CSPG In the News:

Under the radar: Obama health strategy that's getting little attention

By Casey Selix

October 2, 2009 (MinnPost) -- Much has been said and written about how architects of the Obama administration's health-care reform strategy deliberately detoured from the failed Clinton effort 15 years ago.

But two of the crucial differences in Obama's strategy are not getting much attention, University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs said Thursday evening.

"One is to minimize the cost in the short term to the stakeholders, and so you see a remarkable array of health-care stakeholders who were opposed to the Clinton effort … becoming supportive of what the Obama White House is doing," Jacobs told about 250 people at a continuing education forum on the U's St. Paul campus.

"The other element that the Obama White House has been pursuing is to delay costs to the future and to obscure the impact of these costs," said Jacobs, director of the Humphrey Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. "Now this is an element that is very important and it's gotten almost no attention."

To contrast the presidents' strategies, Jacobs played videos of Clinton's and Obama's addresses to Congress. Whereas Clinton said he wouldn't sign a bill that didn't guarantee health insurance for all Americans, Obama focused on cost containment:

"I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit now or in the future — period," Obama said. "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."

Not even major stakeholders have caught on entirely to what the provision on spending cuts actually means, said Jacobs, who for years has studied the politics of health-care policy and written 10 books, including "Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair."

"This provision [included in Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' bill] means that for sure, there will be cuts to the pocketbooks of the stakeholders," he explained. "That will happen. It's also certain that the drug manufacturers and makers, the doctors and the hospitals, and the other suppliers are going to see cuts. What the Obama administration has done is put those costs into the future, and it's done in a way that's fairly obscure."

Bang for the bucks
Jacobs said the Obama administration and others don't think the United States gets a lot of bang for the bucks spent on health care, given that other industrialized countries pay significantly less and see better public health outcomes. "The prediction is we are going to see an impact in driving down what the stakeholders are being paid," he said.

That won't happen now, however. "If the stakeholders see the burden of health reform on their shoulders now in a very clear way, they will then move back to Harry and Louise [the couple in the ad that doomed the Clinton plan but since have had a change of heart, thanks to funding from the pharmaceutical industry] attacking the Obama plan.

"But with the future obscured, you can see that they're a little bit like the cattle marching off to the slaughterhouse," he said. "They're a little bit confused. And one of the issues that we're going to have a lot of debate about is the connection between the price paid to providers and the quality of care."

In his talk for the College of Continuing Education's Headliners series, Jacobs touched on the history of health-reform efforts dating to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. Although national health insurance reform was among the recommendations of the committee that came up with the Social Security program, FDR didn't go forward with it because he feared it "would lead to the defeat of the broader social insurance effort."

FDR saw the risk and "ducked." Most of his successors pursued sweeping changes without success.

"Think of the lemmings who have this urge to jump off cliffs. Well, in health reform, we've seen this urge to continually pursue a certain kind of reform, what I would call systemic reform. … Again and again it's led to defeat, and it's a long list just since World War II," Jacobs said, citing these examples:

Harry Truman tried to get national health insurance. Richard Nixon proposed a system built around an individual mandate.

Still, the same people who conceived the Truman plan eventually went on to craft Medicare, which was signed into law by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965, he noted.

"The reformers that put together Medicare did not think hospital care for seniors was the limit of the problem," Jacobs noted. "They fully understood the full extent of the problem but they thought this is what could be done, and they thought and expected that over time what was done for the one population group would be expanded to other population groups."

If Hubert Humphrey had been elected in 1968, he noted, "sitting on his desk was a proposal called kiddy care that was going to expand Medicare to children. The same program then would work down from seniors to near retirees." Eventually, Medicaid was created for the indigent under-65 population.

Trying to do too much
Administrations run into trouble with health reform when they try to do too much and think that this is their only window of opportunity, Jacobs said. "There…tends to be an assumption that the train is in the station and you got one shot. We've got to get it done now or nothing will happen.…[There's also] an insistence, a demand that the political process give way to this imperative. This is an urgent need and the political process had better wake up and James Madison's clever tinker toy system of separated powers with all sorts of checks…ought to take a back seat for the moment and let national health insurance reform go through."

Jacobs is not holding his breath for a bipartisan solution in this Congress.

"I think most Americans would prefer it, but I've got a very simple message for you: Forget about it."

That line got a lot of laughs.

"There's a lot of different ways for me to show you why that's not going to happen," Jacobs said, "but I think the most important thing is to just appreciate that there's a lot of hard evidence showing our two political parties are more polarized in the House and Senate than in perhaps a century."

Still, the Obama administration has a few more things going for it than Clinton did, he said. For one, this Congress is a year ahead in the process than Clinton was after taking office. The Clinton administration relied on a national task force to come up with recommendations but lost time trying to translate them into legislation.

"The reality is he's [Obama's] got a very long runway," Jacobs said. "If [health reform] doesn't get done by November, they've got a whole 'nuther year. With Clinton, it didn't get done by August and it was time for midterm elections."

Read the full article here.

Bachmann teams with fellow maverick Ron Paul

By John Croman

September 26, 2009 (KARE11.com) -- They've both been called mavericks. They've both known as fiscal hawks. They both do well with young conservatives. And, on Friday night, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul shared a stage at the University of Minnesota.

The forum at Northrop Auditorium was sponsored by Young Americans for Liberty, the group that grew out of Students for Ron Paul, the grassroots online movement that drafted him to run for president in 2008.

"I was a national youth coordinator for Dr. Paul in 2008," Jeff Frazee told KARE Friday, "And we started over 500 campus groups across the country. We're continuing that movement."

The Texas congressman's February 2008 appearance at the U, and his alternate convention at the Target Center during the Republican National Convention later that year, both drew huge crowds of college age supporters drawn to Paul's Libertarian, isolationist views.

"From limited government conservatives, to anti-war liberals, to libertarians, to anarchists, the all follow the freedom message," Frazee remarked.

Bachmann isn't likely to warm up to Paul's call to bring back all U.S. troops from overseas, or to end the Federal Reserve Bank as we know it. She is, however, very aligned with his disdain for deficit spending that adds to the national debt.

"Bachmann has much to gain from a coalition with Ron Paul," Larry Jacobs of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs told KARE, "Especially because of his ability to mobilize younger voters."

Among those who've joined the U of M's chapter is Jenny Schreiter, a senior from Rochester majoring in chemistry.

"I was what you'd call politically apathetic," Schreiter told KARE, "Last year I heard of Ron Paul for the first time and I joined a student group here almost on a whim."

Schreiter, who hopes to become a chemistry teacher, said she grew up in a Democratic family that didn't talk politics very often.

"I like the fact that (Paul) votes consistantly with his political philosophies. He doesn't pander to lobbyists, or change his mind when someone waves from money at him."

The satirical liberal group known as "Billionaires for Wealthcare" planned to picket the student forum at the U of M, to "thank Bachmann for preserving insurance company profits." The group's members pose as wealthy people wearing top hats and mink stoles opposed to health care reform.

In the past they've worked under the labels Billionaires for Bush, Billionaires for Cheney and Billionaires for McCain.

As for the notion that Bachmann hecklers may disrupt the town hall, which is free and open to public, the Ron Paul staffers didn't seem too worried.

"I don't expect any trouble," Frazee said, "We welcome the dissent. We welcome the questions. It's a student town hall."

Read the full article here.

Usually Raucous Mayor Races Quiet in 2009

By Becky Nahm

September 25, 2009 (KSTP-TV) -- In November, voters in Minnesota's two largest cities will chose their mayors. But, while the races for mayor in both Minneapolis and St. Paul are usually hotly-contested, this year politicos might find it difficult to stifle a yawn.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced his reelection bid in January. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak made it known he planned to run again in February.

Since then, the mayoral races in Minnesota's two largest cities have gone mostly silent.

University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute political science professor Larry Jacobs said, "These are the most bizarre elections I've ever seen."

Jacobs said Coleman and Rybak seem to have unified DFL support in the two strong Democratic cities.

In Minneapolis, Rybak, who has raised nearly $260,000, faces several challengers who have almost no money.

For example, earlier this month Al Flowers had $.65 left in his campaign fund.

In St. Paul, Eva Eng is challenging Coleman.

Read the full article and view the clip here.

Changing face of foreclosures in Minnesota

By Sheila Regan

September 23, 2009 (Twin Cities Daily Planet) -- Foreclosures in Minnesota appeared to be down in the first two quarters of 2009, according to a report prepared by Minnesota Housing Link in partnership with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA). According to Foreclosures in Minnesota: A Report Based on County Sheriff's Sale Data, there were 11,089 sheriff sales in Minnesota between January and July of this year, which included 6,903 in the Twin Cities. These numbers appear to have dropped from last year. In the first quarter of 2008, there were 6,446 sheriff sales in Minnesota compared to 5,157 in the first quarter of 2009. There were 7,349 sheriff sales in Minnesota in the second quarter of 2008 compared to 5,932 in the second quarter of 2009.

Why did January-June 2009 figures show foreclosures dropping? One contributing factor may be the actions taken by banks to halt foreclosures late last year and early this year. Last year, bailed out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac put a moratorium on foreclosures and eviction proceedings between Nov. 26, 2008 and Jan. 9, 2009. Other mortgage companies followed suit: Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup Inc. agreed to halt home foreclosures from January to March of this year. Some moratoriums were extended into March 2009.

It's possible that the next wave of foreclosure is already imminent. A report by the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog indicates that Minnesota had a 67 percent increase in housing foreclosures since the 2008 election. The Minnesota Independent reported recently that while August foreclosure numbers decreased from July, they were still higher than the August 2008 numbers.

Read the full article here.

Pawlenty in 2012? The plot thickens

By Bill Salisbury

September 22, 2009 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- In the latest signal that he's considering a run for president in 2012, Gov. Tim Pawlenty is preparing to launch a national political action committee that will enable him to raise money for candidates and finance his travels across the country on behalf of Republicans.

Pawlenty said Tuesday that he expects to finalize the paperwork to create his "Freedom First" PAC in the next two weeks. He said it would enable him to help Republicans across the country and play a greater role in national policy debates.

"My focus, of course, is going to remain on finishing out my term and serving Minnesota well, but as time allows I also want to speak out on ways the party can and should improve both here in Minnesota and nationally," he said. "This type of PAC provides a vehicle and the infrastructure to do that."

The move was widely interpreted as a big step toward launching a presidential campaign.

Pawlenty denied that.

"I know everybody thinks that, but I really have not made any decisions about what I'm going to do down the road," he said.

He may not have made a final decision, said Carleton College political science professor Steven Schier, "but he has made a preliminary decision to make possible a later decision to run for president."

Schier said he has never heard of a governor creating a national PAC who didn't later run for president.

The PAC will allow Pawlenty to hire staff, build a political operation and widen and deepen his reach around the country, said Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

"This is the most serious step that he has taken toward making a run for president," Jacobs said. "It doesn't mean that he will definitely run, but it's the most explicit and dramatic development in terms of Pawlenty's political career on the national stage."

Politico reported Pawlenty will start his fundraising operation with a $5,000-a-person dinner on Nov. 4 in Minneapolis. Those who raise $100,000 will be named a "chair" for the event, according to an invitation obtained by Politico.

Pawlenty doesn't yet know how much money he will try to raise, but he said, "I think all the other PACs seem to be raising at least in the hundreds of thousands (of dollars), if not in the millions."

Although he plans to give speeches and raise money for his PAC, he said it "won't require an enormous amount of my time." He plans to hire a staff this fall or early winter and hopes they and volunteers "carry much of the load."

Since announcing in June that he would not seek a third term in 2010, Pawlenty has made about a dozen trips around the country to speak to Republican and conservative groups and campaign for GOP candidates. He also has appeared frequently on national television news and talk shows. He placed a strong third Saturday in a Republican presidential straw poll taken at a conference for social conservatives in Washington.

In another sign that Pawlenty is considered a potential presidential contender, the Democratic National Committee quickly criticized him for starting a PAC.

It shows that Pawlenty cares more about higher office than "finishing my term out strong," as he promised, DNC press secretary Hari Sevugan said in a statement.

"This is just more evidence that Pawlenty is, at best, a part-time governor who cares more about his national political ambitions than the people of Minnesota," Sevugan added.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty says his focus will stay on "finishing out my term."

Read the full article here.

Coleman, Ng advance after St. Paul mayor primary

By Laura Yuen

September 9, 2009 (Minnesota Public Radio) -- St. Paul voters have whittled their mayoral choices to DFL incumbent Chris Coleman and Republican-endorsed political newcomer Eva Ng.

But Tuesday night's primary election was a bit of a snore, with only about 5 percent of eligible voters turning out at the polls. Ramsey County elections officials say the citywide voter turnout was the lowest in recent history.

Otherwise, the night went according to script: Coleman and Ng easily advanced to November's general election. While there were challengers, none mounted a serious campaign. Coleman dominated, securing 68 percent of the vote. Ng received 26 percent.

That mean's Coleman's sole challenger is a Republican-endorsed business executive with zero political experience.

But at her celebration party at a Selby Avenue bar, Ng, a petite, spunky woman just days shy of 51, says she has defied the odds ever since her parents moved their family from Hong Kong to Texas. She was influenced early by the frontier spirit of her adopted home state.

"Where the speed limit was 85 miles an hour, and gasoline was 19 cents a gallon," she said. "I love that freedom, the freedom of driving the speed limit you want, to get what I wanna get."
Larger view
Eva Ng

Ng bills herself as a "center-right conservative" and pro-business alternative to Mayor Coleman. She says his double-digit property tax hikes have hurt ordinary folks and admits there are aspects of some city ordinances she has trouble with. She also thinks the city doesn't sell itself well enough.

But one reason why her friends encouraged her to run has nothing to do with Coleman's past actions. It's his future. Coleman is strongly considering a run for governor next year.

"I think it's unethical," Ng said. "If he's seriously eyeing the governor's race, then he should step down and let someone else have a turn of running the government."

At the Chris Coleman party, several dozen supporters didn't seem to mind that the mayor has his eye on two races.

The St. Paul native, 48, made no mention of the governor's race in his speech. But in an interview, Coleman defended his higher ambitions.

"I also know that for us to be able to be truly be what we need to be, we need to have a different partner in the governor's office," Coleman said. "And I think that's true for cities across the state."

Despite a challenging economy, the Democratic mayor says St. Paul has much to be proud of under his leadership: preliminary construction of a light-rail line connecting to Minneapolis, 12 new downtown bars and restaurants, and out-of-school programs for children.

"Sometimes you get so focused on the home runs, you forget about the pieces that hold us altogether," he said. "There may not be a ribbon to cut around an out-of-school time program. But if we can get kids involved, get them on the right path, graduating on time and going to college, those are the things that will lay down the future for the city of St. Paul."
Larger view
Eva Ng and supporters

Coleman has raised about $177,000 for his re-election bid. Eva Ng has raised only about a fifth of that, at roughly $32,000.

But perhaps the biggest story of this race was that Coleman did not face a serious challenge from a DFL candidate.

Why not? One answer could be the mayor's style.

Unlike his past two predecessors, Coleman is known as a consensus-builder. And his politics align well with core DFLers, says University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs. For one, Jacobs says, Coleman hasn't antagonized the unions in the same way that former Mayor Norm Coleman did.

"There's been just a bit less acrimony between the mayor's office and some of the key constituencies in St. Paul politics," Jacobs said. "When you look back at incumbents who have run for re-election in St. Paul, they've usually run into trouble because they get into some controversy, or they run afoul of the Democratic electorate."

After all, Jacobs says, Norm Coleman alienated the DFL faithful after switching to the Republican Party. And his successor, former Mayor Randy Kelly, may have killed his own re-election bid by endorsing President Bush.

Jacobs says those kind of right-leaning moves by Kelly and Norm Coleman in the liberal stronghold of St. Paul opened the door for challenges.

"That tended to gin up the opposition to them, and made the primary and general election much more competitive," Jacobs said.

And, more interesting. While last night's election was a yawner, next year's governor's race should excite more political junkies -- and more voters.

Read the full article here.

Bachmann has history on her side

By LSchumacher

September 9, 2009 (St. Cloud Times) -- It's been 65 years since a two-term Republican member of Congress representing Minnesota has been defeated in a non-redistricting election year.

That tidbit from Smart Politics (quickly becoming a daily must-read for Minnesota political junkies) suggests that Democrats have their work cut out for them if they hope to unseat U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in next year's elections.

Once settling on someone to represent them in Congress, Minnesotans don't change their minds often. In 560 U.S. House contests since statehood, only 62 out of 487 incumbents have gone down to defeat, according to the analysis.

Only 10 out of 85 members of Congress who served two terms have gone down to defeat, and only six of those were defeated in a non-redistricting year. In a redistricting year, the boundaries of their districts change because of U.S. Census results and therefore many constituents may be voting on them for the first time.

Of those six two-term incumbents who lost on their home turf, only two have been Republicans. The last one to lose? Richard Pilsbury Gale in 1944 (Republican Arlen Erdahl lost in 1982's redistricting year and Democrat Alec Olson lost in 1966's non-redistricting year).

History also suggests that 2008 was the Democrats' best chance to defeat Bachmann. Freshman members of Congress representing Minnesota have been defeated 20.3 percent of the time, but sophomores have lost only 11.8 percent of the time, a nearly 50 percent increase in job security.

So far, state Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, and former Independence Party Lt. Gov. candidate Maureen Reed are seeking the DFL Party endorsement to try to do just that.

Read the full article here.

From Capitol Hill to the Twin Cities: Obama bringing health care pitch here

By Bill Salisbury

September 9, 2009 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- President Barack Obama is coming to Minneapolis on Saturday to hold his first big rally for the health insurance reforms he proposed Wednesday night in a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress.

The rally will start at 12:30 p.m. at Target Center.

Obama hopes the event drums up public support for his plan, which he says will protect Americans with insurance and provide coverage for those without it while holding down health costs.

The visit will be his first to Minnesota since June 2008, when he declared at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center that he had won the Democratic presidential nomination.

"In his first visit back to the state as president, President Obama will take his plan for health insurance reform directly to the people of Minnesota," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement. "President Obama will discuss why we need reform and why we need to act now."

The rally will be free and open to the public. Space will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. No tickets are required.

Why did Obama choose Minnesota? For a variety of political and policy reasons.

"It's now a standard part of the playbook that presidents follow up a major national address with a road show that is carefully orchestrated and packaged to amplify the main themes," said Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

The White House knows Obama will get more glowing and intense coverage from the local media than he will from the "more jaded national media," Jacobs said.

Minnesota probably was picked because it's "known across the country for its high-quality and low-cost health care," said state Rep. Tom Huntley, DFL-Duluth, chairman of both a House health care finance committee and a White House working group of state legislators that advised the president on reforming health care.

Huntley has been talking to the president's policy advisers in weekly conference calls since a White House meeting in June. He said the advisers have been particularly interested in Minnesota's reforms that have produced "huge costs savings" by keeping patients with chronic diseases in their homes and out of hospitals.

"The president has been talking about Minnesota's health care for the last six months, using it repeatedly as an example of how to provide more cost-effective care," said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

He also knows Minnesotans are deeply interested in the issue and willing to listen to reform ideas, she said..

"I think he can share with Americans what we've been able to accomplish in Minnesota, delivering excellent care at a price that's much lower than in other states," said state Rep. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, another member of the White House working group.

But the visit is about politics as well as policies.

The Upper Midwest will be one of the most competitive battleground regions in the nation in the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential election, Jacobs said, and the White House is worried about keeping it in the Democratic column.

"So I think it's a hard-headed, political calculation on how to shore up support for the president and for Democrats," he said. "And I don't think this will be the last time that we'll see President Obama back in Minnesota. I think Minnesotans should count on seeing him regularly for the next three years."

THE DAILY GLEAN

By Max Sparber

September 8, 2009 (MinnPost) -- Speaking of Pawlenty, Smart Politics reports that the governor's approval rating is currently about 48 percent, while 50 percent of Minnesotans disapprove of his performance. This might seem like a lot of disapproval, but Smart Politics points out that Pawlenty actually is doing pretty well in comparison with some of his colleagues nationwide: "Pawlenty is one of only five governors in the 13 states tracked by SurveyUSA who has not experienced a double-digit percentage decrease in approval rating since January of this year."

Read the full article here.

Is Tim Pawlenty unpopular?

By Scott

September 2, 2009 (Power Line) -- Tim Pawlenty is the Republican governor of Minnesota who is completing the second of his two terms. In the midst of a tough recessionary environment, he has been forced by a profligate legislature to balance the state budget by his own hand and to veto reckless tax increases. The actions might have made him unpopular. But have they?

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait argues in a column this morning that Obama's bait-and-switch liberalism does not account for his sinking poll numbers. Chait writes:

Is Obama really sliding because of his liberal policies? If so, then you might expect to see governors doing better--after all, they're cutting spending. But governors of both parties have seen their approval ratings fall as well. Tim Pawlenty is unpopular. Arnold Schwarzenegger is really unpopular.

Chait may be right about Schwarzenegger, but Is Pawlenty unpopular? Eric Ostemeier addressed the question on the Humphrey Institute's Smart Politics blog at length last month. Ostermeier wrote:

Now more than two months removed from a brutal budget battle with the DFL, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has seen his approval numbers rise to its highest level this year, according to SurveyUSA's latest "snapshot in time."

Pawlenty's approval rating for the month of July increased six points from June to 53 percent - tying January for his best mark of 2009. Forty-four percent of Minnesotans said they disapproved of Pawlenty's job performance in a poll conducted of 600 adults from July 17-19.

Pawlenty's return to moderately high approval numbers comes even as recent unemployment data continues to leave Minnesotans uncertain about the economic future of the state. June's unemployment rate of 8.4 percent is the highest the Gopher State has endured in more than 25 years (April 1983).

While Pawlenty has not completely rebounded to his two-year approval rating high of 58 percent immediately after the 2008 election, this is the first statistically significant rise in job performance numbers for Pawlenty since the state's jobless claims began to rise at a record pace last November.

Additionally, Governor Pawlenty has fared much better than many of his colleagues across the country. SurveyUSA tracks the approval ratings of approximately one-quarter of the nation's governors, and Pawlenty's 8.6 percent (5.0-point) drop in approval ratings from November 2008 to July 2009 is the third lowest in the 13-state sample. (Other states tracked are Alabama, California, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin).

(Emphasis in original.) If there is a more recent Survey USA or Rasmussen poll on Pawlenty, and there may well be, I have missed it. But the Survey USA poll surveys adults rather than likely voters and therefore probably understates Governor Pawlenty's popularity among the voting Minnesota public, and the Smart Politics post quoted above dating from last month provides the best analysis of Pawlenty's popularity that I have seen.

Governor Pawlenty is far from "unpopular" -- especially if one compares him with other governors, or with President Obama. In short, I think Chait is wrong about both Obama and Pawlenty.

Read the full article here.

Five at 8

By Bob Collins

August 31, 2009 (Bob Collins News Cut) -- What are the odds Republicans will take over the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2010? Eric Ostermeier, who writes the Smart Politics blog, calculates that the odds are longer than the DFL assembling a veto-proof majority. Tomorrow he'll highlight the "swing districts."

More politics. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com considers whether it's a really big deal that President Obama's approval ratings have dropped markedly.

First of all, although I'm on record as being quite pessimistic about what's liable to happen to the Democrats in 2010, odds are that Obama's approval will have to be somewhat worse than 50 percent for the Democrats to lose the House. The relationship between Presidential approval and his party's fate at the midterm elections is quite linear. An approval rating of 50 percent would typically be associated with a loss of about 26 seats.

Read the full article here.

Republican National Convention's political impact? Not much

By Bill Salisbury

August 31, 2009 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- The 2008 Republican National Convention hardly left a mark on Minnesota's political landscape.

It didn't turn the state from blue to red. On the contrary, Barack Obama carried Minnesota by the largest margin of any Democrat in recent history.

And the convention, which started a year ago today, didn't boost the fortunes of Republican candidates down the ticket.

"From a political standpoint, I'm not sure there's any lasting impact," Ron Carey, the state Republican Party chairman who stepped down this spring, said Monday.

Republicans chose to hold their convention in the Twin Cities, in part, because they thought it would boost their chances of carrying the Upper Midwest in the presidential election, said Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

They hoped to hold Iowa and flip Minnesota and Wisconsin, where they had been competitive, from blue to red. Those three states combined have as many electoral votes as Florida. But Sen. John McCain lost all three.

"Maybe the Republican Party should be asking for a refund," Jacobs said. "Their game plan didn't work out."

Actually, the convention gave the GOP ticket of McCain and Sarah Palin a big bounce. They left the Twin Cities with momentum and in a virtual tie with Obama and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden in the polls.

But the national economic meltdown in October was of such "historic proportions that it far outweighed and overshadowed any boost" the GOP received in St. Paul, former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman said. Republicans were in power, and voters blamed them for the deepening recession.

The former Republican senator said the economy had the same impact on his campaign. While he believes the convention was a plus for him, the economic collapse a few weeks later wiped out any lingering benefits.

He eventually lost an eight-month recount and election contest to Democratic challenger Al Franken.

Jacobs said the convention actually might have hurt Coleman politically. He was running for re-election as a pragmatic independent and playing down his party label. "The convention put the party label squarely on his forehead," Jacobs said.

Before the convention, Gov. Tim Pawlenty was on McCain's short list of running mates. But after the Arizona senator picked Palin, the Minnesota governor was relegated to a secondary role at the convention.

Asked Monday if the convention had any impact on his political fortunes, Pawlenty replied, "Not particularly."

But he quickly added that he's glad he worked hard to secure the convention, raise money for it and plan its logistics. "It was good for our state," he said.

People who watched or were involved in the convention came away with a positive impression of Minnesota, he said.

One was Matt Burns, the convention's communications director. The New York native moved to St. Paul from Washington, D.C., two years ago to prepare for the event. He stayed. Burns and his wife now live in St. Paul, where he launched a business, Compelem Strategies LLC, a communications and public relations firm.

"It's a great place to live and work," he said.

Pawlenty said the convention also was a "big chance to update our tourism and convention and visitor credentials ... We've now passed the test of being able to handle a mega event in the modern era."

While Republicans took a beating in the 2008 elections, Carey said, the GOP's decision to meet in St. Paul, combined with the Democrats' expressed desire to hold their convention here, affirms that Minnesota was and probably will continue to be a battleground state.

Although the convention didn't produce tangible benefits for the state GOP, Carey said about 10,000 Minnesotans volunteered to work during the event, and many of them have become Republican activists who will "make a difference in subsequent elections."

If the convention has a lasting political impact, that may be it, he said.

Al Franken's no-recess August

By Anne Schroeder Mullins

August 29, 2009 (Politico) -- Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is using his first congressional summer break for an ambitious goodwill tour of his home state. The 14-day road trip — so far — has taken Minnesota's newest senator to 22 different towns, where he's held "complicated" town hall-style forums on health care reform, hit the local hog farms and set up a meet-and-greet booth at the Minnesota State Fair around the corner from the all-you-can-drink-milk display. (Just $1 a go.)

It's all part of Franken's campaign to "reintroduce himself" to the state, says political science professor and Franken observer Larry Jacobs. The grueling campaign and subsequent legal challenges that gave Franken a razor-thin victory over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman sullied his image, Jacobs says. And since he had to take off for Washington as soon as his victory became official, August is his first chance to repolish his brand.

"When you garden and springtime rolls around, you rake off the plot, rake off the dirt and turn it over," Jacobs said. "Al Franken, he needs to dig up the dirt from the campaign and just replant."

That seems to be the plan.

After a little down time in Portland, Maine, with his in-laws, Franken returned to Minnesota, gassed up the car and hit the road. The tour has the feel of a campaign, with Team Franken hitting between three and five spots in sometimes 12-hour-long days. The senator will turn up anywhere where from a VA medical clinic to an underground mineshaft.

"A lot of what he was doing was touring businesses and organizations that were dealing with local economic issues in Minnesota or would be a critical part of the health care reform," Franken spokesman Jess McIntosh told POLITICO.

In addition to meeting with local officials, Franken has hosted numerous community forums, which are similar to town halls without the cameras. "I wouldn't call them heated, but 'complicated' is a very good word," McIntosh said. And while she describes the discussions as civil, "that doesn't mean concerns haven't been raised and people haven't had a lot to say about it."

Among the folks Franken has met along the way is hog farmer Reuben Bode, who runs his "2,400-sow operation" near New Ulm, Minn.

Bode was surprised to receive a phone call from the state office saying that Franken wanted to visit his thousand-acre farm. Franken, a few aides, a state senator and state representative later arrived the farm and stayed for about 90 minutes.

"Al said he didn't know that much about agriculture and wanted to see a hog operation ...and that he wanted to understand the industry a little better," Bode recalled. "He asked a number of questions, and we tried to inform him as much as we could." Bode, who declined to say if he voted for Franken, was impressed and didn't seem concerned that his senator admitted he didn't know much about agriculture, a lynchpin of the local economy. "He really enjoyed learning about agriculture, and he seemed sincere about everything. ...The things he didn't know, he wasn't afraid to ask," Bode said.

"Just the fact that he wanted to visit" was impressive, Bode said. "He's seriously, genuinely trying to help us."

Franken was also a hit with Mark Fromeke, who works at the American Crystal Sugar Co., a farming co-op. "I think Al at this point is doing everything that a senator should be doing," Fromeke said. "He's out there across the state of Minnesota, listening and learning and showing that he cares. And for a senator who just arrived, there is nothing more important than to be out there talking and listening and showing concern."

Franken spent about an hour and a half at the sugar company. The workers, some of whom are unionized, demonstrated how they put sugar into 5-pound bags and answered Franken's questions.

The trip, however, hasn't been all been high-fives and hog tails. Franken had to cancel a St. Paul fundraiser scheduled for Aug. 27 when his staff learned that the host, Mark Erjavec, had served a year in prison. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Erjavec was accused in 1997 of theft-by-swindle and faced civil judgments and tax liens for up to $100,000. He's also been sued for copyright infringement by General Electric.

When the Franken staff learned of the host's past, it moved quickly to cancel the event. Franken's campaign finance director, Dinah Dale, said in a statement: "We notified everyone who had RSVP'd to the event and offered to have them as guests sometime in the future."

Ultimately, the cancellation is a hiccup that the staff will learn from. In the bigger political picture, the timing of Franken's road trip is impeccable, according to Jacobs. "This is the perfect time to kind of start with the new product line," he says. "This is the friendly, neighborly Al Franken. You get to meet him in your neighborhood, on your block and at the state fair."

The Minnesota State Fair — which has REO Speedwagon, Jackson Browne, Styx, Bonnie Ratt and Randy Travis scheduled to perform — is the highlight of the tour. Franken arrived at his booth a 6 a.m. Thursday and plans to turn up daily. "The first part of the recess I've been all around the state, now the state comes to me," Franken told a local news station KARE on Thursday. "It's much easier for me, and I eat more."

Team Franken is hoping that the state fair will help the senator make up for lost time. Due to Franken's prolonged election battle, "he got started to late and there are a lot of constituency groups he was waiting to meet with until he was in office," McIntosh said.

The road trip has enabled him to meet with hundreds of constituents. And by the time the state fair wraps up, that figure should be in the thousands, aides say. "This is the first time he's been able to talk to his constituents since he's been elected to represent them and explain what he's able to do for them," McIntosh said. "It's been really been nice to be able to get home."

Read the full article here.

Humphrey study ranks lawmakers on Twitter

By Hart Van Denburg

August 27, 2009 (City Pages) -- You might think that politics and blatant self promotion would go hand in hand, but not so much when it comes to Twitter and our fine elected representatives in St. Paul and Washington, D.C. That's according to new numbers offered by the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute on its Smart Politics blog.

Eric Ostermeier posted the results of the survey this morning. Among the findings:

Six of 67 state senators and 23 of 134 state representatives keep Twitter accounts.

Minnesota's Republican lawmakers at the state and national level are outnumbered by Democrats, but they are on a more or less equal footing with Democrats when it comes to the percentage of members in each delegation who use Twitter.

Republicans, both at the state and national level, have more followers on Twitter than do Democrats, by a 13,742-10,646 margin. However, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's almost 8,000 followers make of the lion's share of those GOP numbers. The Democrat with the largest following? U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, with 3,455.

In St. Paul, DFL House speaker Margaret Kelliher has the most followers, 919, followed by GOP Minority Leader Marty Seifert, with 654.

Republicans in general tweet more than DFLers, and New Prague Republican Rep. Laura Brod "remains the Twitter Queen." She's updated per page 351 times since opening her account in March.

Still, if the numbers are right, just 29 state lawmakers are using what is arguably the hottest social networking tool on the Internet (The study points out that they're using Twitter at a much greater rate than the public generally.)

Maybe they think it's a little too, I don't know, trendy maybe? After all, if you spend too much time posting 140 character updates, before you know it people will align you with the likes of Ashton Kutcher.

Perhaps they ought to read yesterday's story in the New York Times, in which a teenager told a reporter that he didn't want to get a Twitter account because it all seemed a little too grown-up for him. The Times story cobbles together some recent research that says adults, not teenagers, are driving the growth of social media outlets: just 11 percent of teenagers use Twitter. Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn? Voting-age folks lead useage in all of them by wide, wide margins.

Or perhaps they ought to stop by Friday's Social Media Breakfast at the Minnesota State Fair, where more than 300 folks, many of them marketing pros, are expected to gather. Marketing and politics go hand in hand, after all.

Read the full article here.

DFL's U.S. House success may depend on governorship

By Cynthia Dizikes

August 24, 2009 (MinnPost) -- The key to DFL dominance in the U.S. House may come down to the governorship, according to Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog.

Ostermeier predicts that the DFL will be looking to pick up six Congressional districts, as Minnesota faces the loss of its eighth House seat after the 2012 reapportionment.

The most vulnerable GOP seats, however, happen to have the best early fundraisers.

Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen from the 6th and 3rd congressional districts, respectively, have already raised more money than Minnesota's other representatives.

But Ostermeier suggests that "one potential pathway" for the DFL to oust a GOP representative will be to win the 2010 gubernatorial contest.

"Since the DFL merger in 1944 there has been a change in partisan control of the Governor's mansion 10 times," Ostermeier writes. "In 70 percent of these elections, there has also been a swing of at least one U.S. House seat for the party winning the gubernatorial contest, according to a Smart Politics analysis."

Despite an interesting historical analysis, however, Ostermeier acknowledges that given the current district map, it will be an uphill battle for the Democrats.

Read the full article here.

If It's Tuesday, It's Michele Bachmann

By David Weigel

August 21, 2009 (The Washington Independent) -- Smart Politics crunches the numbers and finds that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), newly minted as the Democrats' "enemy No. 1" makes a cable news appearance every 9.1 days. The chart is revealing:

CNBC, which is ostensibly a financial news channel, has upped its number of appearances by a member of Congress whose anti-Fed-centric economic policy has been tutored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Read the full article here.

And on the ninth day … Bachmann was on TV again

By Chris Steller

August 20, 2009 (The Minnesota Independent) -- Meteorologists may have failed to forecast yesterday's freak tornado, but political scientists are now able to predict when U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann will next appear on a national cable news show: Aug. 27.

That's the conclusion of Eric Ostermeier, who blogs at Smart Politics for the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Ostermeier counted Bachmann's appearances on cable shows since she took office in 2007. That first year: zero appearances. Over the past year: 43 appearances.

So by Ostermeier's reckoning, Bachmann is on national TV every nine days. At that rate, you can set your Tivo for next Thursday and have a good shot at catching the representative from Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District.

And at that rate, isn't Bachmann proving she could handle her own weekly show, a la Huckabee?

By the way, Ostermeier confirms what you may suspect: Bachmann is increasingly leaning toward right-leaning networks like Fox. She hasn't, for example, shown her face on MSNBC since Oct. 17, 2008, the day she told Chris of her suspicions about colleagues in Congress harboring "anti-American" beliefs.

Her latest appearance, as of this writing, was Tuesday, when she told Fox News host Sean Hannity that reforming the nation's health care system is unconstitutional.

All that airtime is not an accident; it's by design. Bachmann has mobilized an exceptionally large squadron of public-relations staffers to pursue "an aggressive plan" for more media exposure. Among other benefits, Ostermeier figures that strategy is reaping Bachmann campaign-fundraising rewards.

Read the full article here.

Study: Bachmann Is on Cable News Every 9 Days

By Emily Cadei

August 20, 2009 (CQ Politics) -- If you thought you were seeing Rep. Michele Bachmann every time you turned on the television, it's because you probably were.

The Smart Politics blog, from the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, has an illuminating analysis of the 6th District congresswoman's surging national media exposure.

The study, which examined media transcripts from the day Bachmann took office in 2007, found that the Minnesota Republican, who has a penchant for making controversial statements, has made 22 appearances on national cable news programs so far this year, matching her total number of appearances for all of 2008. "Representative Bachmann has thus substantially increased her national profile from averaging one national cable television news interview every 16.6 days in 2008 to one appearance every 9.1 days thus far in 2009," wrote Eric Ostermeier, the center's research associate.

The analysis also found that "all but one of her 44 appearances have occurred within the last 12 months."

And as Bachmann has become more of a conservative lightning rod, her media appearances have come more often on Fox News and less frequently elsewhere.

In addition to making the round on television, Bachmann has also been popping up as a featured speaker for conservative causes and advocacy groups. In the last week alone, she addressed the 2009 Inaugural Freedom Conference hosted by the Steamboat Institute, a new conservative grassroots advocacy group, and participated in a "teletownhall" conference call hosted by the Susan B. Anthony List, which provides support to women who oppose abortion and are involved in politics.

Bachmann's expanding public profile could cut both ways in what is expected to be a fierce re-election battle in 2010. It helps build her network and name identification among conservative activists and donors, but it is also likely to rally opposition from liberals who can funnel support to her challengers, state Sen. Tarryl Clark and physician Maureen Reed.

Bachmann's frequent media spots have already become a point of attack for Clark, who in her campaign announcement declared: "It's time to deliver more than a sound bite. Representative Bachmann's biggest accomplishments are creating controversy instead of creating good jobs, and working the talk show circuit instead of helping working families."

CQ Politics rates the general election contest Leans Republican.

Read the full article here.

Franken Approval Rating Worst Among New Senators

August 19, 2009 (Newsmax) -- Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is not topping the hit parade with his relatively new constituents, according to the most recent poll.

Two weeks into the former "Saturday Night Live" comedian's tenure in the Senate, SurveyUSA asked 600 Minnesotans whether they approved/disapproved of his work thus far. The poll found 43 percent of adults approved of his job performance and 45 percent disapproved. Registering an "unsure" was 12 percent.

Meanwhile, the state's senior senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, captured a 54 percent approval rating, with 42 percent disapproving.

Bottom line: Franken received only 42 percent of the vote last fall — nearly identical to the percentage of those now approving of his job performance.

Only Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb captured a lower net approval rating in his first month in office than Franken, according to Smart Politics. It reached that conclusion by looking at polling results compiled by SurveyUSA, which tracked nine senators who have assumed office since January 2007.

What's worse is that the relatively low approval numbers appear to be part of a general downward trend.

Some weeks before Election Day, unfavorable numbers for Franken rose to 53 percent in a December Rasmussen poll, with that number increasing to an all-time high of 55 percent in mid-May, according to Smart Politics.

That time period was in the midst of Sen. Norm Coleman's lawsuit in his quest to retain his seat. Despite all the furor, Minnesotans believed by a 4-to-1 margin that Franken eventually would emerge as the winner of the contest.

Read the full article here.

Franken's approval rating nothing to write home about

By Emily Kaiser

August 18, 2009 (City Pages) -- Now that he can finally call himself Sen. Al Franken, Minnesotans are already grading his job performance. And it appears he isn't winning over new Minnesotans that didn't believe in him in the first place. 

Two weeks into the job, SurveyUSA asked Minnesotans if they approved/disapproved of his work so far as senator. The poll found 43 percent of adults approved of his job performance and 45 percent disapproved. For a net disapproval of 2. Yikes.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar had a 54-percent approval rating, with 42 percent disapproving.

According to Smart Politics, Franken has one of the worst net approval ratings among newly elected members of the Senate recently.

A Smart Politics analysis of SurveyUSA data finds only Virginia Democratic Senator Jim Webb to have notched a lower net approval rating in his first month in office than Franken, of the nine Senators tracked by SurveyUSA who have entered office since January 2007.

Still, Franken's low approval rating should not surprise political observers as the DFLer only received 42 percent of the vote last fall - virtually identical to the percentage of those now approving of his job performance (43 percent).

Read the full article here.

Franken's initial approval rating: right where he left off

By Ed Morrissey

August 17, 2009 (Hot Air) -- When politicians first take office, they usually ride on a bubble of good will among their constituents.  Consider it the triumph of hope over experience; after an election, most people hope they will do well even if they didn’t support the winner in the election.  With that in mind, Eric Ostermeier looks at Al Franken’s initial job-approval ratings after a month in office, and finds that bubble missing entirely:

A newly released SurveyUSA poll conducted only two weeks into Franken’s tenure finds Minnesotans unsurprisingly divided about how he is conducting himself as their Senator in Washington. The poll finds 43 percent of Gopher State adults approving of his job performance and 45 percent disapproving.

A recent Smart Politics analysis of Franken’s colleague Amy Klobuchar found her approval ratings approaching a career low at 54 percent in July. Overall, many Democratic and Republican Senators have seen their approval ratings take a hit this year in light of the nation’s economic and budget troubles.

Still, Franken begins his second month in office with one of the worst net approval ratings among newly elected members to the Senate in recent years. … Franken’s low approval rating should not surprise political observers as the DFLer only received 42 percent of the vote last fall - virtually identical to the percentage of those now approving of his job performance (43 percent).

Not only did Franken fail to gain any traction in that first month, the poll surveyed Minnesota adults, not registered voters or likely voters.  That should have given Franken the best opportunity to gain approval points.  Instead, he looks like a flop across the board.

• Age demographics - Oddly, Franken does better among older voters than younger.  A majority of 35-49 year olds disapprove of Franken, 50%-37%, and the 18-34 demo disapproves 49%-43%.  He gets plurality support in the two age demos 50 and above, but not majorities.
• Own or rent?  It makes almost no difference.  Homeowners slightly disapprove 43%-42%, while renters slightly approve, 47%-46%.
• Students disapprove, 49%-46%, while part-time workers approve 57%-33%, and retirees 46%-40%.  Homemakers disapprove by a wide margin, 56%-35%.

The lesson here is that Franken is an extraordinarily weak incumbent even before he’s cast enough votes to alienate his constituents.  If the GOP can make 2014 a two-candidate race, Franken should be easy to beat.

Read the full article here.

Doctors want end-of-life provision resuscitated

By Guy Boulton

August 14, 2009 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) -- As a family practice physician in Sauk City, Tim Bartholow regularly saw elderly patients fearful of being caught in a system that would take extraordinary measures to keep them alive if they became incapacitated.

He has also seen families struggle as they try to determine the wishes of an incapacitated parent or relative.

For that reason, Bartholow hasn't understood how a seemingly minor provision in the draft of the House bill on health care reform has led to talk of the federal government's encouraging euthanasia and setting up "death panels" to determine who will live and who will die.

The rumors - now a common contention at the town hall meetings on health care reform - stem from a proposal to allow Medicare to pay doctors for optional consultations with patients about end-of-life care.

Does a patient want to be kept alive with a feeding tube for months or even years, for example, if he or she had a stroke and can't swallow or talk?

"Families should be able to have the opportunity to have these conversations," said Bartholow, a vice president with the Wisconsin Medical Society.

To him, so-called advanced directives are about respecting a patient's wishes.

Encouraging the use of advanced directives has broad support among physician societies.

"Everybody supports this - it's motherhood and apple pie," said David Weissman, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a palliative care staff physician at Froedtert Hospital.

The contention that health care reform will lead to the elderly "being put to death by their government" - in the reported words of Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina - has been widely refuted. Yet the rumors persist.

The rumors may be the best example of the misinformation that has come to mark parts of the debate over health care reform.

"This is a way to scare people, particularly seniors, from health care reform," Weissman said. "It has nothing to do with facts."

...But in the contentious debate on health care reform - with opponents' assertions of a government takeover of health care and rationing of care - the proposal has raised suspicions of such sinister plans as the federal government's determining what care people will receive at the end of their lives.

"It's been fueled by a fear of government and a fear of uncertainty," said Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota.

The goal of slowing the rise in health care spending in all likelihood has only added to those suspicions.

"There are a number of interests that would like to see nothing change, and they are using scare tactics that have nothing to do with what's been proposed," said Leo Brideau, chief executive of Columbia St. Mary's.

Some of that stems from politics, he said. And some stems from the legitimate debate about how to pay for expanding coverage and how to slow the rise in health care spending.

Read the full article here.

Klobuchar's approval rating falls

By Cynthia Dizikes

August 11, 2009 (MinnPost) -- According to SurveyUSA's latest round of polling, Sen. Amy Klobuchar's approval rating fell from 62 percent in June to 54 percent in mid-July.

Smart Politics reports that this marks the Democrat's second lowest mark in her Senate career and is consistent with the decrease in approval that other Democrats around the country have been seeing.

Smart Politics hypothesizes that it is possible that the recent seating of Minnesota's second senator, Al Franken, may have had something to do with the decline.

"Minnesotans showed particular good will towards Klobuchar during these trying times while other Senators were enduring low public approval ratings across the country. This good will may have been due, in part, to Senator Klobuchar's toiling, without much complaint, under a double-duty constituency caseload as the Gopher State slogged through the legal proceedings in the 2008 U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken...

"...In short, with the Gopher State now at full representation in D.C., Senator Klobuchar seemed to no longer be insulated from the public discontent with the problems facing Minnesota and the country."

Read the full article here.

Net approval for Dem Senators declining twice as fast as GOP counterparts

By Ed Morrissey

August 10, 2009 (Hot Air) -- Barack Obama's approval ratings have rapidly declined as more of his hard-Left agenda hits the table and the economy begins to decline, but Obama's not the only person who has that problem. Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics looks at polling numbers from Survey USA and finds that almost everyone in the Senate has lost ground with voters. However, net approval for Democrats has declined twice as much as Republicans:

Herb Kohl (D-WI) has seen the biggest net drop, at minus 23 points during this span.

Overall, these 25 Senators have seen their collective +24.8-point net approval rating in January fall to +14.2 points in July.

But this growing disapproval by the public toward the job its Senators are doing in Washington has not been evenly distributed between Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans have seen their net approval rating drop an average of 6.6 points from January to July, while the Democrats have seen their net approval rating drop nearly twice that amount at 12.5 points. (SurveyUSA tracks the approval rating of 8 GOP Senators and 17 Democrats).

It looks as though Obama's coattails have become an anchor. Eric ranks the Senators by rate of decline, and sees only two Republicans in the top 10, and three in the top 15. After Kohl comes Tom Udall (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar (DFL). Klobuchar presents a curious case, as she has mostly been a nonentity in the Senate for the past two years and has no discernible change in her net approval ratings … until Al Franken became the other Senator from Minnesota:

In 22 consecutive polls conducted by SurveyUSA between July 2007 and June 2009, Klobuchar's approval rating had a variance of just 5 points - falling between 58 and 63 percent in every survey. Similarly, her disapproval rating had been measured between 30 and 36 percent in every SurveyUSA poll during this two-year stretch.

The fact that Klobuchar's approval rating should dip to its second lowest level, and her disapproval rating reach an all-time high, in the very first month in which Al Franken officially became her colleague in D.C. is 'curious' at the very least.

As a result of this apparent shift in public sentiment, Klobuchar has now endured the 4th largest drop in net approval rating since Barack Obama took office in January of this year among the 25 Senators tracked by SurveyUSA.

Three different explanations could account for this. Klobuchar has been a reliable supporter of the Obama agenda in 2009, which has grown increasingly unpopular, even in Minnesota. Her support for ObamaCare may prove especially problematic for her. Another explanation could be that the focus on Franken has highlighted the lackluster performance of Klobuchar in the Senate. She has been practically nonexistent, not involved in any significant way on major legislation or the national debate. One could reasonably wonder whether Minnesota had even one Senator in the upper chamber this year.

Third, and most problematic for Klobuchar, could be that Franken's win may have Minnesotans rethinking the direction of their representation in Washington. That becomes important when it comes to determining whether Tim Pawlenty aims at Obama or Klobuchar in 2012. With Franken expected to be a reliably liberal Senator, perhaps even a radically liberal vote, Minnesotans may want balance, both in terms of ideology and in temperament. Klobuchar provides the latter — she's downright soporific — but Pawlenty can provide both, plus show national leadership.

Even apart from Klobuchar, though, this study shows the danger facing the Democrats in 2010. Most of these Senators still have net positive numbers, but the rapid decline is likely to continue while ObamaCare and cap-and-trade remain on the table. Voters in these states are blaming their elected representatives for the radical agenda under consideration in Congress, and Democrats have a lot more to lose from anti-incumbent fervor this year than do Republicans.

Read the full article here.

Sotomayor is sworn in, but the politics are far from over

By Brad Knickerbocker

August 8, 2009 (Christian Science Monitor) -- The swearing in of Sonia Sotomayor as the nation's first Hispanic and third woman to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States was decidedly nonpolitical. President Obama had decided not to attend, and the ceremony was at the high court itself — not in the White House, as had been the practice for decades.

The picture of solemnity and celebration as Chief Justice John Roberts administered the judicial oath before TV cameras — another first — was in sharp contrast to the highly-partisan and sometimes rancorous confirmation run-up to Saturday morning's historic event.

But are the politics of Associate Justice Sotomayor's appointment now over? Far from it.
In the Senate confirmation vote, all but a handful of Republicans voted against her, and many see this as trouble for a party increasingly rejected by Hispanic voters. And it’s not just Democrats making this point.

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough (a former Republican congressman) said this about the GOP's action on Sotomayor: "What's wrong with them? … It's about as short-sighted and stupid as any political move this year."

The first test could come in the midterm elections next year.

...At the University of Minnesota's "Smart Politics" blog, Eric Ostermeier points out that the potentially most-vulnerable GOP senators — those with the lowest margin of victory in the party caucus — all voted against Sotomayor.

Read the full article here.

Oberstar rips Obama administration over transportation policy

By Emily Kaiser

August 6, 2009 (City Pages) -- When you are on your 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, you get some freedom to go off on your very own political party's president. No one's holding our Rep. Jim Oberstar back.

Oberstar chairs the House Transportation Committee and has big visions for the future of the country's crumbling infrastructure. Apparently the Obama administration isn't exactly following through on their "change" mantra when it comes to our country's ability to move from one place to the next.

Oberstar spoke Wednesday afternoon at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and had some harsh words for the president. We wouldn't be surprised if Oberstar finds his car sealed in plastic wrap someday soon. No one rips on Obama, particularly Democrats.

Oberstar's speech was titled "Getting America to Work: Opportunities and Challenges in Transportation Policy" and focused on his new plan for the country's transportation system as well as a strict timeline to get things done.

The Obama administration has their hands full trying to deal with the health care reform debate in the next couple months, so officials have suggested putting Oberstar's baby, the $450 billion six-year plan on hold for 18 months and extend all existing laws.

Oberstar isn't having any of that.

"An eighteen month delay in Washington means four years. Inertia is the enemy of progress," he said in the Smart Politics speech recap.

When discussing how the country will pay for some much-needed upgrades and additions, Obama's leadership wasn't exactly speaking out, Oberstar said. While several business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the American Trucking Association, and the Associated General Contractors of America support user fees (gas taxes) to pay for the new programs, the White House isn't exactly supporting anything.

"The yes-we-can, change-you-can-believe-in White House ran for cover," Oberstar said. "I told the groups that they have to lead, because the White House isn't."

To read more of Oberstar's remarks, check out the full rundown at Smart Politics.

Read the full article here.

Oberstar talks transportation, stimulus at U

By Briana Bierschbach

August 5, 2009 (Minnesota Daily) -- The clock is ticking on America's transportation spending bill, and the time has come to transform it into something that looks at how future generations are going to get around.

That was the message of Rep. Jim Oberstar Wednesday at a discussion put on by the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs as part of a series of visits from high-ranking political officials to discuss policy in the nation.

Oberstar, a Democrat representing Minnesota's 8th Congressional District, told a nearly full auditorium in the Humphrey Center that the nation's six-year transportation funding bill will expire on Sept. 30, and the time is now to revamp it at a cost of $450 billion.

"We could be at the cusp of the first stem to stern rethinking of our transportation spending," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Humphrey's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

Oberstar, who is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, projected a mind-map-like schematic that he drew out for a retiring politician years ago, spelling out the "Future of Transportation."

"I drew this up one day, somehow it found its way onto the Internet and now they want to put it in the Smithsonian," he said.

The schematic detailed how Oberstar thinks the transportation spending bill should change, including the creation of a national "intermobility council" that would oversee all the branches of transportation. Oberstar described the current system as various departments acting in a Stonehenge-esque way: solid but separate.

"We need to work together under a national program," he said. This program would be more transparent, require annual benchmark requirements to Congress and post progress on the Web, he said.

Oberstar also wants to change the way the Federal Transit Administration is run, citing the 14-year time line of planning and building the slated Central Corridor light rail line. Oberstar said they will put in place a new system that could cut these projects down to three years from planning to operation.

Read the full article here.

Obama gives powerful drug lobby a seat at healthcare table

By Tom Hamburger

August 4, 2009 (Los Angeles Times) -- As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry's chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

Since the election, Tauzin has morphed into the president's partner. He has been invited to the White House half a dozen times in recent months. There, he says, he eventually secured an agreement that the administration wouldn't try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.

"The White House blessed it," Tauzin said.

At the same time, Tauzin said the industry he represents was offering political and financial support for the president's healthcare initiative, a remarkable shift considering that drug companies vigorously opposed a national overhaul the last time it was proposed, when Bill Clinton was president.

...It's far too early to tell whether the pharmaceutical industry's decision to back Obama's health initiative will pay off.

"Since Obama came into office, the drug industry has received everything it wants, domestic and foreign," said James Love, who leads an international nonprofit promoting low-cost distribution of drugs to fight the world's most devastating diseases.

"Yes, the drug companies are getting tremendous sweetheart deals" from Obama, said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who studies the history of health reform and other major social and economic changes. "But these bargains are the price of admission for achieving substantial reform."

Read the full article here.

Inside Politics

By Tom LoBianco

August 3, 2009 (The Washington Times) -- Could a national Republican Party resurgence come from the frozen climes of the North? Possibly, explains Ed Morrissey in a blog at HotAir.com, citing Minnesota political specialist Eric Ostermeier.

"It took four years of George Bush's second term to push Republicans to a recent nadir in registration in Minnesota. It only took six months of Barack Obama to push the GOP back into parity with the DFL, the state's Democratic Party. Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics looks at the suddenly stronger Republican Party and draws at least one of the correct conclusions," Mr. Morrissey writes.

"Eric explains that the change has come quickly. In four earlier polls this year, Democrats had double-digit leads on party ID in Minnesota, including as late as June, when the gap was 13 points. That's how much ground Republicans have gained - in a month."

"What happened? The CBO began scoring ObamaCare, and the House shoved cap-and-tax down the throats of Republicans. Even after Porkulus, people clung to the belief that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid represented a moderate middle rather than a radical Left, and that their leadership would focus on prosperity rather than socialism. After June and July, those pretenses disappeared, even in Minnesota."

So is this the Republican 50-state strategy?: Give Democrat leaders enough rope. Mr. Morrissey sees potential: "This shows that Republicans can beat Democrats by focusing on their overreach, and by having common-sense alternatives that support prosperity rather than destroying it. Even in Minnesota, people can learn those lessons, which says something for a state that just sent Al Franken to the Senate. If we see this trend in Minnesota, you can bet it's happening in plenty of other states, too."

Read the full article here.

Analysis: Obama must regain momentum after Gates

By Jennifer Loven

August 1, 2009 (Associated Press) -- The success of President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda — from health care and climate change to education — could depend on how quickly he recovers from the sharp drop in support among white voters after criticizing a white policeman's arrest of a black Harvard scholar.

Obama's widely publicized effort to defuse the first racial flare-up of his young presidency by inviting the protagonists to the White House last week for beers and conversation ended well by most accounts, even though there were no apologies.

Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. Joseph Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. agreed to disagree about the July 16 confrontation at Gates' home and pledged to meet again.

Obama's impromptu comments about the incident could become a defining moment. Nearly immediately after Obama's remark that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, his approval rating plummeted among whites, dropping over two days from 53 percent to 46 percent in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

If Obama is to have success with the policy changes he wants, he can't afford to shed white support. Not to mention the disaster that losing the affections of many in the blue-collar, Reagan Democrat constituency would spell for any re-election campaign.

Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, said he was stunned at how poorly Obama, normally so controlled, handled what Jacobs called "the first major personal debacle for the president."

"This thing was just hung around his neck and he couldn't get rid of it," Jacobs said. "I think he presumed too much. He really started to believe his own press releases on post-racial America."

Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative in California and a former aide to Al Gore, said Obama prolonged the story by arranging the White House meeting, but was smart to do so because it fits into another narrative that Obama promotes: that he's a "different kind of president."

"The politically smart move would have been to call the officer, tell the press, not ask for a meeting and pivot back to health care at a time when the White House needs to regain its momentum," Lehane said, "while the riskier courageous leader position was to hold the suds summit."

Greg Strimple, a Republican strategist in New York who advised Sen. John McCain, Obama's GOP opponent last year, saw Obama's initial words at the news conference as a calculated play to win points with his base — and it backfired.

"He's lost the center on economic issues," he said, citing the big-government label Obama is earning for the massive stimulus package and his health care and energy proposals. "When politicians get in trouble, they always revert to audiences that will clap and cheer the loudest for them. ... But they had a fundamental miscalculation on the political strategy of this."

Regardless how he got himself in the fix, Obama must move on from the national debate the incident prompted.

"The most important thing for Obama is to move on to nonracial topics — health care, for instance," Jacobs said. "The loss of white support is potentially devastating but it is unclear how sustained it will be, especially if he can enact his legislation."

Read the full article here.

Resurging Republicans … in Minnesota?

By Ed Morrissey

August 1, 2009 (Hot Air) -- It took four years of George Bush's second term to push Republicans to a recent nadir in registration in Minnesota.  It only took six months of Barack Obama to push the GOP back into parity with the DFL, the state's Democratic Party.  Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics looks at the suddenly-stronger Republican Party and draws at least one of the correct conclusions:

The SurveyUSA poll finds 34 percent of Minnesotans now identify as Republicans - the largest percentage enjoyed by the GOP in 63 surveys conducted by the organization dating back to its inaugural tracking poll in May 2005, when 35 percent identified as Republicans.

In fact, Republicans had only reached the 30 percent mark in just 7 of the previous 42 statewide surveys conducted by the polling organization since January 2007.

Democrats have held advantages over the GOP in party ID of moderate to large margins since late 2005. The percentage of residents identifying as Democrats in Minnesota had even eclipsed the 40 percent mark nine times since the 2006 election - and as recent as April and June of 2009.

The Democratic slide - and Republican gain - in party ID may be tied to the slipping approval ratings of President Barack Obama. Obama's approval numbers were measured at an all-time low of 51 percent in July by SurveyUSA, down eight points from June. Obama's slippage was tracked in several states, and SurveyUSA also reports that Republicans appear to be making inroads in other battleground states, such as Virginia - where Republicans hold double digit leads in a new round of election matchups for three statewide offices, including Governor, on the ballot this fall.

Eric explains that the change has come quickly.  In four earlier polls this year, Democrats had double-digit leads on party ID in Minnesota, including as late as June, when the gap was 13 points.  That's how much ground Republicans have gained — in a month.

What happened?  The CBO began scoring ObamaCare, and the House shoved cap-and-tax down the throats of Republicans.  Even after Porkulus, people clung to the belief that Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid represented a moderate middle rather than a radical Left, and that their leadership would focus on prosperity rather than socialism.  After June and July, those pretenses disappeared, even in Minnesota.

This shows that Republicans can beat Democrats by focusing on their overreach, and by having common-sense alternatives that support prosperity rather than destroying it.  Even in Minnesota, people can learn those lessons, which says something for a state that just sent Al Franken to the Senate.  If we see this trend in Minnesota, you can bet it's happening in plenty of other states, too.

Read the full article here.

Smart Politics analyzes House donations

By Cynthia Dizikes

July 29, 2009 (MinnPost) -- The Humphrey Institute's Smart Politics breaks down the large donations to Minnesota's U.S. representatives in the most recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports.

Among other things, Smart Politics found that business owners and executive officers comprised the largest group of big donors, followed by retirees and doctors/dentists. These three groups favored the GOP.

Read the full article here.

Former U regent seeking 6th District nominations

By Casey Merkwan

July 28, 2009 (Minnesota Daily) -- As soon as Redwood Falls native Dr. Maureen Reed stepped onto the University of Minnesota campus as a junior in the early 1970s, it felt like home.

Over the next 30 years, she spent a lot of time on campus, as an undergraduate, a medical student and from 2001-2003 as chair of the Board of Regents.

Now Reed has her sights set on a new position in public policy: United States Representative.

On May 6, Reed announced a run for Congress in the 6 Congressional District, seeking nominations from the DFL and Independence parties. Others hoping to gain the DFL nomination against incumbent Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann include last year's candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg and possibly Assistant Senate Majority Leader Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud.

...Larry Jacobs, director of the University's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said he thinks Reed will have to prove she has campaigning experience to gain a foothold in the race.

Her opponents for the nomination have experience in the district — Tinklenberg is running for Congress in the 6th District for the third time against Bachmann, and Clark has represented a portion of the district for four years at the state Capitol.

Reed does have some campaign experience of her own — she ran for lieutenant governor in 2006 under the Independence Party.

Her campaign has brought in a good amount of donations, too. As of June 30, Reed's campaign has raised almost $232,000, while Tinklenberg's campaign has raised more than $55,000, according to the Federal Election Commission.

"Even though I think Maureen Reed's got her work cut out for her, she's an intelligent, thoughtful, independent-thinking Minnesotan and I think it's a good sign for our state that we get people like that jumping to run for office," Jacobs said.

However, Clark may have an advantage for the DFL nomination due to her elected office experience, Jacobs said.

"My hunch is that Democrats in that district are going to be more interested in a fresh face," Jacobs said. "I think there was some frustration among Democrats that [Tinklenberg] lost against Michele Bachmann."

Read the full article here.

KSTP-TV says Norm Coleman won't run for governor

By Joe Kimball

July 28, 2009 (MinnPost) -- Following media reports Monday saying that Norm Coleman won't decide until spring whether or not to run for governor, KSTP-TV is reporting that he's already telling friends he won't.

Channel 5 reports that three sources say Coleman "has been busy working on a long-term issue-oriented 'action group' that might eventually involve some lobbying in Washington."

If true, that will make a big difference in the race to replace Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has said he won't run for re-election, U of M political science professor Larry Jacobs told the station.

"The biggest names in the Republican Party, like (former Congressman) Jim Ramstad and now Norm Coleman are no longer in play. It is really wide open," Jacobs said.

Other candidates, such as Republican legislators Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer and former State Auditor Pat Anderson, might now appear as front-runners for the Republican slot.

"These are folks who are well known here at the Capitol in St. Paul but don't have very good name recognition out of state. It's really unclear whether they can attract the kind of independent support you need to win in Minnesota," Jacobs said.

Read the full article here.

Sources: Coleman Will Not Run for Governor

By Nicole Muehlhausen

July 27, 2009 (KSAX-TV) -- 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that former Sen. Norm Coleman has been privately telling friends and political colleagues he will not run for the Minnesota governor's seat in 2010.

When Coleman made a gracious concession speech to Sen. Al Franken, it might have been his final exit from elective politics.

In late June, Coleman would only say he'd have some announcement after the July 4. But on Monday, a spokesman for Coleman now says he will wait until March or April to announce a final decision on the race.

Three sources tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Coleman has been busy working on a long-term issue-oriented 'action group' that might eventually involve some lobbying in Washington DC.

Unless Coleman has a dramatic change of heart, University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs says his decision is a governor's race game-changer.

"The biggest names in the Republican Party like Jim Ramstad and now Norm Coleman are no longer in play. It is really wide open," he said.

Former Rep. Ramstad announced two weeks ago he's not running, and last month Brian Sullivan—who narrowly lost the endorsement to Gov. Tim Pawlenty in 2002—announced he wouldn't run.

That leaves several Republican legislators like Marty Seifert, Tom Emmer, and former State Auditor Pat Anderson near the front of the pack.

"These are folks who are well known here at the capitol in St. Paul, but don't have very good name recognition out of state. It's really unclear whether they can attract the kind if independent support you need to win in Minnesota," Jacobs explained.

If Coleman does change his mind in March or April, it would be a tough road to the Republican endorsement.

The party just announced it would hold it's convention on April 30 and May 1—the earliest they've ever had their state endorsing convention.

Read the full article and view the clip here.

Bachmann shows fund-raising muscle

By Don Davis

July 22, 2009 (Capitol Chatter) -- U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann appears to have appeal well outside her district.

While her aides deny she is interested in running for governor, an analysis by the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog shows her financial reach extends outside of her 6th Congressional District, which stretches from St. Cloud through northern Twin Cities suburbs into the eastern Twin Cities area.

Eric Ostermeier reports that the colorful and quotable Republican raised more individual contributions in the St. Paul-area district served by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum than did McCollum. And she raised nearly as much money in the second quarter of the year in U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison's Minneapolis-centered district than did Ellison.

Bachmann raised $17,650 from individuals in McCollum's district last quarter, compared to $1,825 that McCollum herself received.

Ostermeier figured out that Bachmann raised a higher percentage of contributions from Minnesota individuals than McCollum, Ellison, Collin Peterson and Jim Oberstar. Of course, the other members of Congress have more access to special interest money because they have leadership roles and are in the House Democratic majority, so they can get money from political action committees and out-of-state donors easier than Bachmann.

Added Ostermeier: "Perhaps the most dramatic way to slice the data is as follows: The total sum in large donor individual contributions raised by McCollum, Ellison, Peterson and Oberstar in their respective home districts ($16,475) was less than 60 percent of the amount Bachmann received from residents in these four DFL districts ($28,200)."

Read the full article here.

Republicans' missteps may benefit Pawlenty presidential bid

By Bill Salisbury

July 18, 2009 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- If Sarah Palin shot herself in the foot by announcing she'd step down as Alaska's governor 18 months before her term ends, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty stands to benefit as another potential presidential candidate is knocked out of the field — or at least slowed down.

The controversy swirling around Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has effectively boosted Pawlenty's national profile.

Consider this: A Nexis search for news stories referring to Palin and Pawlenty in the past week produced more than 100 hits. He's been speculated about as a 2012 presidential candidate in newspaper stories and columns and on cable TV talk shows and political blogs.

But so have about a half-dozen other Republicans — some of whom also are taking aim at their feet.

Sex scandals already bumped South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Nevada Sen. John Ensign out of contention, and President Barack Obama took out Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman by naming him ambassador to China.

"Republican presidential candidates have been falling like flies," Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said last week.

But while Pawlenty remains in the thinning pool of Republican presidential wannabes, he's little-known around the country and starts out far behind the presumed front-runners.

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday showed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee bunched at the top of presidential candidates that Republican voters said they'd vote for in the 2012 GOP state primaries. Twenty-five percent picked Romney, 24 percent said Palin, and 22 percent backed Huckabee.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich came in fourth at 14 percent, and Pawlenty was tied with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for a distant fifth place at 1 percent.

"Outside of Minnesota and maybe extreme western Wisconsin, nobody's ever heard of the guy," Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, joked about Pawlenty. But he said that doesn't matter, because it's way too early to start playing the who's-ahead game.

"I really don't think you can take stock of the Republican race, because there is no race yet," Rothenberg said. He predicted the contest wouldn't get serious until after the 2010 mid-term elections.

Sabato likened this preliminary stage before the real presidential race to a demolition derby.

"A lot of these cars run into other cars, and that's the end of the drivers. You don't hear from them again," he said. "So far, Pawlenty has avoided crashing his car, but I think it's a small compact. His is not the Cadillac of presidential campaigns, but he's still in the race. Sometimes, you win just by finishing the race."

Pawlenty did not grant the Pioneer Press an interview for this story but through spokesman Bob Schroeder dismissed all the recent news coverage as "just more people speculating at this point." The governor has said repeatedly that he doesn't know whether he will run for president but hopes to help revive the national Republican Party.

Lately, he's been a national policy wonk. Last week, he spent two days in Nashville at the Education Commission of the States' annual policy forum. The previous weekend, he participated in the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival in Colorado. A few days earlier, he attended the commission's Global Education Competitiveness Summit in Washington, D.C.

Former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber, a national Republican strategist, said Pawlenty is "very smart" to be digging into policy matters.

"The policy side is where Republicans have been perceived as having been virtually brain dead for the last couple of years," Weber said. If Pawlenty can polish his reputation as a policy innovator, it will enhance his political prospects.

It also could endear him to an important segment of the party, the "Republican intelligentsia," said Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

While Palin appeals to the "populist, anti-intellectual element" of the GOP, Jacobs said, Pawlenty could charm policy wonks at conservative think tanks and the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and National Review.

"That crowd can write some of the biggest checks," Jacobs said. They also know how to build a national campaign organization.

To win them over, "you've got to impress them that you're a person of substance," he said. "I think that's what Pawlenty is doing."

But the odds for Pawlenty are still daunting. He has yet to show he can raise large sums of money or build an organization that could compete with Romney and Huckabee's battle-tested operations.

Pawlenty still has time, said Terry Nelson, John McCain's first 2008 campaign manager and political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. While a lot of speculating is going on, he agreed with Rothenberg that the real presidential campaign wouldn't start until after the 2010 election. Until then, Pawlenty and other candidates can lay the groundwork for running by getting to know key GOP activists in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primary and caucus states, and influential fundraisers in California, New York and Florida.

Nelson predicted the 2012 GOP race would be wide open. Republicans have a history of having a clear-cut favorite at the head of the line for their presidential nomination, but that doesn't appear to be the case this time.

"This will be the first race in a long time where the next in line is not obvious," he said. "Leadership of the Republican Party is up for grabs."

That means "Pawlenty has a shot," Jacobs said.

Read the full article here.

Franken's Senate debut: Appropriate levity or class clown?

By Cynthia Dizikes

July 17, 2009 (MinnPost) -- The moment came roughly eight hours into the third day of Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearing. With the air conditioner broken, and the audience lulled into a glassy-eyed stupor by rehashed questions and repeat responses, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee finally turned to the last senator on his left.

"And, [last in] this round of questioning will be Senator Franken, the newest member of the committee," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

It would be an overstatement to say that it was the moment everyone had been waiting for, but those in attendance did seem to perk up at the mention of the familiar name.

It was Al Franken's debut performance since being sworn-in to office last week after a protracted Senate race against incumbent Norm Coleman. And it just happened to be a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, which is essentially like asking a rookie to pitch the World Series on his first day in the majors.

But, like the Democrats who had come before him, Democrat Franken eagerly took to the mound and began throwing out the best softballs he had.

"I watched 'Perry Mason' every week with my dad and my mom and my brother," Franken began, referring to the TV show that Sotomayor had mentioned earlier in the hearing under questioning from Minnesota's senior Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat.

"And it amazes me that you wanted to become a prosecutor based on that show," Franken continued. "Because, in 'Perry Mason,' the prosecutor, Burger, lost every week…"

At this bit of whimsy, Sotomayor smiled, the audience chuckled, and Franken attempted to reconnect his observation to the matter at hand.

"But, I think that says something about your determination to defy the odds," he said.

The media, however, thought it said more about Franken, who is a former comedian and liberal radio talk show host known for his satire and biting wit.

'Real Franken'
Before Franken had concluded his round of questions, which mostly focused on the very unfunny issues of net neutrality, judicial activism and the right to privacy, the tweets were already out about him cracking wise.

Like proud parents whose child had just passed an impressive milestone, POLITICO declared it "Sen. Franken's first joke."

Washington reporters — force-fed a peas-and-carrots narrative over the last week of Franken the Taciturn and Franken the Solemn — exhaled a collective sigh of relief.

"Finally, we get to see the real Franken," one reporter said after Franken ended his comments to more laughter over the fictional defense attorney Perry Mason.

That none of it was really even that funny seemed to matter little. It had been roughly seven hours since Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Sotomayor had entertained two bizarre hypothetical cases: one featuring Coburn as 38 weeks pregnant and the other starring a gun-toting Sotomayor returning to the committee room and shooting him. And it had been at least 24 hours since Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had referred to his "ability to turn people on."

So, those still in the room were looking for a little levity. And, it would seem, that Franken delivered. Or at least, the audience took what it could get.

But the reaction from outside the hearing was a bit more mixed.

Some in Minnesota — familiar with the image of an attention-seeking liberal firebrand that Franken has struggled to change since running for office — bristled at portions of his performance.

"I don't think that any damage was done," said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. "But I do think it was a moment to pause and say, 'Does he really understand the challenges he faces?'

"He has given us a lot of rhetoric about not being a show horse," Jacobs continued. "So, why did he throw in the Perry Mason thing? Why did he not just go into his very reasonable questions about judicial activism? Instead there seems to be a very driven need for cleverness."

Alarm bells
Jacobs said that it was this inclination that might prove problematic to Franken reinventing himself as a conciliatory and pragmatic senator who shows deference to the more-senior lawmakers.

"That is what set alarm bells off for me," Jacobs said. "You think this is clever, but this is not what you need to be in the news for now."

On that point, David Schultz, a professor in the Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, agreed.

"The danger is that the main story becomes about his discussion with [Sotomayor] on Perry Mason," said Schultz.

And, indeed, the Perry Mason segment reverberated through headlines, stories and TV clips throughout the evening and into the next day.

"If you watched the hearing, the Perry Mason discussion was just sort of a sidebar," Schultz said. "But what struck me is that the established media seemed to be keying in more on that than anything else."

In a hearing where funnier and stranger things were said, and truly offensive comments were also made, Schultz said that Franken was "facing a double standard."

"He has to work harder than other senators to prove" himself, said Schultz.

But does this mean he should amputate his wit in the process?

Guy-Uriel Charles, a professor of law at Duke University who used to work at the University of Minnesota, argued that the Perry Mason bit was "a positive thing."

"Obviously, the risk is that he won't be taken seriously, that he will be viewed as a clown," Charles said. "But, oddly enough, it seems that if he played it as a straight man, without any humor, he would have been taken less seriously."

Kathryn Pearson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, reduced this reasoning to the authenticity factor.

"Franken being funny and serious at the same time is Franken's own brand of authenticity and voters want authenticity," Pearson said. "If Franken never cracked a joke, I think people would wonder where the real Franken was."

Franken, however, said he didn't even see it as much of a joke.

"I thought it was more of a human moment than a humorous moment," Franken said after the hearing. "It was about getting to know her as a human being."

Franken pointed to the portion of his questioning when he noted that both of them — Sotomayor in the Bronx and Franken in suburban Minneapolis — had grown up watching the same show.

"And here we are today," Franken said during the hearing. "I am asking you questions because you have been nominated to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court. I think that's pretty cool."

Range of legal topics
In addition to not finding his Perry Mason comments very funny, Franken added that he also thought his "line of questioning was quite serious."

On that note, the political analysts that MinnPost talked to seemed to agree.

Franken's arc of questions started by focusing on net neutrality and the First Amendment, touched on judicial activism and the Supreme Court's recent cases on the Voting Rights Act and age discrimination, and ended on abortion and the right to privacy.

The media also picked up on some of these topics, just not to the extent of the Perry Mason banter.

"I think it went very well," said Charles, who is a constitutional law expert. "At the end of the day, I thought he was quite impressive."

Said Jacobs: "I thought that his questions were very much within the ballpark of legitimate questions."

Concluded Schultz: "He didn't embarrass himself. And, I think he did as good as anyone could have done with only about five days on the job."

Throughout the hearing, and in the weeks preceding the hearing, one of the main Republican talking points against Sotomayor has been about judicial activism. Franken sought to upend the Republican argument by redefining the term and pointing to several instances where he felt that conservative members of the Supreme Court had engaged in acts of judicial activism.

"He attempted to provide a counterweight, from an intellectual perspective, to the questions conservatives had been asking [on judicial activism]," said Charles. "It was not something you would have expected from the newest, and most junior, member of the committee… [And] I thought for a person who is not a lawyer and who was only just sworn-in as a senator, he seemed extremely well prepared and quite sound."

Although Schultz noted that Franken's "pit bull" approach seemed somewhat reminiscent of his Air America days, Jacobs argued that the point he was making was not "highly partisan."

But Pearson cautioned that it was still far too early to tell what kind of a senator Franken would become.

"At the end of the day, this is only the beginning," Pearson said. "Where the lasting opinions of both Minnesotans and the press will be formed is in the legislation he offers, the speeches he gives on big issues like health care and how he responds to the needs of the state."

Thus, time will tell whether Franken will successfully shed his former persona and escape the pre-written Jesse Ventura-narrative that lies in wait for him.

Unlikelier events have certainly occurred. Even Hamilton Burger won at least once.

Read the full article here.

Political Notebook

By Don Davis

July 15, 2009 (Park Rapids Enterprise) -- President Barack Obama is finding his Portuguese water dog, named Bo, is a better pal than Blue Dogs.

The fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, Democratic U.S. representatives who do not follow the party line on many money votes, opposed Obama more than House Democrats overall in the first half of 2009, a study by the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics blog shows. But it was just 5.4 percentage points less than overall Democratic votes.

Reps. Collin Peterson of western Minnesota, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota are among the Blue Dogs, a 52-member organization that Peterson helped start.

Sandlin sides with Obama just 73 percent of the time, while Peterson agreed with Obama on 81 percent of votes. Pomeroy was much more friendly with the new president, voting with him 92 percent of the time.

Read the full article here.

Smart Politics analyzes Twittering lawmaker's tweets

By Casey Selix

July 15, 2009 (MinnPost) -- Between all the interest in the 2010 governor’s race and the health reform debate, these just aren’t the lazy, hazy days of summer in Minnesota.

Eric Ostermeier, a Ph.D. who writes the Smart Politics blog for the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, certainly isn’t frittering his time away. He has published a content analysis of 307 tweets from a potential gubernatorial candidate, state Rep. Laura Brod, R-New Prague.

According to Ostermeier’s thorough examination of her Twitter account, "Brod spent a plurality of her time on Twitter discussing substantive policy issues (as substantive as one can get, that is, in 140 characters or less), with 142 of her 307 tweets falling into this category (46.3 percent)."

You may recall the ethics complaint filed against state Rep. Paul Gardner when he tweeted about state Rep. Tom Emmer, another Republican gubernatorial candidate, and Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan. I wrote about the troubles in Twitter-land in June.

"But these are isolated examples," Ostermeier writes. "The bigger question is how are politicians choosing to use Twitter over the course of weeks and months? To what extent is Twitter used for overtly political purposes?"

Brod tweets about everything from her kids discovering raspberries in their backyard to taxes, the top topic among her tweets about policy issues. And she didn’t refrain from tweaking politicians, especially those of the Democratic variety, before Gardner got into trouble in May.

"On some occasions (20 tweets, 6.5 percent), Brod also chose to target specific politicians in her tweets. Many of these were jabs at DFL Majority Leader Tony Sertich," Ostermeier reports. Here’s one:

"Sweet.... Sertich is being a Page and handing out amendments.. I wonder if we can have a Page play Sertich! Thanks Tony! (April 27th)"

Read the full article here.

DFL lawmaker seeks bipartisan election reform in response to 2008 U.S. Senate recount

By Bill Salisbury

July 10, 2009 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- A key Minnesota Senate committee chairwoman will try to craft a bipartisan election reform bill that would correct flaws uncovered during the state's just-completed 2008 U.S. Senate election.

Sen. Ann Rest, a New Hope DFLer who chairs the committee that oversees election law, said Friday that she will meet with DFL and Republican legislators in coming months to draft legislation to make the voting process easier for voters and to help ensure that elections are fair and honest.

It wouldn't be major reform; it would just "get rid of some dust mites" in the system, Rest said after a panel discussion on the U.S. Senate recount at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute. Her plan would have the changes take effect before the 2010 elections.

Among other steps, Rest said, the legislation could streamline absentee ballot counting procedures across the state. Last year, election judges rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, more than 1,300 of them improperly. Those ballots were at the heart of the election trial between Sen. Al Franken and former Sen. Norm Coleman.

Rest said she hopes to draft the bill before the 2010 Legislature convenes Feb. 4 and pass it during the first month of the session.

The DFL-controlled Legislature passed a major election reform bill last year, but Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed it, largely because it lacked bipartisan support. GOP lawmakers opposed the legislation because it didn't include a provision they insisted on
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that would have required voters to show photo identification before voting.

The lead Republican on the House elections committee, Rep. Tom Emmer, of Delano, said during the panel discussion that he believes GOP lawmakers could support a bipartisan election bill that does not require photo IDs. But he said it would have to include other steps to protect the "integrity of the process."

Last year, Emmer said, about 17,000 more ballots were cast than there were registered Minnesota voters. He wants to clean up the voter registration lists to ensure, among other aspects, that dead people and felons aren't listed.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie defended the integrity of last year's election, saying that during the Senate trial, lawyers for Franken and Coleman "agreed with local election officials 99.99 percent of the time." Only 14 of the 2.9 million ballots cast last year were challenged during the trial, he said, noting that a Coleman attorney said his legal team "found not a whiff of fraud."

Nonetheless, Ritchie proposed a series of election law changes, including one that would have prevented one of Minnesota's U.S. Senate seats from sitting vacant during the Coleman-Franken trial. After an election recount, he called for granting a "provisional election certificate" to the canvassing board's declared winner. The loser still could challenge the result in court, he said, but judges would be under less intense public pressure to make a hasty ruling.

Ramsey County elections manager Joe Mansky suggested several other reforms, including allowing voters to learn online whether their absentee ballots had been accepted or rejected and permitting registered voters to certify their own absentee ballots, instead of requiring another voter's signature.

Read the full article here.

Coleman's future: Governor, or something more lucrative?

By Paul Demko

July 7, 2009 (The Minnesota Independent) -- When Norm Coleman gathered the media at his St. Paul residence last week to announce that he was conceding the U.S. Senate contest after a nearly eight-month post-election battle, he hit all the appropriate notes for appearing gracious in defeat. The Republican repeatedly congratulated his Democratic challenger, praised the integrity of the Minnesota Supreme Court and hailed Minnesotans as the smartest, most decent folks on the planet. It was a relaxed, even folksy display of Coleman's redoubtable political skills — a tone noticeably missing during the bitter fight with Al Franken.

At the close of the press conference, however, Coleman made perhaps his most illuminating comment. Pressed on his future political plans, he didn't duck the question as inappropriate for a day on which he was conceding a previous political contest. Rather, the former senator promised prompt news on that front.

"Sometime next week I presume I’ll be talking a little bit about what the future is," he said.

That teasing answer caught political observers off guard and has fueled speculation that Coleman may turn around and run for governor in 2010.

"I was shocked by it," says Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "He was using the announcement almost as a boomerang into the next campaign."

While some political prognosticators are highly skeptical that Coleman will wage a gubernatorial bid in 2010, the specter of another campaign raises an intriguing question: Is Norm Coleman still politically viable?

There's little doubt that he comes out of the battle with Franken as somewhat damaged goods. As far back as January both candidates registered approval ratings south of 40 percent — and it's doubtful the intervening six months have done anything to bolster public sentiment. Most Minnesotans would be happy not to see either of their mugs until ice-fishing season.

In addition, Coleman may have run out of chances to prove his political mettle in a statewide campaign. He’s now lost two of three such races, including a 1998 bid for governor. Even Coleman's 2002 Senate victory carries an asterisk, owing to the death of Paul Wellstone just 11 days before the election.

But few political observers count Coleman out of the contest. He's an unusually adroit politician who further endeared himself to the GOP base by taking the Senate contest all the way to the state's top court despite repeated calls for him to concede. In addition, with Tim Pawlenty opting not to seek a third term, the GOP gubernatorial field looks to be a wide-open affair with no obvious favorite. Even so, Coleman can't be considered a shoo-in for endorsement if he enters the fray.

"I think that he would be among the front-runners," says Greg Peppin, a GOP political consultant who is advising former House Speaker Steve Sviggum on a potential gubernatorial bid. "I think he would be in the top tier."

Peppin believes the taint from the ugly Senate fight will fade as the contest recedes from the headlines. "It was kind of a pox on both their houses, but I don't see that lasting for either of them," he says.

Coleman would easily have the widest name recognition among the current crop of contenders. He'd also bring a proven track record of raising revenue in what’s likely to be a very expensive race.

"The amount of money this guy raises is just stunning," says Jacobs. "This is a guy who has been in the big fights and knows how to put together a plan for a campaign and then stick to it."

Former Republican U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger agrees that the voting public won't continue to punish Coleman for taking the contest to the state's top court. But he believes Coleman will be hurt by a hallmark of his six years in Washington: fealty to the Bush administration.

"He will have to answer for appearing to be George Bush's man from Minnesota," says Durenberger, who supported Coleman in the 2008 campaign.

Coleman's plans, however, will likely be driven by more than simple political calculus. The Senate campaign revealed numerous indications that the Republican's vaunted fundraising ability doesn't extend to his personal bank account.

In January it was revealed that Coleman had refinanced his St. Paul residence 12 times over the last 14 years, most recently in 2007 for $775,000. In addition, Harper's Magazine reported that longtime Coleman patron Nasser Kazeminy had purchased suits for the then-senator at the Neiman Marcus store in Minneapolis. Finally a pair of lawsuits filed just days before the election alleged that Kazeminy attempted to funnel $100,000 to Coleman through a Minneapolis insurance firm. The businessman's purported reason for this political philanthropy: "Senators don't make shit."

Eyeing age 60, with two kids currently in college, it seems likely that Coleman might be seeking a post more financially rewarding than the governor's $180,000 salary.

"I'm not sure he can afford to be governor with his private debt load," says David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University. "He may actually need at this point to say, 'Gosh, I can't run for governor.' That could very well factor in to what he's going to do down the line."

Durenberger expresses similar misgivings about any future campaigns for Coleman. He believes the former senator would be better served by stepping away from public life.

"Does he have legs?" Durenberger asks of Coleman's political future. "Yes. I'd rather he trotted off into civilian life, but that's just a personal thing."

Read the full article here.

Franken Ready to be Sworn In

July 6, 2009 (Fox9) -- Minnesota finally gets a second senator on Tuesday as Al Franken will take his oath of office with Vice President Joe Biden at 11 a.m. Central time on the Senate floor.

Tuesday is exactly six months and a day after all the other new senators took their oaths.

Franken spent the Fourth of July weekend touring northern Minnesota on the Iron Range and says he's ready to get to work. He acknowledges that he'll need to work hard to represent all Minnesotans because of the extremely tight and long fought election he went through with Norm Coleman.
Franken has said he wants to follow in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton and Bill Bradley, two celebrities who won praise as senators by focusing and working hard, and not seeking publicity.

When asked whether humor would be a part of his senate career, Franken said, "it's part of me. I have to be true to myself, but my main focus and the focus of the campaign will be seriousness of purpose."

Franken will be sitting on the health committee, currently writing the big health care bill, and on the judiciary committee, which will conduct the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Political Analyst Larry Jacobs believes to succeed; Franken has to avoid the partisan, emotional talk that made his books and radio show so well known.

When Franken is sworn in as the 60th Democratic senator, he'll give Democrats a big enough majority to overcome Republican filibusters. But when he claimed victory last Tuesday, Franken was clear he's headed to Washington for more than a majority.

"I'm not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator," Franken said. "I'm going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota. That's how I'm going to do this job."

Read the full article and watch the clip here.

Coleman-Franken experts get a break

By Daniel Libit

July 2, 2009 (Politico) -- Norm Coleman has given his concession speech. Al Franken
is off to Washington. And summer break has finally come for Larry Jacobs, chairman of the political science department at the University of Minnesota, who achieved near omnipresence the last several months.

Since the rest of the country knew only so much about the great state of Minnesota, to say nothing of its state canvassing boards and its optical-scan voting machines, the job of putting it all into perspective has most often fallen to a troika of local university professors including Jacobs, Hamline University's David Schultz and Carleton College's Steven Schier.

Rarely does a university employee get this much airtime unless he has a whistle around his neck and a Nike Swoosh on his jacket.

Tuesday, the day the race finally ended, was the culmination of the professors' many months' worth of public predictions and explanations. And it concluded with quite a bang for each.

"It was like instantaneous combustion," says Jacobs. "What we talked about for months happened in hours."

"The most important things in all these calls was getting the college's name spelled right," says Schier. "It really doesn't matter if my name is spelled right. Because we are here in flyover country, to the extent you get national media interested in college, you want to make sure the presentation is correct."

The first phone call came to Jacobs from a reporter around 1 p.m. Central time, a heads-up that the state Supreme Court ruling on Coleman's legal challenge to the election results was about to come down. Jacobs, who had been in his basement working on a book project, quickly got online to brief himself before the inevitable flood of calls came in. And did they ever.

By nightfall, he had spent six continuous hours doing 15 interviews, and then did a few more — including one with POLITICO — Wednesday morning before heading out to Ocean City, N.J., for some much-needed beach time.

Schultz, meanwhile, stood outside Coleman's St. Paul house Tuesday, where the former senator delivered his concession remarks. There, the professor bounced from reporter to reporter, from television satellite truck to satellite truck, summing it all up.

In June, he had predicted that the state Supreme Court would hand down a 5-0 decision in favor of Franken and that it would come just before the July 4 weekend. Schultz has, in fact, been in fine form with his prognostications for much of the recount, making up for what he says was a string of bad calls he committed during the 2000 Florida recount.

"I have to sort of say I got dumb lucky on this on one level," Schultz told POLITICO.

Jacobs has been the go-to voice on the Minnesota political scene for the past seven election cycles, but nothing has compared to this. By this springtime, he was a local celebrity, what with all the appearances on local and national TV. Indeed, so synonymous has his name and face been with the Franken-Coleman saga, he was at one point confronted in a supermarket checkout line by a woman furious over how long the recount was taking — as if Jacobs was personally responsible for it.

Reporters have been asking him about Franken since the summer of 2007, when the former "Saturday Night Live" performer was emerging as the comedian candidate.

By last summer, a confluence of various factors had put the Land of 10,000 Lakes right in the center of the political pool. Not only was there this intriguing Senate race, but Minnesota also was the site where Barack Obama spoke after clinching the Democratic nomination last June. A few months later, it hosted the Republican National Convention and in between, the state's governor, Tim Pawlenty, was regularly bandied about as a possibility to join Sen. John McCain on the Republican ticket.

"There were a number of days where I would be on three of the networks, as well as public radio on the same day," Jacobs recalls. "It was just off the wall. And it wasn't like people were going out there looking for stories."

And then came Nov. 4, the irresolution of the election, and the start of an eight-month recount process that turned "three-judge panel" and "previously rejected absentee ballot" into common cable news colloquialisms.

In the immediate aftermath of Election Day, Jacobs described the flabbergasting experience from the perspective of a man who knew he would be counted on to explain this to myriad befuddled reporters.

"It was like being at the bottom of a mountain when a volcano goes off," he says. "You are trying to judge how ferocious it's going to be and how far lava flow is going to go."

Immediately, it was a sprint to the statue books, and for half a year, the arcane details of Minnesota election law have comprised the great all-consuming side project for each of the professors.

Says Schultz: "To simply say this displaced a lot of other stuff in life would be an understatement. Everything else you do kind of gets thrown out the window."

However, the professors found plenty of opportunities to engage this information, and the recount, in their classrooms.

"Let's be honest, a third of any class is there for reasons other than absorbing all wisdom I could impart," says Jacobs. "They are just looking to meet a requirement and get their card punched, but this was something like, 'Holy smokes, this professor, I just saw him on TV last night.' And I was just brutal in exploiting that."

So now what?

"I am going to the gym to work out," Schultz said on Wednesday. "That's what I need to do more of. I need to get in shape."

Schultz says he plans to work on a law review article with a student of his about the recount. Jacobs is pondering writing a book. Schier says he's just looking to take a "breather."

"There are certain words I plan not to Google as long as possible," he says. " 'Franken,' 'Coleman,' 'Minnesota Supreme Court,' and 'Minnesota recount.' My Google routines are definitely going to change dramatically."

Read the full article here.

Chiefs weigh alternatives to all-metro gang unit

By Randy Furst

July 2, 2009 (Minneapolis Star Tribune) -- With the Metro Gang Strike Force shut down indefinitely, its reputation shattered by investigations into its operations and revelations of questionable practices, Hennepin County law enforcement officials have been meeting privately to consider an alternative strategy to fight gangs in the county.

Sheriff Rich Stanek said in an interview that county law enforcement agencies might have only minimal involvement in an interim metrowide anti-gang unit that the Strike Force's oversight board is setting up, but he emphasized no decisions have been made.

"There is a feeling that the words 'gang unit' are suffering a credibility issue right now," said Stanek.

All the county's police chiefs have been invited to a July 30 meeting to discuss their needs.

Richfield Chief Barry Fritz said he has no idea whether the Strike Force will be reconstituted. He has volunteered one Richfield officer to be a part of the interim metro unit while Fritz meets to discuss a separate Hennepin County unit. "I want to keep my options open," he said.

Said Maple Grove Chief Mona Dohman: "We haven't drilled down to anything specific. It's more about how we can collaborate ... to provide necessary service to combat crime."

Brooklyn Center Chief Scott Bechtold said he thinks a county focus is best for his city. "Brooklyn Center is not going to join an interim [metro] unit," he said. "First of all, we were never asked, and, second, I would rather explore the possibilities of a Hennepin County collaboration because it addresses more of our needs in the immediate area. A lot of our nexus of crime problems is with Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park. ..."

Some officials are ambivalent about the Hennepin County initiative.

"They are certainly allowed to do it," said West St. Paul Police Chief Manila Shaver, chair of the Strike Force oversight board. "It seems a little disingenuous to me. I am not going to be finger-pointing or criticizing another administrator. ... I recognize these individuals are exploring different alternatives. It is something they need to do."

But he said he was committed to reconstituting the Strike Force because he believes it is the best way to combat gangs.

Dave Bellows, chief deputy with the Dakota County Sheriff's Office, said his county is between Hennepin and Ramsey counties, so a single unified anti-gang unit would be most appropriate for his needs.

The Strike Force, created in 1997, was the subject of a highly critical report by the state legislative auditor on May 20. That audit found that the force could not account for $18,126 of forfeited cash and a large number of seized vehicles.

That night Strike Force members were found shredding documents, and operations were suspended. An FBI investigation has begun, plus an inquiry by a panel appointed by state Public Safety Commissioner Michael Campion.

"The general area of metro governance has always been tricky," said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute. "You have a case where there is a need, but the Gang Strike Force has obliterated the confidence of elected officials in Minnesota. The Gang Strike Force has a sort of become radioactive. ..."

Stanek said Hennepin County Sheriff's Capt. Chris Omodt would remain head of the interim metro unit. But he said a possible alternative to deal with Hennepin gangs might be expanding both his department's violent offender task force and criminal information sharing and analysis unit, adding officers from suburban police departments. He said local chiefs want an investigative component, a "suppression" or street presence, and a strong intelligence aspect, to deal with crime analysis and trends. He said the chiefs want to focus on violent crime.

Mike Davis, Brooklyn Park chief, said Hennepin police chiefs are reviewing their needs and available assets. "We are not coming to this with a predetermined product in mind," he said. He said he'd been considering such issues long before the legislative auditor's report.

Read the full article here.

Will Norm Coleman run for governor?

By Eric Black

July 2, 2009 (MinnPost) -- Your humble ink-stained wretch can't provide a yes or no answer to the headline question. The answer may be unknowable at present, meaning Norm Coleman may have honestly not decided, at least not finally. The current conventional wisdom is that Coleman will run. And there certainly are good facts and arguments to support the proposition that Coleman will make a strong candidate if he does run and that his life story so far suggests that he will.

But I've been talking to some of my best sources, especially in Republican circles. They see and hear things the rest of us don't. And, based on what they tell me, I am increasingly convinced that when the answer is knowable (and some of them think it already is), the answer will be: No.

Of those Repub insiders who claimed to have a strong, clear impression, the impressions ranged only from, "No, he will not run, and he told me as much" to, "He doesn't seem to be thinking about it that seriously" to, "He is extremely, maybe 94 percent unlikely to run" for governor in 2010, but of course that leaves open the 6 percent possibility that Coleman will still decide to do so.

Safe position

The safe position is that Coleman hasn't ruled anything in or out, that, now that the Senate race is finally behind him, he will follow a serious, rational and potentially lengthy process of considering the race. In his gracious concession press conference Tuesday, when he said, "As to my future plans, that’s a subject for another day," it was the perfect tease for the next phase, closing no doors.

Republican analyst Tom Horner (of the Himle Horner public affairs/PR firm) was willing to go on the record (in an email) with what he is seeing and hearing:

"Norm Coleman is actively exploring the reception his candidacy would receive from the Republican faithful. So far, I believe he is hearing more positive than negative, in part based on the lack of excitement over other candidates.

"My guess, though, is that he will stay low profile, perhaps announcing that he will be talking/listening to Minnesotans how he can best serve the state, etc. He brings a lot of political assets, not least of which is a capacity to raise funds -- a quality that becomes hugely more important with the de facto death of publicly financed gubernatorial campaigns and the potential for Republicans to be facing a candidate like [Matt] Entenza or [Mark] Dayton.

"Coleman has demonstrated a remarkable resiliency -- who else has bounced back from as much as he has throughout his political career? Ultimately, though, it's a tough road ahead for him. The most conservative members of the party (otherwise known as 'convention delegates') never have been completely convinced of his position on social issues and they still are mad at last fall's bail-out vote.

"If there is a credible alternative at the convention, delegates will go there. And a primary will be tough, especially when Dems likely will have their own primary to tend to (which in 2010, probably will be the primary that independents focus on)."

Among those who have long believed that Coleman would go for guv is Minnesota's political superguru Larry Jacobs of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. Look at Coleman's adult life to date, says Jacobs, and he comes across as the classic professional politician. He's run for office pretty much every cycle that he could have done since he first ran (unsuccessfully) for mayor of St. Paul in 1989.

While there are a dozen or more Republicans thinking about the race for guv, Jacobs says that Coleman is the only one that combines:

* Statewide name recognition;
* A proven ability to fund-raise well into the millions of dollars, and to tap into an already existing statewide and national donor base;
* Strength as a candidate for Repub endorsement (he's been endorsed for statewide office three times -- no other candidate can come close to that record; the other biggest-name possible Repub candidate, former Congressman Jim Ramstad, is presumed to be a non-starter for endorsement because of his positions on key social issues);
* Strength as a potential candidate in a primary if it came to that;
* Significant experience at putting together statewide campaigns, and, although he is only one for three in statewide races, he has been competitive every time.

It's an impressive list. One exploratory-mode guv candidate told me that many of the lesser-known exploratory mode-ers would probably stop exploring if Coleman got in because he would suck up so much of the air and money and make the chance of success for a lesser-knowner seem remote.

Read the full article here.

Five at 8

By Bob Collins

July 1, 2009 (Bob Collins News Cut) -- 1) Eric Ostermeier, who writes the Smart Politics blog, does not disappoint as he puts a bow on the U.S. Senate race. He puts the margin of victory in historical context. But enough of then. What about now? Time looks at the five areas where Franken can make a difference in the Senate. Monica Davie, the New York Times political reporter, does one of those segments where the NY Times tries to be a radio station, but provides a little analysis, including some thoughts on Norm Coleman's future.

Read the full article here.

Larry Jacobs on New Balance of Power in Sen.

July 1, 2009 (WCCO) -- Mike Binkley talks with political analyst Dr. Larry Jacobs about the balance of power in the U.S. Senate with the addition of Al Franken.

Watch the clip here.

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