Thanks to a dedicated reader of MNPublius we found out today that Jon Olson, former President of the Minneapolis Park Board filed for the 58A house seat against incumbent Joe Mullery. Olson briefly ran for the 5th Congressional District seat in 2006. Peggy Flanagan, a friend of MNPublius was running a spectacular campaign against Mullery until she dropped out a few weeks ago citing her mothers health. Mullery is one of the last vestiges of the old Minneapolis North side political/labor machine and will be incredibly hard to beat. While it seemed to this not particularly impartial observer that Peggy had what it took to beat Rep. Mullery, I don’t know if Commissioner Olson does. We’ll pay attention to this race in September.
And as of 4:30 6 candidates have filed for the US Senate seat on the Democratic side: Al Franken, Ole Savior, Dick Franson, Priscilla Lord Faris, Alve Erickson and Bob Larson. We’re waiting with baited breath to see if there are any surprises in the next half hour.
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Penguins (think “Opus”) and muskies await many things with baited breath.
The rest of us, hoping for an abatement of the continuing assaults
on the English language, do so with bated breath…
Very, very witty LimaBN.
Thanks for the awfully polite correction. Sean
“Mullery is one of the last vestiges of the old Minneapolis North side political/labor machine..”
Sean, if the political/labor machine is relegated to the North side of Minneapolis, can you tell me how you would describe the Democrat party in general? We await your enlightening comments with bated breath.
Sure Swiftee — I’ll tell you when you actually show up to something.
I don’t know if I would say the Flanagan campaign was “spectacular.” It certainly succeeded in blocking the DFL endorsement. It would have been spectacular had she won it. Still faced a tough primary with Mullery, who has the full $30K in the bank. Olson has his hands full. Does he truly want to serve in the legislature or is he just trying to make a point of some sort. While he may escape 2008, Mullery needs to think about a plan to bow out gracefully down the road.
Mullery is powerful at the Capitol when it comes to any legislation relating to the courts and the practice of law. The statutory short form power of attorney was his baby, though not his creation, and he won’t allow any changes to the magnificence of his edifice, regardless of how many practicing lawyers make useful and practical suggestions. The problem is, the other legislators defer to him, regarding this stuff as “Mullery’s area.”
He’s served, he’s been useful, it’s time to let others move forward - but he doesn’t have anyplace else to go. Minnesota’s own little Jesse Helms, without the overt and craven racism but with the insistence on prerogatives. Since he’s a DFLer, there’s no chance Pawlenty will appoint him to the bench. What else is he going to do?
Mullery will be hard to beat, Jon Olson is a nice enough guy, but he has his own baggage (and I would be willing to bet that in a close race it would come out). Olson’s public experience is the Mpls. Park Board, with a profile nearly as high as the Board of Estimates and Taxation. I would be willing to bet that Linda Higgins is behind all of this, she was vocal in her support for Peggy the Temp., and apparently has some problem with Mullery.
Mullery has pushed through a host of other legislation including strengthening sex offender registration and penalties. But LimaBS wants to call him “our own Jesse Helms”. Without offering evidence, that seems petty, stupid, and childish.
Senator Higgins did not endorse Peggy until after the endorsement convention. Peggy received her support, US Congressman Ellison’s support, RT Rybak’s support, many city council members and a large part of the community because she is an outstanding community organizer, public servant, candidate, and person. She also has an awful lot of people who consider her a personal friend.
As for the incumbent’s sex offender laws, what a joke. It’s so hard to pick on sex offenders, to toughen up laws against them. What an accomplishement!
It is widely known that bills go to the Public Safety committee to die. Some of those bills, admittedly, ought not to have come to a floor vote. However, comments about Mullery’s perrogatives and his heavy-handed tactics being similar to Helms are right on, if somewhat melodramatic. Mullery’s biggest fault is his unwillingness to respond to regular constituents calls and emails. He has repeatedly said that he is too busy “meeting with groups” to do regular constituent service, in spite of the fact that he has a staff to help him with just this.
He has also served on the House tax committee since 1996. This committee has been an abject failure during this period. The top income tax bracket, eliminated under Jesse Ventura, is the reason why the entire pawlenty administration has been plaugued with budget shortfalls. The house has increased highly regressive sales taxes every single year of his tenure. We live in north Minneapolis, his consituents, so regressive taxes hurt a lot. Worse yet has been the committee’s complacency in shifting the cost of government onto local property tax revenues, a solution to decreased state revenues which gives cities and counties the worst of both worlds.
They have to pass property tax levies, which hurt lower middle class folks the most - people who are either on their way out of the middle class due to retirement/fixed income living or comming into by way of first-time homeownership. They also fail to pass these levies frequently, leading to decreasing educational results, more expensive utilities and higher crime.
All that said, Olson is going to have a terrible time getting past Mullery in the primary. While I have a slightly higher opinion of the park board’s visibility than some posters, I also think much of that visibility has been negative - the Lowe’s siutuation recently, for example.
Olson hasn’t run for a while. This primary was going to be hard and expensive when Mullery was facing Flanagan. As far as I can tell, Olson doesn’t have the money or organization, and his opponent has already braced for a much harder impact. Olson hasn’t been to my house to ask me for my vote yet, which bodes badly for him - he needed to be on that last fall if he wanted a realistic chance to do this without spending twice as much as Mullery. I think that’s why nobody else hopped into this no-endorsement race.