I’m so tired of these Coleman lawyer clowns trying to overturn the election. I apologize for not posting frequently but here’s the recap if you haven’t been paying attention for a couple weeks: it’s been day after day after day of Coleman throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks and it never does. Lately, there’s been more evidence of shenanigans being exposed.
You might remember that on Wednesday, the Coleman team was caught having withheld notes given to them in early January by Pamela Howell, a Republican election worker in Minneapolis.
If you want the day-to-day of what’s happening with the election contest, MinnPost, the Minnesota Independent and The UpTake have been doing great coverage. That said, following these sources I start feeling like I see the same headline every single day. It usually reads something close to “Coleman tried some other wacky thing and it was struck down yet again.” The Coleman legal team is proving over and over again that they do not have a case to overturn the certified results of how Minnesotans voted on election day.
Tyrone Yates is a State Representative from Ohio who just announced he’s running for the United States Senate in 2010. Faced with long odds and formidable opposition (the state’s Lt. Governor and Secretary of State have both already announced candidacies), Yates has decided to emulate Minnesota’s own Paul Wellstone:
Yates, who set up the committee on Wednesday, Feb. 25, said he wants to model his campaign after the successful effort that vaulted the late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota into the U.S. Senate.
Yates, 55, said he’d like to find an “old school bus that we can green up, weld a platform on the back, stick an American flag on it, put ‘Yates for the Senate’ on the side and ride across Ohio.”
Its too soon to say if Yates’ similarities to Wellstone extend beyond their shared affinity for green buses, but certainly something to keep an eye on.
Matt Entenza has announced 11 additions to his gubernatorial exporatory campaign. The new staffers include veterans of the Franken and Walz camps, but what might be even more interesting than the who is the how. Entenza made his announcement via a Facebook note - the first time I’ve heard of a candidate making a news announcement on the social networking site. This could be a sign that Entenza plans aggresive use of online organizing. We are still waiting, however, to read the former Minority Leader’s 25 things.
Entenza’s note is after the jump:
UPDATE: Just wanted to clarify that the 11 “additions” mentioned above include five paid staffers and six unpaid interns.
Norm Coleman, who called on Al Franken to concede in the days after the election so “the healing process can begin” is now angling for an electoral do over.
That’s right. Minnesota just suffered through the most contentious, expensive and divisive election in the history of the state, and now Norm wants to do it all over again. From an interview on Sirius Radio (via Ben Smith):
You know the St Paul Pioneer Press is…one of the second largest papers in the state, last week [they] said we’re never going to figure this out, just run it again. So you start hearing that. Ultimately the court has to make a determination, can they confirm, can they certify who got the most legally cast votes. I truly believe when all is said and done, we have the most legally cast votes. We had it election night, we had it when the recount began, we should have it when we go through this process, if the votes, you know [are counted with] equal application of the law.
But this certainly highlights our concerns in the process. I got to believe next time this happens folks are going to say…if you have something within a couple of say percentage – this is by the way was thousandths of a percent – but if you have something within a couple of hundred votes out of three million cast, probably the best thing to do next time is run it again in three weeks and put all this other stuff aside.
Some will note (correctly) that this is the last act of a desperate man. But, to borrow from Mel Brooks, I don’t care if its the first act of Henry V, this is a crazy idea.
Speaking at the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference will be Mike Huckabee (today at 1:30 pm ET), Mitt Romney (Friday), Mark Sanford (Friday), and Tim Pawlenty (Saturday). Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin aren’t attending.
CPAC is a very influential conservative group and its conference this weekend is, understandably, being billed as the first cattle call of the 2012 race. From my vantage point, however, the speeches will not be the weekend’s main attraction:
As it has in past years, CPAC will conduct a presidential-preference straw poll, and it will be unveiled at 4:30 pm on Saturday (right before Rush Limbaugh delivers the conference’s concluding remarks). But an important note of caution: The most recent CPAC straw poll winners were Romney (2008 and 2007) and George Allen (2006). Neither, of course, went on to win the GOP presidential nomination.
Still, it will be interesting to see how T-Paw fares. Remember, Pawlenty indicated to POLITICO this week that a re-election bid and a presidential campaign are mutually exclusive options for him, which means that every step he takes towards the national stage is a step away from the Governor’s Mansion.
I have to admit, Bobby Jindal is one Republican politician that I find intriguing. He’s got a compelling backstory and a pretty impressive record of accomplishment in Louisiana (though I think much of his policy is misguided, its impressive how much he’s gotten done in a short period of time). But after watching him on television tonight, I feel pretty comfortable predicting he’ll never be President.
To be fair, Jindal faced a tall order. He was following one of the powerful orators in recent American history and the basic message of his speech - that Obama and the Democrats are pessimists - was basically preempted by Obama’s optimism tonight.
Still, even giving him a large handicap, he was horrible. I’m not even talking about the content of the speech (which was pretty awful and politically tone deaf). His delivery, his speaking style and his inflection were all terrible. It reminded me of the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2008, given by Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Seen as a rising star in the naitonal Democratic Party, and a possible VP nominee for Obama, Sebelius’ terrible performance blunted the buzz and hype that was building around her political future.
Bobby Jindal may have a future in the Senate or even in the Cabinet, but he doesn’t have one in the Oval Office.
By the way. Sarah Palin is to Tina Fey as Bobby Jindal is to Kenneth the Page:
Obama mentioned the Mill City in his budget address tonight:
Because of this plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Health care professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.
There were a couple of interesting things that came of POLITICO’s interview of Tim Pawlenty. Here’s T-Paw’s response to a question about the recent demise of the MN GOP:
Well, I think it’s a mirror of what happened nationally. But Minnesota also has deep Democratic or liberal roots. It’s the land of Humphrey, Mondale, McCarthy, Wellstone. And it is a state that for almost all of its recent history was a pretty deep-blue state. It got a little purplish or competitive around 2002. But as the country has lurched back toward the Democrats, so has Minnesota. With the exception of [Indiana Gov.] Mitch Daniels, there isn’t a Republican governor between me and the Atlantic Ocean.
That last sentence is true only if you omit the Republican Governors of Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Hope Pawlenty wasn’t counting on the support of those gov’s in his Presidential bid! Speaking of a potential Pawlenty presidential bid, here’s what the Guv had to say on that subject:
Q: Has a presidential bid in 2012 crossed your mind?
A: I’m focused on 2009 in Minnesota, with a huge budget crisis and an economic crisis. So my energy is there. And once I get through that I’m going to next consider whether I’m going to run for reelection as governor of Minnesota in 2010 and I’m going to make that decision sometime this spring. I am not focused on, nor am I going to decide anything relative to 2012, anytime soon.
Q: If you run for reelection does that commit you to serving a full term?
A: I think it’d be a reasonable expectation for voters. I mean, if you’re going to run for reelection to one office you don’t want to turn around and start running for another one the next day.
I’m not sure there is any new ground in these answers, except that T-Paw seems to indicate that a re-election bid and a presidential campaign are mutually exclusive endeavors. In my mind, this further decreases the chances of a Pawlenty re-election campaign. I just don’t see T-Paw passing up a 2012 bid. Especially not when he’s meeting with “influential” national groups like Legacy. Pawlenty had a private audience with Legacy yesterday (as did suspected 2012 GOP contenders Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford).
Some have speculated that another stimulus might be passed if this one doesn’t reinvigorate the economy. If we do need to go down that route, I think there is a great option that will inject over $60 billion into the economy at minimal cost to the government:
I’ve got a simple, cost-free proposal for stimulating the economy: legalize gay marriage.
Forget your politics. Shelve your bigotry. Just listen to the numbers….
The average American wedding costs $20,000. The number of gay couples living together without the benefit of marriage is estimated at 3 million. Using those numbers, same-sex marriages could pump an estimated additional $60 billion in revenue into our ailing economy. That doesn’t even include money from the pre-wedding parties, honeymoons, or wedding registries.
MN House Speaker, and potential DFL gubernatorial candidate, Margaret Anderson Kelliher will be the guest of Keith Ellison tonight in the U.S. House chamber as Barack Obama addresses Congress for the first time. In other news, I am very jealous.
Messina, who is single, has also discovered a side benefit to working for the president. When he brought a date to a gala at Ford’s Theatre this month, Obama stopped by to chat.
“It turns out the president is a really good wingman,” Messina said. Obama, he said, “stopped by and said, ‘Messina, you look pretty good when you clean up.’ ”
Most of you have probably already heard about Michele Bachmann’s disastrous interview on KTLK the other day. For those that haven’t, the Washington Monthly has a nice overview here. I just want to draw attention to one particular lie Bachmann told in the interview, namely that the stimulus bill was a plot by Democratic lawmakers to funnel money to their districts at the expense of Republican represented districts. Well, Ollie Ox did the research and - unsurprisingly - Bachmann was wrong. Here is the congressional district breakdown of the job creation projections for Minnesota:
Congressional District 1 Minnesota 7,800
Congressional District 2 Minnesota 9,200
Congressional District 3 Minnesota 8,300
Congressional District 4 Minnesota 7,700
Congressional District 5 Minnesota 7,900
Congressional District 6 Minnesota 9,500
Congressional District 7 Minnesota 7,500
Congressional District 8 Minnesota 8,100
Notice two things about this chart: First, the top three districts in terms of jobs created are the 6th, the 2nd and the 3rd. Those districts also happen to be the only three districts in Minnesota represented by Republicans. If that weren’t enough, Bachmann’s own district stands to benefit the most from the stimulus bill!
Amy Klobuchar starts the 111th Congress as the 82nd most senior member of the United States Senate. That’s a big improvement from where she was as a freshman (98th) but she’s still got a long way to go. Nevertheless, her seniority was good enough to earn her the gavel in two subcommittees. Klobuchar will be Chair of the Children’s Health Subcommittee of the Environment and Public Works Committee as well as Chair of the Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion in the Senate Commerce Committee.
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