On his campaign website, Emmer said: “At the request of local prosecutors, Rep. Emmer agreed to author their bill to reform the court system and how DWIs are handled. The legislation prepared by the prosecutors and other interested parties with the assistance of nonpartisan House research staff would have provided incentives for early and immediate prosecution of first-time offenders.”

The Emmer campaign identified the “local prosecutors” as Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes, and said they are based in Stillwater, Washington County. Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling. [Emphasis mine]

Local prosecutors? Excuse me? Once again, Emmer may not technically be lying, but he’s also definitely not being straight with us. He’s trying to make it sound like this bill was written to help local law enforcement officials, when in fact it was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys.

And let’s be completely clear: these weren’t attorneys contacted at random by WCCO. According to their story, they were specifically identified by Emmer as the attorneys he was working with. He was also identified by Emmer when WCCO first wrote about the story, after Marty Seifert brought the same attacks against Emmer.

Below the break, I’ve posted a screen capture from the firm Weidner and Stokes work for. You can see that these are clearly not the people who should be responsible for crafting our DWI laws.

Here’s the text from the screenshot:

Skilled Legal Representation for Your Drunk Driving Charges

In Minnesota and Wisconsin, DWI and DUI are serious charges with serious consequences. If you have been charged with drunk driving and want to best protect your interests, you will need an experienced DUI defense attorney. At Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling, P.L.L.P., we can effectively represent you.

If you are convicted of DUI in Minnesota, the consequences and penalties can be severe. In addition to serving jail time and paying substantial fines, you may have your driver’s license revoked, your vehicle license plates can be impounded and destroyed, and in certain cases, the State can forfeit and take ownership of your motor vehicle. Additionally, a DUI conviction will almost certainly result in a significant increase in the cost of automobile insurance, and, in some cases, can make it impossible to obtain insurance at all.

The best way to avoid these consequences is to avoid the conviction. Our primary DUI defense attorney is an experienced criminal defense lawyer who also spent time as a criminal prosecutor. With this experience, he understands how prosecutors think and can use this knowledge to your benefit. Furthermore, he is very familiar with all of the procedural challenges available to contest DUI charges. [Emphasis mine]

So when Emmer said he worked with “local prosecutors,” apparently he means he worked with someone “who also spent time as a criminal prosecutor.” Not quite the same.

Here’s what WCCO wrote about Weidner and Stokes after Seifert brought up the issue before the GOP convention:

Emmer referred most questions on the bill to Stillwater attorney Tom Weidner, who works for a law firm that handles prosecution for 10 municipalities in Washington County and also does criminal defense, including DWI cases.

Weidner said he first raised the issue with Emmer in 2008 but wasn’t acting on behalf of the cities he serves and didn’t collaborate with prosecutors outside the firm. One of Weidner’s colleagues, Sean Stokes, testified on behalf of the bill, identifying himself as a prosecutor.

Weidner said he personally doesn’t take many criminal defense cases and doesn’t believe he was representing anyone criminally at the time he raised the issue with Emmer. A check of court records showed him handling one DWI defense case in the past year. Stokes has more frequently handled such cases.

So apparently, when he requested this bill, Weidner wasn’t even acting “on behalf of the cities he serves.” He must have been acting in his capacity as a defense attorney.

This is the first of many personal attacks we’re likely to see in the general election, which is going to see unprecedented amounts of third-party advertising, led by ABM and MN Forward. I do think the personal attack in this ad is mitigated by the fact that the ad also focuses on actual legislation Emmer proposed that would weaken the enforcement of drunk-driving laws. Here’s how the Star Tribune summarized the proposed changes:

Currently, suspected drunken drivers face revocation before they go to court. The minimums are 90 days for failing a sobriety test and a year for refusing a test. Under Emmer’s proposal, drivers would be subject to revocations of at least 30 and 60 days for failing or refusing tests, but only after they’re convicted or plead guilty.

The policies are debatable, and the bill did receive support in some quarters. If you ask me, though, I think it’s pretty tough to make a case that the penalties for drunk driving should be reduced.

By the way, the bill brought up by ABM is not the only drunk-driving proposal that’s gotten Emmer in trouble. During the Republican endorsement battle, Marty Seifert’s campaign brought up an amendment Emmer had proposed that would have made drunk-driving offenses private after 10 years.

Well, Emmer certainly built name recognition, but not in the way he wanted. For much of the past three months, Emmer has been on the defensive. Now that the pre-primary campaign finance reports have been released, it’s clear that his other expected advantage never materialized, either: He lags behind Margaret Anderson Kelliher in fundraising. One can’t help but wonder — has Emmer been forced to spend so much time defending himself that his fundraising has suffered?

Republican Tom Emmer has raised $785,000 this year for his gubernatorial campaign. The GOP-endorsed candidate, who faces no credible primary opposition, had $296,000 in the bank as of last week. Since launching his gubernatorial bid last year, Emmer has taken in roughly $900,000.

The numbers are similar to the fundraising figures released by DFL-endorsed candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher yesterday.  Kelliher reported raising $982,000 this year, but with $385,000 cash on hand.

Kelliher will certainly be doing some serious spending in the last two weeks of the primary campaign, and it’s quite possible that at the end, she’ll have less cash on hand than Emmer. But Emmer was expected to have a significant cash advantage, and it doesn’t look like he will. What’s more, Kelliher’s superior fundraising will probably wipe out any advantage Emmer does have after the primary is over.

A quick afterthought: Tom Horner. “Afterthought” describes him perfectly, as he has just $28,000 cash on hand.

Public Policy Polling, a robo-poller, has a poll of the New Hampshire Senate race coming out tomorrow.  The top lines are still unavailable, but PPP teased the poll by releasing data that shows Sarah Palin’s absolute toxicity among voters (and moderates in particular).  According to PPP, 51% of New Hampshire voters are less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Palin. Only 26% of voters are more likely to support that candidate.  That’s pretty awful.

But how big of an impact does Palin’s support really have?  After all, these voters might not like Palin (that has been demonstrated pretty conclusively) but they also might not care that much about her.  The PPP data doesn’t answer this question directly, but there is some circumstantial evidence supporting the notion that a Palin endorsement has some power.  When PPP polled New Hampshire in April, Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte had a 32/27 split on fav/unfav among moderate voters.  Now, that split is 27/46.  That is a -24 point swing! Of course, there is no way to determine how much of that swing is attributable to the Palin endorsement, but its reasonable to assume that some of it is due to her involvement in the race.

I haven’t seen any comparable data for Minnesota, but if Minnesota moderates are anything like New Hampshire moderates, than Palin’s endorsement of Tom Emmer is going to cause him a lot of trouble.

First, there was Emmer’s disastrous interview with MPR, where he waffled and floundered  for a full hour. Then, there was his now-infamous proposal to reduce the wages of tipped employees, a story his own campaign kept alive for two weeks. On Thursday, he proposed a “Minnesota GI Bill.” That doesn’t sound so bad — until you learn that the bill is already law, and Emmer voted against it.

“I don’t know if you remember, a few years ago the governor had proposed [a Minnesota GI bill],” said Emmer, a state representative. “And I think that’s something we should certainly be looking at and it’s unfortunate we haven’t done something like that already.”

There’s just one problem: The proposal became law in 2007. It was included in a broader higher education appropriations bill, which Emmer voted against. [Star Tribune, emphasis mine]

Amazing. Maybe this is why Emmer is so unwilling to discuss his positions on the issues — he doesn’t know Minnesota law, and can’t even remember his own voting record. But that’s not even the end of it. When the mistake was caught, Emmer’s campaign had the worst possible reaction: they threw campaign staffers under the bus.

Campaign spokesman Bill Walsh attributed the flub to “bad staff work,” noting that Emmer was reading from an overview of Pawlenty’s proposals.

Excuse me, but Mr. Emmer has to have some accountability for the things that come out of his mouth. After all, it’s his own voting record, and he hasn’t been a Representative for such a long time that these things should be difficult to keep track of.

The gaffes from Emmer are almost non-stop at this point. This guy is clearly not ready for prime time.

This is particularly good news because Rasmussen is a pollster that has a tendency to lean to the right. The reality may be even better for the DFL than it looks here. In fact, in the toplines of the poll, I noticed that Tim Pawlenty had a 49% approval rating, which sounds fairly high. If I had to guess, I’d say that this poll probably overstates Emmer’s support.

Obviously, there’s still a long time to go, and plenty of undecideds. But the dynamic of this race is becoming clearer — Tom Emmer is digging himself into a hole. Another major gaffe from him, and the DFL could open a major lead.

That brings us to Tom Emmer, who wants to make it easier for registrations to expire. Minnesota law says that a person who has not voted in four years will have their registration changed to “inactive” and must re-register (Minn. Stat. 201.171). That seems reasonable, given that we need to verify they are still eligible to vote in the location where they are registered. But the law does have a common-sense exception which Tom Emmer wanted to eliminate.

In 2006, Emmer proposed a bill that would have eliminated a single line from sec. 201.171:

Although not counted in an election, a late absentee ballot must be considered a vote for the purpose of continuing registration.

This provision makes a lot of sense to me, and I’d love to know what Emmer’s reasoning could have been for eliminating it. We can agree that if your absentee ballot is late, it shouldn’t count as a vote — once the election is over, it’s simply too late. But given that you’ve already gone through the process of obtaining the ballot and confirming your address, why shouldn’t you be allowed to at least keep your registration active?

Is this a huge deal? No, not really. But I can’t help but wonder why Emmer would propose a bill like this, the sole purpose of which seems to be to make it more a little harder for people to exercise their right to vote.

But now they may land in a big heap of trouble for the editing they did on the video. David Brauer at MinnPost found something interesting when he looked closely: The MN Forward ad “squishes” Emmer to make him look thinner. It’s very plain in the picture below:

Given the amount of extra space to the right, it’s hard to believe they did this because they needed the space. They did it because they thought it would make him look better. It’s stupid, shameless, and simply not worth it in the context of an otherwise mild ad campaign.

UPDATE (7/20, 5:25 AM): MN Forward told the Star Tribune that the image “looks skinnier on a YouTube screen grab than it does on television,” and that they did not edit it. That sounds like a strange explanation to me. On the other hand, maybe they ought to get the benefit of the doubt simply because editing it would be so completely stupid and pointless.

MN Forward was just formed very recently, but they’re already bringing in plenty of money. In the span of three weeks, they raised $405,000 in cash. Their financial disclosures are pretty light reading, though — they raised all that money from only 4 companies, each of which contributed $100,000. You can click on the image to the right to see more detail.

Given that they have plenty of access to quick cash, they’re already advertising. Surprise — they’re supporting Tom Emmer in this election. And can you guess why?

Of course — they want to avoid taxes. MN Forward is a collection of big businesses that have thrived because of Minnesota’s great education, infrastructure and quality of life, but don’t want to contribute to make sure that legacy continues. Thanks, big business!

Here’s the full MN Forward ad:

…what I found really interesting was the groups of Emmer/GOP supporters with the long faces, growing frustrated as the event wore on. Soon a supporter came out of the back room and approached a group of other Emmer supporters, I overheard:

“What is he doing … this is a catastrophe”

Emmer supporters should prepare for much more of this. His stance on the minimum wage is by no means his most extreme, and if he ever manages to put the tip penalty debacle behind him, you can be sure he’ll put his foot in his mouth again shortly.