly from the lists of issues that candidates said they were going to be focusing on this election season.)

We’re only now beginning to analyze the responses. At the moment, all we have is this graphic showing what issues respondents ID’d as most important, and 2nd most important.

It’s not scientific. It’s not even quasi-scientific. Think of it as a Polaroid snapshot: a little blurry, a little fuzzy but authentic and pretty interesting.

What do you see in it?

We’ll be providing some more analysis here at some point soon and look at what other issues people think are important; and we’ll be looping back to those who responded over the next several months to gauge voter sentiment and to get their questions for the candidates.

It’s the sort of interactive give-and-take with our audience that we’ve wanted to engage in for a long time here at MPR, but only recently have developed the wherewithal to do, via Public Insight Journalism.

Download pdf file of responses.

CQ on TP and MH

Posted at 3:40 PM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

Congressional Quarterly takes a look at the Minnesota gubernatorial race and declares it in the "no clear winner" category. Ignore the pun on Pawlenty's name -- they still think that's funny stuff inside the Beltway.

Longer terms for reps?

Posted at 5:14 PM on May 10, 2006 by Bob Collins

I've been remiss in note pointing out that HF 2890 is slowly working its way through the House. It's another constitutional amendment, this one changes the terms of representatives from two to four years. And also staggers the terms in the Senate. It passed House Ways and Means Committee yesterday.

The Senate version of the bill appears to be gasping for breath in the Elections Committee.