A very good source at the Capitol tells us that MN GOP Deputy Chair Dorothy Fleming (who apparently uses the moniker “Deputy Dot”) made an appearance out at the Cottonwood County Republican Convention (Cottonwood County makes up just over a third of Override Sixer Rod Hamilton’s district). Fleming’s appearance will remind some of MN GOP Chair Ron Carey’s visit to Kathy Tingelstad’s endorsing convention, but there is one very notable difference. Carey lives in Tingelstad’s district, Fleming does not live in Hamilton’s. In fact, according to her website, Fleming lives in St. Anthony. Per Google Maps, its over a three hour drive from St. Anthony to Cottonwood County.
Deputy Chair Fleming went all the way out to Cottonwood County to express her deep opposition to the endorsement of Rod Hamilton for another term. But according to my source, the activists in the room didn’t take too kindly to the State Party sticking their nose into this particular issue. Apparently, Fleming was booed and heckled during her speech. In fact, she was “all but booed from the stage.”
One Republican who was in the room said “If there is any Republican who should be worried about his job, its Ron Carey, not Rod Hamilton,” a reference to the MN GOP Chair’s decision to endorse Mike Huckabee before precinct caucuses.
One more example of the Republican Leadership being out of step with the average Republican, let alone the average Minnesotan.
Interesting post. I have a more general comment though on how Republicans are spinning everything, from this transportation bill to education funding. I recently read Marty Sieferts’ editorial in the Winona Post on the transportation bill. For Republicans, like Siefert, it’s always outstate MN versus urban Twin Cities: we shouldn’t fund transportation and education because the Twin Cities will get more than we do. Are there clear cut talking points out there that refute this angle? Here’s some of Siefert’s stuff: “The nearly $7 billion tax and fee hikes center heavily on Twin Cities transit needs at the expense of rural MN roads and bridges” , “He (Drazkowski) recognized that the bill prioritized Metro Area transit over rural roads, at a significant cost to Greater Minnesota taxpayers.” “..(Transp. bill will be) costing the average rural MN family $300 to $500 annually”. I’m happy to wager that Siefert is wrong on every account, but why doesn’t a MN state dem staffer put out some talking points on this? This seems to be the main argument Republicans are using, we didn’t get our fair share.
Whenever did the Republicans in this state become mostly NeoCons?
These are not Arne Carlson style Republicans by any stretch.
When did they throw out the public good completely?
Punishing anyone who works to their conscience, like the 8 removed from leadership positions for voting for the transportation bill.
WHO declared this New World ORder????????
———————-
Amy Klobuchar -
At SD42 Caucus this weekend - mentioned the number of congressional filibusters by Republicans…
Was the number - 79???
On MPR this AM - they did a piece on Coleman’s campaign.
They replayed a Bush soundbite from 2001:
“I think its imporant for you to know, whenNorm calls, I’ll pick up the phone.”
The disaster that is Bush, only takes SOME calls. And won’t BE there to answer calls from sycophants any more in 2009!!!!
In response to Bobbi’s first note, the first issue with Marti’s assertion about transportation, is that here in St Paul everyone is paying a thousands in property taxes, a huge chunk of that goes for road maintainence of local streets: resurfacing, sweeping and plowing.
So the state share of city streets, are the state roads that outstaters use to come in to the cities for shopping and events. And we let them use local roads for free. Also a huge chunk of transportation funding comes from matching funds in federal money. I agree that it would be nice to have a good analysis.
I look forward to lower property taxes now that the Democrats have raised all these other taxes I’m paying.
If you think your local property taxes will go down one dollar because of this massive tax increase, I’ll be glad to sell you my stockpile of magic beans.
I got two questins.
1. What’s property taxes?
2. Can I get some catsup with them beans?
What Seifert doesn’t mention is that the trunk highway funding formula favors the rural areas over the urban areas. The Twin Cities metro area has 60% of the population, but gets 25% of the trunk highway funding. This is nuts. And it’s totally irritating that the Minneapolis DFL legislators aren’t agressively trying to change this.
According to Session Weekly of 22 Feb 2008, 9 percent of the road miles in
MN are part of the state trunk highway system.
One percent are in the Metro area.
27 percent of the traffic uses the 1 percent of the trunk.
59 percent is the state road miles traveled on trunk highways.
And now I’d like to know how former commissioner Molnau would have set the funding priorities for spending transportation money on the stretch of Hwy 60 where three people were killed in Rod Hamilton’s district since August 2007, or on the roads in between the GOP National convention site and the convention hotels.
And that, my metro friends, is why Deputy Dot got booed in Cottonwood County, after she invested over six hours and a $50 tank of gas to commute practically to Iowa to impress her leadership upon the good people of SD22B.
I hope she blew a couple of tires on the way home to Saint Anthony.
Yeah, Ron Carey should be worried about his job security, and so should Minority Leader Seifert. People want to be represented by someone that has their best interests as serving the greater good, not loyalty to a party.
Just an observation:
If people gave UP their yards -
to live in concentrated high rises near the center of the city, instead of a Republican out-migration to the exurbs…
and stopping traveling to Duluth & other points outstate, to use the state’s resources…
Then there would be fewer roads needed. All could be spent on roads that will impress the party hacks coming for their convention.
Is there a cash incentive for the new 35w bridge, if they can have the ribbon cutting during the convention??
C’mon conservatives. Sacrifice!
In Mockingbird’s world, you don’t get to choose where you live or where you go.
Why is it up to conservatives to sacrifice and not liberals? Why not give up making government bigger and bigger and socially engineering how we live?
Why is it so easy to ask someone else to give up their standard of living? The sense of entitlement and lack of personal accountability in today’s environment is a big part of our problem.
And if we made our own TV sets, clothes, toys and pots and pans, we would not need roads from port cities like Duluth to population centers like Minneapolis / Saint Paul.
But no, we’ve given up much of our manufacturing base because foreign-made goods are cheaper per unit, even with the transportation costs added on.
And now we’re too cheap to want to pay for the transportation network and infrastructure that connects us to the global marketplace.