Politics in Minnesota: The Weekly Report, Vol. 4, Issue 5 - 7/28/2008
Congratulations, Steve Sviggum
The former GOP speaker of the House, now Commissioner of the Department Labor & Industry, Steve Sviggum received the nation's top legislative honor: The 2008 Excellence in State Legislative Leadership Award. The award honors two legislators each year "whose careers embody the highest principles of leadership and who have shown a commitment to protecting and strengthening the institution of the Legislature."
Your publisher, who attended the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in New Orleans, caught up with Sviggum in the Big Easy after he won the award. In typical Sviggum self-effacing fashion, the first thing he wanted to talk about was the fact that former DFL Sen. Roger Moe received the same award five years ago. "That speaks to the quality of people serving Minnesota," said Sviggum. He's right. That's rare for two top legislative leaders from one state to receive the award in such a short period of time. However, our readers know it also speaks to Moe and Sviggum, individually, and about a different time in our state's politics when legislative leaders from different political parties were each other's biggest fan clubs.
At the podium after receiving the award, Sviggum talked mostly about balance, repeating his mantra about living life and "governing to the balance." Besides serving in the Pawlenty Administration, Sviggum is also a senior fellow at the HHH Institute of Public Affairs. He'll be teaching a class that he wanted to title, "From John Adams to Jesse Ventura and Property Tax Reform to Medical Marijuana." [Sviggum surprised many when he became a staunch advocate for the use of marijuana for medical purposes legislation.] The school rejected that title, but it is surely fitting for Sviggum's career, in which he evolved from a rote, staunch conservative to a conservative progressive pragmatist.
Your publisher, long a huge fan of Sviggum's, will always maintain that he is singularly responsible for the Republicans achieving the House Majority in the 1998 election. That victory was the result of years of work in the trenches all over the state. And, his tenure as Speaker...was about governing to the balance.
Notes From NCSL
- The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) annual meeting is still a raucous affair for most state delegations, especially in a party town like New Orleans. Not so for Minnesota legislators. The 1993 NCSL meeting in San Diego resulted in a barrage of bad local media coverage in Minnesota, including video of then-DFL House Speaker Dee Long taking a bad golf swing in the California sunshine instead of attending NCSL seminars. [Hey, even Long admits it was a bad swing!] More from PIM on the San Diego fiasco is here.
- Speaking of media coverage, what a difference the last few decades make. Your publisher can recall hundreds of reporters and cameras at NCSL meetings in the early 1990s. Even as late as 2005 (Seattle), there were at least 100 reporters. This year, over several days, there were never more than six reporters sitting in the vast empty space that was the media room.
- Here's the list of legislators who were registered to attend this year's meeting (caveat: Your publisher ran into most, but not all, legislators on this list, so who actually made the trip is unclear): House Speaker Rep. Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL-Minneapolis) and Reps. Joe Atkins (DFL-Inver Grove Heights), Lyndon Carlson (DFL-Crystal), Kent Eken (DFL-Twin Valley), Al Juhnke (DFL-Willmar), Dennis Ozment (R-Rosemount) and Kathy Tingelstad (R-Andover); and, Sens. Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis), Michael Jungbauer (R-East Bethel), Mee Moua (DFL-St. Paul), Ann Rest (DFL-New Hope) and David Tomassoni (DFL-Chisholm). About half a dozen Minnesota House and Senate staff were also registered.
- Several former legislators also attended. Former DFL Sen. Jane Krentz for the National Center for Educational Outcomes, and former GOP Sen. Mark Ourada, for the Center for Energy and Economic Development.
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Your publisher, busy other places, was unable to attend any of the working sessions of the meeting. One seminar, called, "How Did the Bridge Fall?" billed Senate Transportation Committee Chair Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing) as the chief speaker and Deborah Junod, Office the Minnesota Legislative Auditor, as a panelist. Not surprisingly, the nation's infrastructure was the dominant topic of conversation, given our bridge and the failed levees in New Orleans. The nation's legislators concluded that as far as transportation funding goes, Congress "is in the driver's seat with transportation policy," and that included a call to raise the federal gas tax.
- Also not surprisingly, the big news from the Big Easy was that more states are facing budget woes. More states reported gaps for FY 2009 than for FY 2008, with the cumulative total more than tripling from about $13 billion to more than $40 billion. Fifteen billion of that is California's budget deficit, which the state has yet to figure out how to deal with.
- Keynote speakers were NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and PA Gov. Edward Rendell, who are co-chairs along with CA Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of Building America's Future Coalition. They asked state lawmakers to support their effort to address the urgent need for some $1.6 trillion over a five year period to reverse the deterioration of America's roads. The Star Tribune summarizes the proposal here.
- The best press release from the conference was from the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR). "George Washington did it, so did Ben Franklin. Even John Quincy Adams conducted a press interview while doing it. Skinny dip, that is. One of the liberties [the AANR] members enjoy, promote and promote. The AANR ran an exhibitor booth in New Orleans "to provide assistance as the credible voice of reason on pending or proposed legislation relating to issues involving nude recreation in appropriate settings." Too bad there aren't any nude beach wars in Minnesota...there's an issue we'd have fun watching.
- Speaking of exhibitors' booths, the only Minnesota company to have a major presence at NCSL this year was Wells Fargo. Climbing into The Wells Fargo Wagon proved to be a popular photo op, as always. Other Minnesota companies did, however, send representatives. Those registered included Best Buy, Cargill and West Thompson.
The PIM staff has completed our 2008 Minnesota House Races index, and we've reviewed the good, the bad and the ugly campaign websites.
The bad, the ugly and the funky:
- Tim Hafvenstein, GOP challenger to 8A's Rep. Bill Hilty (DFL-Finlayson), has a virtually unmodified Microsoft Frontpage template (hafvensteincampaign.com). Besides the title, it's totally unchanged, no contact info or anything.
- In 9A, Rep. Morrie Lanning's (R-Moorhead) site (morrielanning.com) is decidedly straight out of 1996. It's not glitchy, but it looks out of date, and hasn't been updated since March. (The contrast is with his opponent, below.)
- Mike LaMieur, Rep. Al Doty's (DFL-Royalton) challenger in 12B, has a site (mikelemieur.com) with a decidedly funky look, and unlike many, dares to feature a photo of President George W. Bush, who is rarely spotted on GOP campaign sites these days. LaMieur also needs to create lower-resolution photos of himself in the middle: currently they slowly load as giant, forcibly resized JPEGs.
- Independent candidate Daniel Sweeney, challenging Rep. Rob Eastlund (R-Isanti) in 17A, has a lot of typos to clean up (ivotemn.net), though his interesting proposal to let his constituents directly control his votes deserves some notice.
- Dr. Dave Detert, Rep. Dean Urdahl's (R-Grove City) DFL challenger in 18B, (detertfor18b.homestead.com) has a very old look to it, and also needs to add HTML title attributes to the pages. The content is substantive, but it looks strange (a 1990s style rotating email link, for example) and clicking around the site opens new windows each time, which is not needed.
- Jim Bakula, Rep. Bruce Anderson's (R-Buffalo Twp.) DFL challenger in 19A, has a pretty average setup, (jimbakula.com) but the menu across the top does not work. We really like his central photo rolling through a parade on a campaign Segway! "Time to move in a new direction," indeed! Anderson, on the other hand, has no website whatsoever. (The PiPress' Rachel Stassen-Berger noted that Anderson registered his official House email address as his campaign email address, which might be a campaign violation if it's used to solicit contributions, etc.)
- Sharon Anderson, one of Rep. Erin Murphy's (DFL-St. Paul) GOP opponents, (sharon4council.blogspot.com) has the quintessential weird blogspot setup: lots of strangely styled posts, mysterious legal briefs, and a funky fantasy painting at the very bottom. There's barely a trace of her House campaign.
- Mike Bidwell, Rep. Terry Morrow's (St. Peter) challenger in 23A, (bidwell4house.com) has a basically blank site.
- Rep. Kathy Brynaert's (DFL-Mankato) site for 23B has some kind of line-wrapping problem (hickorytech.net/~mnflipnb), probably because of missing closing HTML tags. This is a great example of where Firebug or the Web Developer toolbar can troubleshoot layout problems (see below).
- Tim Rud, challenging Rep. David Bly (DFL-Northfield) in 25B, (timrud.com) looks like a default template.
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Mark Altenberg, Lanning's DFL challenger, (markaltenburg.com) has a good, clean design which features a Facebook group, a YouTube channel and Flickr photostream. Each of those is easy to set up and provides channels for candidates to reach potential voters with minimal work. It prominently features a YouTube clip of Altenburg's campaign kick-off.
- David Allan Pundt in 12A, Rep. John Ward's (DFL-Brainerd) GOP challenger, (davidallanpundt.com) has an excellent design, with an event calendar and a cool Flash-based Polaroid slideshow featuring parades, meeting with U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), the family, etc. He also has a blogspot account that has been updated regularly during July.
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Rep. Bly is well-known for his long-running blogging efforts (davidbly.com), as was his predecessor and frequent electoral opponent, Ray Cox (raycox.net). The two were the first to have a bona fide who-can-out-blog-whom contest.
Without the right tools, Web development is a hit-or-miss, trial-and-error affair. Make a tweak, save, upload, see if it worked. Then, of course, it might render differently in different browsers.
Here are our free must-have tools for successful Web tweaks: Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 is now out, and it's quick and reliable. There are many add on extensions for developers, but two of them are crucial. The Web Developer toolbar creates twelve drop-down menus that control all aspects of Web display. Our favorite feature draws boxes to show the otherwise invisible layout elements on the page, eliminating a colossal amount of guesswork. It also can validate the code, analyze forms, cookies, images, and help manage a myriad of other small items that are a pain to determine manually.
Firebug creates a panel that lets you, the harried part-time developer, make live tweaks to the style sheets and HTML, so you can see right away what each change does. (The changes are only made within Firefox's representation of the site, not the real site itself, so your experiments won't affect what the public sees.) It also helps debug JavaScript problems, tells you if individual files are loading slowly and shows syntax errors in code.
To see how various browsers and operating systems display your site differently (always a bane), this article at Smashing Magazine has many tips. The free IE NetRenderer shows several versions of Internet Explorer at once. BrowserShots.org shows a ton of different browsers, but you have to wait for a few minutes unless you pay a few bucks. Litmus is an advanced tool that also shows how different email clients present emails. BrowserCam.com is a fancy pay service with some extra features, much like BrowserPool. We're most impressed with the ease of the free BrowserShots. 8th Congressional District Staff
We wrap up our tour of who's who in staffing Minnesota's Congressional campaigns by exploring the 8th. Represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar (MN-8) since 1975, there hasn't been much by way of political drama in the 8th; Oberstar has only scored under 60% of the vote once since 1980 (1992, when he garnered 59%). Oberstar has been in office for 17 consecutive terms, making him Minnesota's most senior representative (and, by the way, the longest serving Congressman in Minnesota's history). The area, dominated by agriculture, mining and shipping, has been represented by a Democrat since U.S. Rep. John Blatnik (MN-8) won the seat in 1946. This cycle pits Oberstar against political newcomer and small business owner Michael Cummins.
Blake Chaffee has always admired Oberstar, noting, "growing up in the 8th you know who Jim Oberstar is." It was while attending the University of Minnesota-Duluth that is the acting campaign manager for the Oberstar campaign. Having grown up in the district, ChafeeChaffee developed an interest in politics. After college, he went to work for his father who owned a small construction business. The political bug bit him shortly after that, and in 2006 he ran for the DFL endorsement against Rep. Tony Lourey (DFL-Kerrick). Although he lost, the experience gave him many contacts throughout the district. He was eventually hired to do field work for Oberstar's '06 run against GOPer Rod Grams. [In 2007, Oberstar's campaign manager, Don Ness, left to pursue his own political career (running for and winning the office of Mayor of Duluth).] Chaffee was offered the position and jumped at the chance.
"Election season gives Jim a chance to talk about his record and his vision for the future of Minnesota," Chaffee said, continuing, "he really enjoys old school retail politics." Oberstar has had some solid victories in past elections but the campaign and Chaffee "are not taking anything for granted." The summer's campaigning will be like that of past years: getting out in the district and having Jim talk about his record. Blake was amazed with the response Jim got when he first stared working for him. "People would just come out of the crowd (at various parades throughout the district) and shake his hand. People on the Iron Range feel a really strong connection to Jim," he said.
Conscious of the import of the 2008 election, Chaffee has been in contact with both the Al Franken for Senate Campaign and with Jeff Blodgett, who is running the Minnesota Obama Campaign. Although a cooperative campaign plan is still in development, he is looking forward to campaigning with Al, and hoping U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will make it to the 8th.
With strong financial support nearly $290,000 raised this last quarter and $1.46 million raised to-date, Chaffee is confident with the direction of the campaign. The paid staff is small, only three, but many of the DFL activists in the 8th are motivated and willing—"on a good day 20-25 people come through our Duluth office to volunteer," Chaffee said. Also, the state party has been lending staff support.
Cummins, the Republican challenger is running for Congress because, "it seems like so much is happening in Washington with little regard for the American people." Recently he has been traveling the district talking with residents. Whether it is resort owners doing 40% of the business they did in the past or working families not being able to afford the high cost of gas and food, Cummins believes Washington is ignoring the 8th district.
His campaign is small (he is currently in the process of interviewing campaign managers) but it is a campaign Cummins sees as "mushrooming nicely." The state GOP is lending a hand and the Coleman campaign is "very excited," he said. His small staff is allowing him to be mobile. Instead of an actual office, Cummins wants to travel the district and "meet with the people where the people are." He sees this as a way of shedding the "Washington first attitude and getting back to basics in this country." The campaign is also new to the scene, but don't worry, Cummins assured PIM, "in the next week or so we will take Minnesota by storm."
Bits & Pieces
GOP U.S. Rep. John Kline's (MN-2) lead over DFL challenger Steve Sarvi may be slipping according to a few organizations. Congressional Quarterly recently changed its rating of Minnesota's 2nd Congressional race from "Safe Republican" to "Republican Favored." Also the more partisan Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has rated the race similarly, placing it on their list of top 20 "Emerging Races" meaning, if DFL challenger Sarvi can meet DCCC criteria, the national Democrats will get involved.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul Deputy Mayor Ann Mulholland, along with the RNC Host Committee, will launch the Spruce Up MSP campaign on July 28th. At 1 p.m. at the Xcel Energy Center they will announce the project to prepare the cities for the legion of politicians, delegates, and media soon to be descending. Spruce Up MSP will also unveil a special prize package for the Minnesota citizen with the most "Spruce Up Spirit."
Our diligent friends in House Research have loosed two new publications upon the web from their nerve center in the State Office Building. "Airline Mergers and Labor Integration Provisions Under Federal Law" [.pdf] and "Minors' Consent for Health Care" are available for download immediately. In addition, sticklers for Minnesota Constitutional law will appreciate two briefs on the guidelines for Special Legislation. A two-page summary and thirteen-page full brief are available now.
The Commission on Judicial Selection has announced two judicial vacancies for the First Judicial District trial court bench. The vacancy for the judgeship of the city of Le Center in LeSeur county comes because of the death of the Hon. Jean Davies in March, and the vacancy for the judgeship in the city of Shakopee in Scott County comes with the retirement of William Thuet in June. All licensed attorneys who are residents of the First Judicial District may request an application by contacting John Hultquist at 651-293-0019 or by email at john.hultquist@state.mn.us. Applications will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. August 12th.
When Finance and Commerce broke a major story this week exposing more acute financial woes at the Star Tribune, the Twin Cities media community took note. An interesting corollary story in F&C detailed the recent developments on the matter of the Strib's HQ's and its fate as it relates to the money problems at the paper. PIM ears perked up at this, as we wrote on the Strib's plans for its building back in March. Since last year, there have been murmurs that the Moderne HQ on Portland Avenue would go on the block. F&C answers a few of the questions we had about the deal in March; most importantly, the paper would stay in the building as a tenant of the new owner. Still an option for disgruntled Strib employees: Get the building designated as a historic place.
Could be the vibe at this RNC party will be half Herbert Hoover, half Caligula. PIM staff were shocked and appalled to learn that executives from the tottering Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (along with banker, realtor and home builder trade associations) will throw a lavish party for themselves dubbed "Building Stable Communities for America's Future" at the Graves 601 Hotel. The Politico exposed this tasteless plan just days after Capitol Hill began discussing how to bail out the barely solvent corporations, which, along with their debt-swamped friends up the avenue at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, systematically inflated a housing bubble of trillions of dollars. (Molly Priesmeyer added details about the chummy circular lobbying.)
Politics in Minnesota Blog Interview
By Peter Bartz-Gallagher
PIM is pleased to continue its blogger interview series with the collaborative MNPublius, which focuses on progressive issues in Minnesota.
Politics in Minnesota: Who is MNPublius? How'd the blog get started?
MNPublius: MNPublius.com is Sean Broom, Zack Stephenson, Aaron Landry and me, Matt Martin. I started the blog in 2005 while I was at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. Like the other guys, I have a very deep interest in Minnesota and, specifically, Minnesota politics. So, being out in Hanover was a fairly isolating experience as far as homegrown connections went. In response, I sat down, opened a blogger account, and launched MNPublius, dedicating it to a honest, if partisan, discussion of Minnesota politics. At first the readers consisted of, maybe, my mother—but slowly the readership grew as Zack joined and we gained local exposure through the news and other blogs. Today we enjoy a much larger audience but still identify ourselves as four guys who simply have a love for our home state and the politics that serve it.
PIM: MNPublius seems to have excelled as a group project. How do the differences in personalities, backgrounds or education of the writers enrich the final product?
MNP: Part of the fun of MNPublius' slow expansion was adding new personalities and meeting unique, but like-minded, individuals through the blog. We've always placed an emphasis on quality of writing, intelligence and humor but have eagerly embraced differing personalities because we feel that such diversity of style makes the blog more interesting to read on a daily basis. That being said, it is interesting how the blog does attract a fairly homogeneous collection of talent: All four of us are young white male Minnesotans with progressive viewpoints. And while the last two characteristics are consciously picked, we have been on the lookout for an interested writer who might shake-up the first three categories a bit.
PIM: A lot of readers consider you the premier DFL-oriented blog in Minnesota. Tell me about your strategy for being the best blog you can be. What do you add to the conversation of Minnesota politics?
MNP: That's a flattering suggestion, but I think there are a lot of great Minnesota blogs and frankly, we wouldn't be able to do what we do without them. We feed off the community of progressives that provide us with inspiration and information. Frankly, there's little doubt that our product would be of a lower caliber if it were not for outfits such as MN Campaign Report, MN Blue, Centrisity, or Aaron Brown, among others. Mostly, we just focus on providing honest, reasoned analysis of local political issues, ensuring a high quality of writing, and trying to have some fun along the way.
PIM: How do you balance coverage of Minnesota-specific issues with more general progressive or Democratic party items?
MNP: From the very beginning it has been our goal to provide the best coverage of Minnesota political topics that you can find online. This is for two reasons really: (1) because we are passionate about Minnesota and it's what we know best; and (2) there are thousands of other blogs that do a better job of covering more general progressive topics than we do but not all that many that focus on Minnesota. That being said, we're four young politicos in a Presidential election year, so avoiding national topics entirely is impossible.
PIM: The recent bipartisan happy hour - in cooperation with Minnesota Democrats Exposed - was an interesting experiment. Did you learn anything from that night about political writing in MN or about what fosters a healthy blogosphere?
MNP: I would like to say that co-hosting the bipartisan happy hour was a difficult decision for us because Michael Brodkorb stirs up so much controversy across the aisle, but it really wasn't. To me, reaching across the aisle, face-to-face, is incredibly important because it humanizes individuals that you may have never seen in the flesh before. In my experience those sort of interactions are crucial not just to remind each other that we're all Minnesotans in the end, but also simply to maintain sanity. If I allowed myself to mindlessly demonize operatives from the other party, I might lose it.
Still, it should be noticed and stressed that there is a fundamental difference between the bloggers in the Minnesota progressive community and Michael Brodkorb: this is essentially his job and for us it's just a hobby. That distinction often gets lost but it is an important one because Michael has a long and storied history as a Republican operative and paid consultant. Some of my friends rightly noted that the event blurred that line by pairing us, bloggers by hobby, with Michael, a GOP operative, and I understand how that is alarming. But in the end, I felt that exchanging the sabers for beers was more important.
PIM: What are your hopes for the future of your blog and for Minnesota?
MNP: I hope that someday I can quit! It's a bit like an addiction because I talk so much about politics in my daily life that moving those thoughts into writing and online is a natural progression. But as I am forced to focus a bit more on my personal life and future career, I have found that blogging is a challenging hobby to maintain. Still, it's an addiction that I have no plans of kicking any time soon!
As for Minnesota, it should never be forgotten that we live in an amazingly unique and storied location. I often tell the story of when I took a State Politics course in undergrad in New Hampshire and was surprised to find Minnesota a frequent focus of our text. The reason being that so often we are the shining example for the rest of the nation. I strongly believe that status is due in no small part to our history of progressive politics in this state and our collective passion for democracy. That tradition, however, is being eroded by the current Governor and the replacement of the local Republican brand with the national one. As this tradition of progressive politics has faded, so too has the list of our positive examples: we are falling in per capita income relative to the nation, our education system is quickly tumbling down in the rankings, our transportation system is cracking under the dual pressures of growth and veto-governance, the list goes on. So, it is my deep hope for the state of Minnesota that we return to our history and once again embrace the forward-thinking politics that made us a state on the hill for the rest of the nation. And if there's one thing I know about Minnesotans, we're up to the challenge.
Lobbyist Watch
From the Minnesota Campaign Finance & Public Disclosure Board:
Morning Reports
