MN DFL Senate ‘08 Review: Tarryl Clark

by Matt Martin | 17 Comments
January 30, 2007, 11:58 pm | Category: MN 2008: Senate and MN State Senate | Tags: , .

17 Responses to “MN DFL Senate ‘08 Review: Tarryl Clark”

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  • Charley
    January 31, 2007 at 1:42 pm

    I am going to ask for a different sort of coverage from you. I just don’t know this person. You say she is “ambitious, talented…” and that “visibility at the capitol certainly doesn’t hurt.” You talk about her potential relative appeal to party insiders or outsiders. But you don’t mention a single area of leadership or a single legislative interest she has had over the years.

    Haven’t we moved beyond the horse race? Couldn’t we get at least a tiny hint about the potential policy strengths or weaknesses (depending on our own priorities) of our candidates? Is she a road fanatic? Does she wear pink in peace marches? Does she believe that God has called America to invade countries around the world? Does she get her electricity from photovoltaics, just to do her part against global warming? Who is this person, beyond her title of state senator and the early speculation of ahead/behind, running/coy?

    Pardon me for getting testy, but can’t we please have a hint or two about issues?

  • Jon-David
    January 31, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Charley,

    I suggest checking here for an exhaustive list of Clark-related info.

    We appreciate your comments, but every post we make about candidates will not detail all their positions on all the issues everyone cares about.

    I think Matt’s post was some solid info and analysis on Clark as a potential cnadidate. If she were to get in the race, please know, we will certainly be discussing her positions on the issues as well.

    Thanks for reading! And never worry about getting testy, our readers keep us honest and tell us what they want, and we appreciate all the feedback that’s not in the form of abusive profanity or flaming bags on doorstep.

  • Dan
    January 31, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    Issues? Issues? When was the last time that issues really mattered? Unless you are on the far left or far right of the DFL party, any issue distinctions between candidates are not very meaningful. Beating Republican incumbents is not easy work. Let’s worry about winning and address issues afterwards.

  • Josh
    January 31, 2007 at 3:49 pm

    I’m a big fan of Tarryl Clark and I think she could have a big future. She’s smart and talented and anyone who doesn’t think she’s tough as hell hasn’t done politics up near St. Cloud before.

    Moving her into a leadership position was a great move for everyone. I love having her as the face of the Senate DFL.

    Personally, I would prefer he to chalenge Bachmann in the 6th; I think she’s the kind of candidate who could win and hold the seat. I’m not sure how she’d do state-wide at this point. But she certainly has the talent!

  • Fred Garvin
    January 31, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    /America says “Who?”
    //Not impressed with her work as associate chair
    ///St. Cloud, ‘nuff said…..

  • Charley
    January 31, 2007 at 4:35 pm

    Thanks for the response, Jon-David. Fair enough. So my understanding is that you are just alerting us to a name, just in case. If that name ever becomes a candidate, then we will all do a bang-up job in discovering their passions and policies, plus digging into whatever past experience they have, so we might judge their effectiveness in leading the nation toward their ideals. Good enough.

    My response to you, Dan, is somewhat different. Is it your position that it doesn’t make any difference what a candidate believes in, unless one is an extremist? Would you say that there is really no difference between Republicans and Democrats, or even between one candidate and another (except for the left or the right)? So I am wondering, if all candidates are identical, why we bother voting. Why don’t we just hold a lotttery, or name the physical characteristics we are looking for (e.g. tall, white, deep voice, plenty of hair, greying but not too much, big chin but not Jay Leno, etc.)? Selecting senators this way could be done automatically and would save the nation billions! That is, if it doesn’t really matter what their positions are and what leadership they bring to the job.

    In checking the links that Jon-David provided, here is what I’m getting so far. She straight (married, two kids), mainstream protestant a bit to the left (Episcopal, plus involvement with the Minnesota Council of Churches). In general, she leans a bit to the left, it seems. BA in sociology at Drake in Des Moines (which still reflects a bit of Iowa populism), M.Ed as counselor at Arizona, and went for her law degree at William Mitchell (which will be hosting the National Lawyers Guild dinner this year).

    Clark’s resume seems to reflect her passions with housing (Habitat for Humanity and the Housing Fund), legal help for poor people (Legal Services clerk) and expecially help for troubled youth; I was impressed with her work with the Children’s Defense Fund, but even more impressed with her work in Arizona with a group called Tumbleweed (which reminded me of the Bridge in Minneapolis, a shelter for runaway youth). Clark has only been in the MN Senate for a year and hasn’t authored much during that time…a couple of wonkish bills (including the one last week to put inflation calculations back into our budget process), plus one for early childhood funding.

    So far, that’s all I’ve got so far. She seems to qualify as a Democrat. Like Jon-David says, we may be looking more closely as the campaigns heat up.

  • Dan
    January 31, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    Charley, you need to read my post a little more carefully. My point is that except on the extremes, there are not substantial differences between candidates IN THE DFL PARTY. There are huge differences been Democrats and Republicans, and in comparison the differences between Democrats is small. I don’t really care what, if any, differences Atkins or Clark or Franken have, because (I assume) they all have positions in the DFL mainstream. I just want someone who can beat Coleman and Bachman, who have radically different positions that all the DFLers.

  • Charley
    January 31, 2007 at 8:29 pm

    Dan,

    You might want to look a little closer. For example, most people assume that Amy Klobuchar was a peace candidate, especially running against a super conservative like Mark Kennedy. That would be a false assumption.

    Sen. Klobuchar is on record in quite a few places as being adamently opposed to stopping the war in Iraq by cutting off funding. Not only that, she is on record as believing that a nuclear attack on Iran should be “on the table.” Twice last June, once on the PBS program Almanac and once at the DFL convention in Rochester, she responded to an Iran question with that direct answer.

    Dan, the DFL is not a monolith. The are anti-choice DFLers, pro-war DFLers, anti-gay DFLers and so on. Please remember that Norm Coleman himself used to be a DFLer. Some of these folks will certainly end up working very hard against programs that you really believe in or working hard for programs you consider absollutely evil. Pardon my saying so, but we really need to start paying attention.

    Unless you really don’t think it matters, just so long as they have that big D after their name.

  • Matt
    January 31, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    Charley, I appreciate your comments and you are dead-on in distilling what Jon-David is getting at. For better or worse, we’re just trying to put blips on the radar right now because we’re not sure who will actually run or not. If they do run, rest assured that more will follow.

  • Dan
    February 1, 2007 at 9:20 am

    Charley,

    I don’t know what exactly you mean by a “peace” candidate, other than that was the distinction that jerkoff Ford Bell tried to make. Klobuchar would have opposed the war and opposes the surge. Beyond that, I don’t care. I am 100 percent happy with Amy Klobuchar. If Klobuchar was the result of not paying attention, then I’ll keep on not paying attention.

    I reallize there are anti-choice and anti-gay DFLers, and those would fall under my “extreme” category. Other than the pro-life and anti-gay outliers, and the truly pro-war Democrats like Joe Lieberman, it really doesn’t matter. On the other side, dishonest sleazebags like Ford Bell would also be “extreme.” As long as our candidate is not in one of these “extreme” categories, the issues don’t matter. Getting them elected does.

  • KEK
    February 1, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    Charley,

    Amy Klobachar is no longer a candiate, she is a US Senator. You did your best to derail her campaign. And you lost. She went on to win by a historic margin.

    Your tone makes you sound like you think you are a martyr on a quixotic mission for the “peace” cause. Why do I get the sense that you think you reflect the mainstream of the DFL party? If there are indeed more moderate perspectives in the DFL, where do you get off righteously assuming that you reflect the common denominator, consensus opinion?

    Politics is more than just rhetoric. If issue oriented conversation was all it took to win, than the collective genius of School of the Americas protesters, Wedge Coop members and Joan of Ark parishioners would have led us to the promised land a long time ago.

    Winning elections takes a lot of hard work. Your admitted disdain for things such as “reminder calls,” and your evident interest in list serves and blog comments, tell me that you’d rather comment on politics than take the actions needed to make change.

  • Charley
    February 1, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    KEK,

    No, I certainly don’t think that I’m a martyr. I own a very nice house, have a secure and steady job that provides huge satisfaction most days, and I have a wife more amazing than I could ever deserve. I am quite proud of my grown children and I have a clean conscience in the volunteer work I do. I am certainly NOT a martyr.

    The martyrs and victims are the war dead or their families. They are the folks in the market who died with a bomb went off or when their their town got leveled during an invasion. It is the deformed kids born when their parents got exposed to depleted uranium and the ones dying a slow death from lack of clean water. And, yes, it most certainly would include the patriotic soldiers and marines who volunteered to protect their country, but ended up stuck in an ill-conceived and horribly executed war of aggression. Those brave people are the ones who will have to live with the PTSD nightmares or without the limbs for the rest of their lives.

    No, I’m not the martyr. I’m not the victim of war here. Just like you, I’m living fat and happy in the land of the (usually) free and the home of the (poorly led) brave.

    Is it mainstream to believe, as I do, that the troops should be pulled out immediately. According to the polls I read, it apparently is now. Go figure.

    But Democrats do have a problem. Bush is the only one who can directly order the troops back home. Except that it is Congress that holds the purse-strings. So the words are completely hollow when Amy Klobuchar says she opposes the escalation, unless she is willing to withhold money for it. It is a total fraud to say she is against the war, unless she votes against the money to continue it, and votes instead to dedicate the money to bringing those poor folks home. It’s really time now.

    So now I have a question for you, KEK. How do you personally feel about spending two billion dollars of your money on this war instead of other stuff? Since it’s all going on my grandchildren’s credit card, it doesn’t really qualify either one of us as victims of war, but how do you feel about it? Are you really fine with that?

    By the way, I think you are confusing me with someone else when you claim I have a distain for reminder phone calls. I have done quite a lot MORE than my share of door-knocks and phone-banking for the candidates I support. I just won’t do it for a candidate I mistrust, no matter what letter they put after their name.

  • Charley
    February 1, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    I had intended to say two billion dollars a week. The total, of course, is much larger. When Congress makes its next generous gift to Parsons and KRB, we will be up to a half TRILLION in direct costs since 2003.

  • tom
    February 1, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    With one whole year in the state senate I wish that she had run for Senate in 2006, that would have given her the chops to run for President in 2008…

  • KEK
    February 2, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    Sorry Charlie, I was only paraphrasing your own words: “…I don’t do too well in running an organization, so don’t ask me to make those reminder calls about the next meeting.”

    From here: http://www.mnblue.com/user/25

  • Charley
    February 3, 2007 at 6:27 pm

    Perhaps that wasn’t entirely clear. It is true that I am not the best at running an organization. I am more of a social butterfly in the peace movement, and I am really good at that.

    So we all have strengths and weaknesses. I take my strengths of making friends in a number of organizations, and I put out an email calendar of peace events around the Twin Cities. If you are interested, you can ask me for a copy or to be subscribed at peacecalendar@visi.com

    And, like others, I tend to compensate for my weaknesses. What I do on phone calling is have somebody else organize me. They give me the list, the schedule, the phone, and I actually produce voters by the hundreds. I’m disorganized, but sometimes persuasive.

    So I’m human, with my own collection of strengths and weaknesses. But please don’t think that I just sit in some basement blogging. People might call me disorganized and sometimes unfocused, but I don’t believe that I have ever been called lazy.

    Enough about me, though. What about you? Did you notice that I asked you a question: are you OK with spending a couple billion dollars a week on war, as opposed to spending it on anything else? Are you OK with the debt (to China) on your grandchildren’s credit card? Are you OK with how it’s going and about the direction our civilization is heading? Are you OK with Amy Klobuchar voting for every single special occupation appropriation that comes her way, and probably voting to authorize war in Iran as well? Are you OK with the one to two trillion dollars this war will eventually cost, by the time we pay for all the PTSD and disability payments? What’s your take on this situation, or would you just rather not think about it?

  • Eva Young
    February 3, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    Tarryl Clark doesn’t have talk show baggage. Al Franken does - and he does have that baggage of his joke about the murder of a gay man (has this blog ever commented about that joke - and whether you found it humorous).

    I’ve been hearing her name quite a bit as a house candidate against Bachmann.

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