On the other hand, I also found out that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was walking the picket line yesterday with the striking security workers. Just as Jack had earlier been in solidarity with the striking university clerical workers.

Minnesotans are not policy wonks who even know who runs the party… they’ll vote for Al once all those photos of Norman sucking face with Bush get out.

Cerisi’s only claim to the Senator position is he ran a large law office… and he has been a DFL stalwart. Note enough steak and no sizzle there.

Nelson-Pallmeyer is a stalwart DFLer with impeccable liberal credentials plus as a policy wonk really understands the issues. But up against Coleman he will be handed his head on a platter. Too much steak and not enough sizzle.

That leaves us with Al Franken, small warts and all. A smart presentable candidate that can hand Coleman his head on a platter in the general. A leader people can get behind with the right amount of both steak and sizzle. All the whining on this thread is trumped by the fact that Franken can win in the general.

But you want to talk about the meaning and power of the SEIU endorsement. Forgive me if I respond with an SEIU anecdote. Javier Morillo happened to be working the floor right near me during the 2006 Rochester convention. I kept wondering why he was wearing a Mike Hatch T-shirt, since I considered Hatch the most likely candidate to betray union principles, as well as Hatch being a pretty autocratic and angry fellow. During the ballots for governor, tremendous pressure was exerted by SEIU and the Carpenters Union to get solid backing for Hatch.

So how did that work out? Hatch got the endorsement, of course. Hatch got the nomination. But it seems that Tim Pawlenty is our governor. Mike Hatch lost it on the campaign trail by calling a reporter a whore. And within weeks of taking office, Hatch’s successor and protege had a scandal involving the appointment of her former boss as employee. Then there was a front-page set-to involving allegations that Lori Swanson was doing union-busting in her own office.

Mary, I am a union member myself, and I have been for every single year of my 40 years teaching, whenever I worked where there was a union to join. My union, Education Minnesota, has also made what I consider to be a very ill-considered endorsement of Al Franken.

Union endorsements could be a powerful and necessary balance to the corrupting power of money in our elections. But that’s not what’s happening right now. Unions seem to be following the same smarmy criteria as the most corrupt lobbyists: they merely sniff the wind to try to find a winner. When they endorse a candidate that is weak on the issues that affect their members, they betray those members. When they pick “winners” who lose, they just make themselves irrelevant. In my opinion, both SEIU and Education Minnesota members deserve better.

What I want to know: what do people think about this endorsement? SEIU invited all candidates to “walk a day” and all of the candidates did so no campaign can complain that the process ignored one candidate in favor of another. What do people think about the endorsement?

It appears that Franken reached his high water mark around caucus day and it’s all downhill now. At first glance I liked Franken, but the more I got to know him and his campaign the less affinity I had for them. I first volunteered for Franken and then applied for an internship. That got me a lot of unanswered e-mails and a two minute interview for the internship. From that experience I figured out that the Franken campaign doesn’t want me or anyone of my democraphic- old, queer, and gimped up. So I studied the candidates and found Ciresi more matches my beliefs, though Nelson-Pallmeyer is a close second.

Like me, many DFLers have had more time to look over Franken and found him wanting- why should we support a candidate that bashes gays, supports nuclear power, and supported the invasion of Iraq just because he calls himself a democrat?

On the first ballot at the State convention Franken will be down to his base and he’ll be lucky to get 40%. When either Ciresi or Nelson-Pallmeyer are dropped, their supporters will flock to the other. There’s a very strong “anyone but Franken” movement out there, and Franken’s only chance will be to hold on to 40% and block an endorsement. The Franken campaign has been running a primary campaign all along… For a reason.