Tag Archive for 'R.T. Rybak'

Rybak Posts Impressive Number: $278K in 12 Weeks

by Matt Martin | 8 Comments

Mayor RT Rybak released his fundraising numbers today, which is a bit odd because Fridays are usually dumps for bad news and these numbers are pretty good.  But, whatever the strategy, here’s the important part of the release (emphasis mine):

R.T. Rybak’s campaign for governor announced today that it has raised a total of $278,000 in less than three months.  This includes $138,000 raised during the last eight weeks of 2009 and $140,000 raised to date through January 2010.  The Rybak for Governor Committee was created on November 5, 2009.

In addition, the Rybak for Mayor Committee, a separate committee, will report raising $389,000 from 2,457 donors in 2009.  In total, Rybak has raised $667,000 in 13 months through these two separate committees.

Rybak was long assumed to be running for Governor but only formally entered the race at the tail end of 2009, making him one of the latest entrants on the DFL side.  This is obviously why the campaign chose to shore up the numbers with additional information about his Mayoral fundraising.  Regardless, raising $278K in 12 weeks firmly places Rybak in the ranks of the more impressive fundraisers in this race.

Again, fundraising is not everything — by a long shot — but it is an important indicator both of the candidate’s ability to connect with voters and his or her ability to access the resources to mount a serious statewide campaign.  That being said, every single DFL candidate has posted numbers that should leave little worries on either front—especially given the dense field. The only candidates’ fundraising that I’d be worried about are Tom Emmer and Marty Seifert.  And, well, that makes me happy.

The 2010 Gubernatorial Fundraising Cheat-Sheet has been updated.

January 29, 2010, 12:00 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: .

2010 Gubernatorial Fundraising Cheat-Sheet [Updated x2]

by Matt Martin | 17 Comments

After getting Bakk’s numbers this morning, I was in the process of compiling where all the various candidates are in their respective fundraising efforts when I noticed that Tom Scheck over at Polinaut had beat me to the punch [UPDATE: Scheck has an even better list now].  So, in the interest of saving myself the effort, I’m augmenting Mr. Scheck’s summary with additional information I had been compiling:

Tom Bakk (D):

  • Total: $361,927 (began fundraising in mid-2008)
  • 2009 Total: $208,682
  • Cash on Hand: $133,000
  • Other: none reported.

Mark Dayton (D): [NEW]

  • Total: $641,821 (committee registered in early 2009)
  • 2009 Total: $641,821
  • Cash on Hand: $16,772
  • Other: He loaned $570,00 to his campaign (!)

Matt Entenza (D): [UPDATED]

  • Total: Over $400,000 (began around January)
  • 2009 Total: $405,286 from contributors in 2009.
  • Cash on Hand: $73,917
  • Other: Matt made a $10,000 contribution to the campaign and loaned the campaign $70,000.

Susan Gaertner (D): [NEW]

  • Total: $200,411 (began in 2007!)
  • 2009 Total: $110,828
  • Cash on Hand: $4,347

Steve Kelley (D): [NEW]

  • Total: About $200,ooo (he never closed out his 2006 committee, so there are nominal contributions in 2007 and 2008, but he didn’t really start his push for this cycle until 2010)
  • 2009 Total: $187,249
  • Cash on Hand: $39,541
  • Other: Loaned $16,400 to his campaign

Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D):

  • Total: $254,000 (formally announced in September, not sure when she began fundraising)
  • 2009 Total: $254,000 from contributors in 2009.
  • Cash on Hand: $81,000
  • Other: She made a direct contribution of $250 to her campaign.

John Marty (D): [NEW]

  • 2009 Total: $105,895
  • Cash on Hand: $18,910
  • Other: None reported.

Tom Rukavina (D):

  • Total: $135,000 (announced exploratory committee in the summer of 2009)
  • 2009 Total: $135,000
  • Cash on Hand: $60,000
  • Other: None reported.

R.T. Rybak (D):

  • Total: $278,000 (started fundraising at very end of 2009)
  • 2009 Total: $138,000 (additional $140K raised in January, 2010)
  • Cash on Hand: $25,000
  • Other: None reported.

Paul Thissen (D):

  • Total: $370,000 (began fundraising in late 2008)
  • 2009 Total: $233,000
  • Cash on Hand: $85,000
  • Other: He also loaned his campaign $20,000

Marty Seifert (R):

  • Total: $262,753 (stepped down as minority leader in June to form exploratory committee)
  • 2009 Total: $262,753
  • Cash on Hand: $133,072.
  • Other: He also loaned his campaign $20,000 and transferred $20,000 from his now defunct MN House campaign

Tom Emmer (R): [UPDATED]

  • Total: $114,852 (began this summer)
  • 2009 Total: $114,852
  • Cash on Hand: $19,154.
  • Other: via Scheck: “His spokesman said he loaned the campaign and gave in-kind contributions that amount to roughly $10,000.”

I said it once, and I’ll say it again:  The DFL numbers are blowing the GOP numbers out of the water. In fact, just for fun, let’s compare totals here:

Party Totals (so far): [UPDATED]

  • DFL Candidates: $1,849,761 ($2,419,761 counting Dayton’s $570K loan to his campaign)
  • GOP Candidates: $429,463 (includes GOP candidates I didn’t bother listing above)

Let’s not get overly-confident, but let’s also not fall for the argument that our cluttered field has dampened enthusiasm, because that is obviously not the case.

January 26, 2010, 11:55 am | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Rasmussen Poll Is Worthless, But Let’s Pretend Its Not

by Zack Stephenson | 4 Comments

Let me give you a few reasons to disregard the Rasmussen poll that is grabbing attention around the Minnesota political universe today:

  1. They only interviewed 300 people for each horse-race, so the margin of error is very high.
  2. They only conducted interviews on one night, which is considered bad methodology.
  3. I am skeptical of their likely voter model.  As Joe Bodell points out, we haven’t had a competitive statewide primary in Minnesota for a while, so modeling is going to be very difficult.
  4. They misspelled R.T. Rybak’s name in the release (R.T. Ryback?)
  5. And the most important reason: a poll this early in the campaign probably only measures name recognition.

The counter-argument to all of this is:

  1. Polls are fun!

Very persuasive.  So, assuming for the sake of this post that Rasmussen’s numbers are more predictive than those you might pull out of a hat, what do they mean? Find out after the jump.

More »

January 13, 2010, 10:31 am | Category: General | Tags: , , , , , .

MNpublius Interview With Blogger Ed Kohler

by Aaron Landry | 14 Comments

If you haven’t been following Ed Kohler’s blog, The Deets lately, you’re missing out on a lot of good writing and research. Kohler’s interests and writing topics are wide and diverse, ranging from Jucy Lucys to shoes on powerlines, from online marketing and business intelligence to toilet paper, from exposing unethical practices in media organizations and the phone book industry to covering up graffiti, and physically running every single street in Minneapolis and writing about it.

Lately, however, Kohler has been writing a lot about the MN GOP and their unofficially associated whisper site, Minnesota Democrats Exposed. Here’s a few posts if you need to be caught up:

Luke Hellier: Minnesota Democrats Exposed Exposed
Marty Seifert Puts Taxpayer Funded Arts Ahead of Cops
Ben Golnik Tweets About Getting Out of Minneapolis – from Minneapolis
Aaron Cocking’s Twitter Echo Chamber Contributions
MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com Dropped from Google
Some Perspective on MN GOP’s Issue with R.T. Rybak

A lot of it is great research and solid work in catching liars red-handed. I caught up with Kohler recently and he agreed for a quick interview. In full disclosure, Kohler is a neighbor of mine and is someone I have a drink with now and then.

MNpublius: Looking back, your blog hasn’t been very political. Why are you getting into politics?

Ed Kohler: My blog started as a political blog, but I lost interest in politics as a theme over time and surely will again. Lately, my inspiration actually came from Newsbobber.com. Out of curiosity, I visited every blog in the Newsbobber 100 list of top-100 Minnesota blogs which reintroduced me to some new blogs and blogs I haven’t visited in quite a while. Some right-wing blogs that were particularly over the top with misleading statements inspired me to correct the record with links to accurate data.

MNp: Some of your recent posts sound very pro-R.T. Rybak. Do you support his run for governor? Do you volunteer or donate to his campaign?

EK: I’ve been a Minneapolis resident since 2000 with the exception of one year in St. Louis Park, and wouldn’t live in the city of I didn’t think it was the right place for me. I’m proud of the city and was ticked off to see Luke Hellier at Minneapolis Democrats Exposed misrepresenting the city’s crime data in an attempt to attack Rybak. I’m more pro-Minneapolis than I am pro-Rybak, so seeing Hellier mislead people about the state of crime in the city pissed me off. I’m not very politically involved day to day, so haven’t had a chance to give each candidate a serious look yet, so I can’t say for sure whether Rybak is my candidate of choice. Perhaps I should go with Tom Emmer since we were both athletes at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks? Well, that may be one of the only things we have in common. To be clear, I have not volunteered or donated to Rybak’s campaign and my opinions are definitely my own. More »

December 27, 2009, 11:17 pm | Category: General | Tags: , , .

The AFSCME Debate

by Zack Stephenson | 44 Comments

AFSCME hosted a debate among the DFL candidates for Governor up in Duluth the other day, and MPR was kind enough to post the audio.  Overall, the debate was very civil, and most of the candidates did not engage each other.  The one exception to this was R.T. Rybak, who took a shot at the all of the current and former legislators in the field, saying “This is not a legislative job, its a chief executive.”  Rybak also slammed Dayton (and possibly Entenza) for their positions on the DFL endorsement.

Below are my impressions for each candidate:

Steve Kelley: Kelley didn’t show me anything new in this debate.  That’s not a criticism, just an observation.  He’s the same candidate he was in 2006.  He did have a couple of odd moments.  He  took a question about the state budget deficit and ended up talking about the public option in the national health care bill.   Later on he stumbled a bit when asked how he would deal with Pawlenty’s disastrous record with the Department of Human Serives.  Kelley said he has not decided on whether to abide by the DFL endorsement.

R.T. Rybak: Came right out of the gate strong and was the feistiest candidate by far.  I already mentioned his hit on the legislators, but he also took a direct shot at Dayton at the end of the debate when all of the candidates were asked whether they would abide by the DFL endorsement.  Dayton had called the endorsement process undemocratic and said he would not abide on principle.  Rybak responded, “I will absolutely abide. No games, no equivocation.  I don’t get this baloney that a party endorsement process isn’t a democratic process.  I don’t get that.”

Mark Dayton:  This was Dayton at his best, passionate and articulate.  He had a great line when asked about jobs, “Pawlenty believes the solution to the jobs problem is to furlough [AFSCME members] from their jobs and then not show up for his own.”  Zing.  As previously noted, Dayton will not abide.

Matt Entenza: He opened up the debate by noting that he is from Worthington, which is so far south that he “doesn’t like Iowa jokes.”  I’m not sure I can support a candidate who doesn’t like Iowa jokes.  On a more serious note, Entenza did a great job of using his compelling personal story to his advantage.  It was a strong performance from Entenza.  When asked about the DFL endorsement, Entenza gave his standard answer, which is that he will abide if everyone else abides.  Of course, he said this just minutes after Dayton said he would not honor the endorsement and would run in the primary.  Pretty obnoxious.  Closed circuit to Matt, just say you are not going to abide.  You are not scoring any points by playing this little game.

Tom Rukavina:  Was entertaining as always.  Described himself as “the love child between Paul Wellstone and Jesse Ventura” and then bragged about his union made underwear.  He had a great moment later when talking about Norman Borlag.  Said Borlag only graduated from the U because of financial aid.  Asked, “how many Norman Borlags are we cheating?”  Said he would abide by the DFL endorsement.

John Marty:  What struck me most about Marty was that he is clearly stuck in the past.  He took every question and used his time to talk about budget votes in the 90s and was also the only candidate to bring up the Time “the state that works” magazine cover.  Get into this decade Marty.  Will abide (and said if he didn’t get the endorsement he’d return to the Senate).

Paul Thissen:  If you are wondering why everyone has been talking about Paul Thissen, you should listen to this debate.  Thissen sounded sharp, engaging and fresh.  Had a nice moment talking about his kid’s struggles with the health care system.  Will abide.

Susan Gaertner: Did a nice job using stories from her time as County Attorney and her personal life.  My favorite line of hers was, “I’ve raised three teenage girls, you think I’m going to have a hard time making the hard decisions?  I’m not.”  Will abide.

Tom Bakk: Spent the whole debate touting his union credentials.  Maybe not a bad strategy given this was a union audience.  Otherwise, he was pretty forgettable.  Said, “my plans are to abide by the DFL endorsement.”  Does that leave the door open just a bit? UPDATE: Sen. Bakk’s campaign emails to say “Sen. Bakk will abide by the endorsement.  The door is not open.”

Margaret Anderson Kelliher: This was not the same MAK I’ve seen in dozens of Capital press conferences.  She was very strong, sharp and showed some passion.  (that’s not to say she isn’t good in the pressers, she just usually doesn’t show a lot of passion).  She had a great answer when asked about the deficit.  A very nice performance.  Will abide.

The Bottom Line

Top performers:  Kelliher, Thissen, Entenza, Dayton, Rybak

In the middle: Rukavina, Gaertner

Not very good:  Bakk, Marty, Kelley

October 10, 2009, 2:34 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Coleman, Rybak Sound Like Candidates

by Zack Stephenson | 2 Comments

Tom Scheck just posted a clip from Midmorning where R.T. Rybak and Chris Coleman talk about Tim Pawlenty’s performance as Governor.  If you are at all interested in the 2010 gubernatorial race, you must listen to this clip.

First off, anyone who thought that Rybak isn’t running for Governor needs to rethink their opinion. R.T. admitted that he is thinking about a campaign (no shock there) but far more importantly, he sounded like a candidate for Governor.  He threw a couple of hard elbows towards Pawlenty - ripping him for his fiscal management (the Govenror has a lot to learn from what we’ve done in Minneapolis) and his presidential ambitions - but also test drove a couple of positive messages.  Rybak clearly had a lot of fire in the belly this morning.

Coleman, who I am certain will run, also took a couple of shots at T-Paw, including a great line about the Governor’s performance on the hockey rink.  Coleman, who plays hockey with the Governor and a few others from the Capitol crowd, said there has been discussion about whether the games violate the gift ban for all the times lobbyists serve up the puck to the Governor.  This cannot make the mulleted one a happy camper

On the basis of this interview, it looks like both Mayors are going to run for Governor in 2010. Kudos to Kerri Miller for a great interview.

March 10, 2009, 12:44 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: , .

Campaign Finance Reports

by Zack Stephenson | 83 Comments

Tis the season for state level campaign finance reporting.  In the 2010 gubernatorial race (which will occupy much of this blog’s attention in short order) we’ve got a couple of filings of note:

Tim Pawlenty

T-Paw raised $750k last year.  That’s a lot of money.  There are a couple of ways to look at this.  Most obviously, it could be a sign that Pawlenty plans to run again.  I have to admit the potency of this argument, but I’m still a skeptic.  As we have noted time and time again, if Timmy has national ambitions (and he does) it makes very little sense for him to run again in 2010.  So why would he raise all that money if he’s not running for re-election.  One question to answer first: how much of that money can be transfered into a federal account?  I actually have no idea, but my gut tells me that most of it should be transferable (Minnesota has tighter campaign finance laws than the feds).  If it can be transfered, then the fact that T-Paw has a huge chunk of money sitting around means nothing in terms of his re-election prospects.

The DFLers

Susan Gaertner raised just $46k despite being in the race since 2003 (and that is just a small exageration).  I am already ready to write off her campaign.  John Marty raised $30k “in the last nine days of December.”  I actually have very little to say about this - I think a thirty point loss (even if it was 14 years ago) should probably be a disqualifier.  Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza both did not file, but we wouldn’t really care even if they had because they both can self-fund.  This brings us to the big surprise of the reporting period:  State Representative Paul Thissen raised $115,000 in “the last seven weeks” of 2008.  For a heretofore unknown state legislator, that is pretty damn impressive.  In fact, Thissen’s campaign has been pretty impressive overall during the last few weeks.  If he can keep it up (and you have to wonder if he can - how much of that 115k came from the Minneapolis legal community?  How much more can he raise with such a narrow financial base?), he might be able to make some waves in this contest.

Of course, the big fish have still yet to get into the race.  Some other commenters have suggested that Chris Coleman and R.T. Rybak’s mayoral re-election bids will prevent them from running for Governor.  Don’t believe it for a second.  Coleman and Rybak will stay quiet until sometime in the late spring or early summer (when it would be too late for a serious re-election challenger to emerge) but I would be SHOCKED if at least one of them didn’t get into this race by this time next year.  Speaker Kelliher is also a good bet to run, but she won’t make a move until the legislative session is over.

February 2, 2009, 2:13 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Thoughts on Rybak’s Announcement (and 2010 in general… I got carried away writing)

by Matt Martin | 34 Comments

rybak_largeIn case you hadn’t already heard, Raymond Thomas Rybak will be running for a third term as Mayor of Minneapolis.  As the ever-improving Star Tribune notes in their sub-headline: “Rybak says he’s energizes for a third term.”  This isn’t a huge surprise given RT’s new year’s eve mayoral fundraiser, but it does firmly close the door for some City Council members who have been licking their chops at rumors of a Rybak Obama appointment or a 2010 gubernatorial run.  And now that he has announced, we can announce the winner of the 2009 Minneapolis Mayoral race: RT Rybak. Okay, so maybe there’s some slim possibility that he won’t succeed in his bid for a third term, but I don’t see him losing absent some new information from Ashley Dupré on her clientele… (for those of you without a sense of humor, that’s a joke)

So what about that 2010 gubernatorial race?

Well, some in the blogosphere jumped to the reasonable conclusion that this announcement forecloses any possibility of a Rybak run in 2010 but the Mayor notably declined to make any such statements.  No doubt, two races in two years puts a lot of strains in a lot of places (most notably, donors), but it’s not impossible by any means.

I may have been singing a different tune just a few weeks ago, but with Congressman Tim Walz out of the picture, the 2010 DFL race is suddenly much more attainable for all other interested parties.  Walz was truly the 800 pound gorilla in the room and his exit leaves much more room for other candidates to fill the void.  Then factor in the inevitably abysmal session the legislature is facing (to no fault of their own) with the budget in the current shape it is and the potency of the whole slew of legislative candidates is necessarily diminished, even Kelliher’s (of course she could come out of this swinging, I’m just noting the current state of things).  And while he’s built up a great political staff, Mayor Coleman has also announced his plans for another run in St. Paul.

So, who do we have left for 2010 who isn’t tainted by the state budget crisis, stated disinterest, or running for a mayoral reelection?  Susan Gaertner, Mark Dayton, and Matt Entenza (who else am I missing).  I haven’t heard all that much from the first two (almost nothing at all from Dayton) but Entenza is rumored to be serious about running and throwing his weight (and money) around to intimidate others away.

The point of all the above (other than taking an advantage to postulate about 2010, which is always fun) is that there is a very real possibility that the DFL won’t have a clear front-runner come November.  Now, of course, we could, but that would be atypical of DFL gubernatorial endorsement battles and fairly surprising given the density of the field.  If the field is still a tangled mess, Rybak wouldn’t have an exceedingly tough time entering: the mayoral race will likely be a walk in the park so he could start hitting up delegates behind the scenes early, he has a loyal donor base that he shouldn’t have to hit too hard for the mayoral race, he’s one of the few candidates with good name recognition (yes, even in outstate MN), and he’s fairly popular.  These are reasons he could still run, however; a combination of personal fatigue, donor fatigue, a heated field, and another run by Tim Pawlenty would lead me to bet against a 2010 by Rybak, but who knows.

Bottom line: the Rybak didn’t close the door today, but the opening got much narrower.  Now what are we DFLers going to do about a candidate…?

January 13, 2009, 10:26 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: .

RT Running Again

by Sean Broom | 12 Comments

I’ve been told that Mayor Rybak is running again for Mayor of Minneapolis.  This probably puts the kibosh on him running for Governor as his funders probably wouldn’t be up to pay for two campaigns in two years.

More on this later.

December 9, 2008, 1:11 pm | Category: MN 2010: Governor | Tags: .

The Enuthiasm Gap Demonstrated

by Zack Stephenson | 123 Comments

Yesterday, the much vaunted McCain-Palin ticket rolled into the Twin Cities.  Team McCain has been crowing for weeks about how Palin’s addition to the GOP ticket has generated a massive increase of enthusiasm among the Republican faithful.  Apparently, McCain-Palin rallies have generated record crowds all across the country (although, media reports have revealed that the McCain campaign has exaggerated their crowd counts).

Well, John McCain did draw a large crowd to his rally up in Blaine yesterday - something in the neighborhood of 10,000 people.  Not bad.  But you want to know what is really impressive?  The Obama counter-rally at Peavey Plaza, which did not feature either Barack Obama OR Joe Biden (or even a state-wide elected official) drew 3,500 people! (Added by Aaron: …and it was only announced two days in advance!)

That, my friends, is a first rate example of the enthusiasm gap in this election - a big reason why Obama is going to carry Minnesota and win the election in six weeks.

September 20, 2008, 1:30 pm | Category: White House '08 | Tags: , .

RT Cracks Wise

by Sean Broom | 22 Comments
October 31, 2007, 1:53 pm | Category: General | Tags: .

Rybak’s Green Life Making Headlines

by Matt Martin | 11 Comments
October 30, 2007, 9:39 am | Category: General | Tags: .