The Weekly Wrap 2-16
♣ The Republican Minority Leader of the Minnesota House, Kurt Daudt, will not get a free pass to endorsement this year:
Oak Grove Mayor Mark Korin said today that he has filed the campaign paperwork and will seek the GOP endorsement. Korin is serving his fourth year as mayor of Oak Grove and runs an engineering and manufacturing company in Ramsey.
Daudt represents House district 31A, just north of Anoka. District 31A sports an hPVI of R+15, so even if Daudt loses endorsement it’s exceedingly unlikely that a Democrat would be able to capitalize.
Why is Korin challenging Daudt?
I believe that there needs to be new communications skills, new background that allows for fresh new ideas and thought into what happens at the Capitol. I’m sick of our party being in the minority, and I think that there’s a lot of people that want new direction and want a voice that’s going to speak up for the silent majority and grassroots.
He says he wants fresh ideas and new communications skills, and then he says he is going to speak for the “silent majority”, which is perhaps the least fresh, and least new type of majority.
♣ Eric Black at Minnpost wrote an exhaustive two part series concerning the Minnesota Senate race, but more specifically concerning Republican challenger Mike McFadden. Part one talks about the Senate race itself. Part two talks about Mike McFadden in particular.
♣ One prominent Minnesota Republican money purse is not getting behind a McFadden candidacy yet. That would be Stanley Hubbard, who is instead backing Chris Dahlberg:
Republican mega-donor Stanley Hubbard is solidifying his support of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Chris Dahlberg.
On Thursday, Dahlberg’s campaign announced that Hubbard would chair the finance committee for the St. Louis County commissioner’s campaign.
♣ The articles regarding the state of relations within the DFL, specifically the state of relations between those DFLers from the Metro and those DFLers from the Iron Range, continues at a steady pace. The most recent piece coming from Politics in Minesota:
When Gov. Mark Dayton tapped his chief of staff, Tina Smith, as his running mate, the selection marked an unprecedented break from one of the DFL’s longstanding (if unwritten) political rules: ensuring that the top of the ticket includes someone from outstate Minnesota.
In fact, the DFL has rigidly adhered to the principle of regional balance in every election since 1974, when candidates for lieutenant governor and governor were first joined on the ballot.
It was probably inevitable, then, that the emergence of a so-called “all-Minneapolis ticket” — yes, that was the above-the-fold headline on The Mesabi Daily News — has prompted grumbling among outstate DFLers.
Beyond the “all-Minneapolis ticket” issue, and probably the much larger issue for Iron Rangers, is the issue of Polymet. Minnesota Representative Tom Anzelc confirms this in the article, basically saying that no one really cares who the Lt. Governor candidate is. I’m paraphrasing the Representative of course, but that’s the reality.
There’s no doubt that the issue of Polymet will be a flashpoint at the DFL convention this spring. At the 2012 convention, even before the recent Environmental Impact Statement had been released the issue of Polymet was a source of much dispute at an otherwise sleepy convention. And despite the fact that whatever resolution makes it or does not make it on the DFL platform will have almost no impact on the ultimate Polymet decision DFLers on both sides will still insist on having a big fight over the issue.
The best way for the DFL party handle this issue politically is for both sides to stand down at the convention and not have a big fight. But there’s almost no chance that will happen. Both sides want to have a big fight over this issue. And that’s what will happen.
It’s going to be at once a lot of fun to watch, and totally stupid at the same time. Yay Conventions!
♣ David Jarman over at DailyKos Elections created a map of the United States that shows, not how each county has voted from 1988 to 2012, but rather shows the change in how the counties have voted from 1988 to 2012. Looking at Minnesota you see, not surprisingly, that Hennepin and Ramsey counties have gotten bluer while the surrounding suburban-exurban counties have gotten redder.
What you also see, and may be related to the item above, St. Louis county has gotten a lot redder. It is no longer the liberal bastion that sent Jim Oberstar to congress for the better part of four decades.
I’ve embedded the map below:
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