Emmer made news early last week by announcing that he would file an amicus brief in the unallotment case with the Minnesota Supreme Court. Sadly, at least for Emmer, the Minnesota Supreme Court doesn’t accept briefs from just anyone and when the Court released the list of parties whose briefs they wanted to read on Thursday, Emmer hadn’t made the cut. I can’t say I blame them - I’ve been refusing to listen to Emmer for years. The court accepted briefs from the City of St. Paul, the City of Minneapolis, The Minnesota House, The League of Women Voters, Common Cause, The League of Minnesota Cities and a couple of law professors and gave no explanation for why they rejected Emmer’s brief.
Still, the slight is especially unfortunate considering that Emmer (who is an attorney by profession) has long been rumored to be interested in running for Attorney General. In fact, rumors that Emmer might switch to the AG race have been intensifying in recent weeks. But you have to ask yourself just how effective an Attorney General he would be considering he couldn’t even write a brief interesting enough to compete with the League of Women Voters.
It is February 1st and no Republican has filed for AG yet. Is this by design (Emmer to switch in April?) or are people that afraid of Lori Swanson?
Why didn’t you post the order you are referring to? Also, are you sure that’s an exhaustive list? Minnesota Appellate Rule says that a party seeking to file an amicus brief needs to file a request for leave to participate “no later than 15 days after … the appellate court order granting review.” Since the Supreme Court granted review of the case on the 19th, I don’t think the deadline has even passed yet. Also, the House is not listed, even though they announced their intention to file an amicus brief. Did they get turned down too?
As for the Emmer for AG rumors, I haven’t heard that from anyone who wasn’t a hard-core Seifert supporter. So take that with a grain of salt.
The Minnesota House was included. I just accidentally omitted them.
Oops, the Appellate Rule in the above post is 129.01. It can be found here: http://www.mncourts.gov/Documents/0/Public/Rules/Appellate_Rules_ — _eff_01-01-2010.pdf
It was a good move on Emmer’s part win or lose. While Marty spends money asking people to vote for him, Emmer has the news covering him for free.
Zach, I have been reliably informed that your story has now been proven false. The Supreme Court today granted leave for the Emmer group to file its amicus. As I suspected, their request had not even been filed with the Court yet when you jumped the gun with your story.