Minnesota Democrats’ Bait-And-Switch Strategy

The Geography of Politics, Part 3

In this series, I have been developing a hypothesis (and exploring the implications) that states, “the safer a seat is for a political party, the more radical its holder becomes.”  [See Part 1 and Part 2.]

My case study today is the Minnesota House of Representatives.  At present, Democrats hold 73 of the 134 seats in the body, with Republicans holding the remaining 61.  A 12-seat majority means that a switch in party of just 7 seats would flip majority control to the Republicans, from 73-61 to 66-68.

Blogger Tony Petrangelo of the website LeftMN has calculated a partisan index for every of those 134 seats in the Minnesota House.  According to his calculations, 12 of the 73 seats held by Democrats are in districts rated as leaning-Republican.  Democrats hold a further 4 seats rated as “Even” (tossup) districts.

In the 2012 election, Minnesota’s Democrats retook control of the state House, in no small part on the appeal of "moderate pro-business" Democrats.  These centrist, pragmatic problem-solvers were supposed to occupy an imagined sweet spot of social liberalism combined with friendliness toward the private-sector economy, a combination thought to be appealing to the suburban, swing-district voter.

If swing district voters thought they were electing a moderate, pro-business legislature, what they got was something decidedly different:  record tax hikes, record spending increases, a non-functioning takeover of the health insurance industry (MNsure), and a failed gun grab…the list goes on.  So what happened?

Moderate, suburban voters may have given Democrats a majority of seats, but that is not where the new House majority found its leadership.

2013 saw a new House Speaker, a new House Majority Leader, and 28 new committee chairs.  Elected as House Speaker was six-term Minneapolis Democrat Paul Thissen, representing a district rated D+29.  Elected as the Majority Leader was four-term St. Paul Democrat, Erin Murphy, representing a district also rated at D+29.

Of the 28 new committee chairs installed in 2013, 21 represent districts rated at D+10 or higher and 24 of 28 represent Districts rated at D+5 or higher.  Put another way, only 4 committee chairs represent districts considered competitive between Democrats and Republicans.

One of the four committee chairs, Melissa Hortman, is in her fifth term representing a suburban Brooklyn Park district rated D+1.  No pro-business moderate, she holds a lifetime rating, as calculated by the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, of 8 on a scale of 100.

Likewise, committee chair Joe Atkins has represented an even-rated Inver Grove Heights district for over a decade.  His Taxpayers League lifetime rating is 7.

Ron Erhardt, representing an even-rated suburban Edina district, offers an interesting example.  The seniority that qualified Erhardt for his committee chairmanship was earned serving nine terms as a Republican, at a time when his district was considered as safely Republican.  Now a Democrat, Erhardt’s 2013 Taxpayers League rating was 8 on a scale of 100.

Finally, Paul Marquart is now in his seventh term representing a rural Dilworth district rated a Republican-leaning R+2.  Marquardt’s lifetime Taxpayers League rating is a relatively moderate 23.

So, suburban voters selected pro-business moderate Democrats and got a leadership anything but suburban and moderate.  Of the 28 committee chairs, seven are from St. Paul, six are from Minneapolis, and one each are from Duluth and Rochester.  Thus, more than half of the House committee leaders come from the state’s largest urban areas.

This result should not be surprising.  Leadership appointments and committee gavels generally go to the most senior members.  Generally, only representatives from safe districts get re-elected enough times to gain seniority.  But moderation is not a quality needed (or even helpful) in winning safe seats.

So, will Democrats try the same approach in 2014?  Will Democrat House members run on a platform of pro-business moderation and hope that voters will be fooled again?

Explaining the Democrats’ Leftward Drift

The Geography of Politics, Part 2

In this post, I continue doing the job Minnesota’s political scientists can’t be bothered to do themselves.  In the first part of this series, I introduce this hypothesis: the safer a seat is for a given political party, the more extreme its holder will become, over time.

When a candidate can win a district without appealing to independents or to moderates of the other party, he or she has no incentive to moderate their views on the issues.  On the contrary, a moderate politician holding a safe seat is vulnerable to a challenge from the more extreme wing of his or her party.

Appeal to Evidence

Blogger Tony Petrangelo of the website LeftMN has calculated a partisan index for all 134 seats in the Minnesota House of Representatives.   

To oversimplify, an index of “even” (as is the case for my Edina district) indicates that the district’s voters do not display a tendency to vote for either Republicans or Democrats.  An index of R+1 or higher indicates that the district leans to the right.  An index of D+1 or higher indicates that the district leans to the left.

The higher the index number, the less likely it is that the district will be represented by someone from the opposite party.  According to Petrangelo, at present, no Republicans represent areas rated D+1 or above in the state House.  Several Democrats represent R-rated districts, including one district rated as high as R+6.

The conservative Taxpayers League of Minnesota has calculated a lifetime rating for all 134 members of the Minnesota State Legislature, based on each Representative’s voting record.  The League’s rating ranges from 0 to 100.  A rating of 100 would rank a legislator as one of the most conservative, a rating of zero would place a legislator among the most liberal.

In the chart below, I show each Republican House member’s League lifetime rating graphed against the partisan index of each member’s district, as depicted by the red dots.

The horizontal axis shows the partisan index. At present, no Republican holds a district seat rated as Democrat-leaning.  A score of “zero” on this axis means the district is rated as “even” between Democrats and Republicans.  Republican seats are rated up to R+17.

The vertical axis shows the League’s lifetime rating.

 

The dark dashed line shows the trend as we move up the vertical axis.  Consistent with my hypothesis, for Republicans, the safer the seat (the higher the partisan index) the more conservative the holder.

The one outlier shown in the graph is Jim Abeler, the Anoka Republican who represents a district rated R+6 and is rated by the League with a moderate lifetime score of 53 on the 0 to 100 scale.

As shown on the chart below, the situation with Democrats is similar.  However, the corresponding pattern for Minnesota’s Democrats resembles more an “L” lying on its side than the linear pattern of Republicans. 

In Search of:  Moderate Democrats

As before, the horizontal axis represents the district’s partisan index.  Democrats represent a number of Republican-leaning districts.  These districts are represented by positive numbers.  Districts with a D rating are represented as a negative number and range up to D+40 (graphed as -40) for the seat held by Minneapolis Democrat Karen Clark.

Supporting my hypothesis, the only Democrat-held districts with “moderate Democrat” representatives (League rating above 20) are rated as either Republican, Even, or no more than D+5.  These swing districts could elect a candidate from either party, so it’s understandable that Democrats who hold such seats would be more moderate than holders of safer D seats.

Applying the Hypothesis
If you buy the hypothesis, than a number of logical conclusions suggest themselves:

·       To get more moderate politics, you need more competitive seats.  This conclusion is certainly not original, with opposition to gerrymandering dating back centuries.  With so many seats in safe hands and so few competitive plays, the resulting gridlock and sharp partisanship should surprise no one.

·       Democrats have safer seats than Republicans.  This is not a conclusion, but an observation of the data itself.  A D+40 seat is safer than an R+17.  Democrats hold 19 seats rated safer than the safest Republican seats.

·       Democrats are further from the political mainstream than Republicans.  Applying my hypothesis leads to this conclusion.  A party lead by holders of seats rated +20 or above will be more radical than a party whose safest seat is only +17.  Democrats may have made inroads into Republican territory to gain a majority, but once in majority, Democrat leaders (Committee Chairs, Leadership) are from safe Democrat seats.

Democrats Are Winning the Money Race in Minnesota

In a front-page story in the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reporters Rachel Stassen-Berger and Glenn Howatt do a public service by following the money in Minnesota state elections from 2007 to 2012.  The reporters track money from individuals, labor unions, party units, corporate donors and others.

The Star Tribune makes the point of how concentrated political donations are in the state.  A mere 26 donors account for more than half of the $53 million spent on state political campaigns during the period examined.

To their credit, the reporters don’t bury the real lede too far down, as they write in the second paragraph of their story,

The analysis shows those donations heavily favored Democrats.  Unless that trend is reversed, Republicans could find themselves at a disadvantage heading into the 2014 elections, when they will attempt to retake the governor’s office and the Minnesota House.

They are correct.  But just how heavily the donations favor Democrats, the reporters do not say.  So I have taken a shot at answering the question by identifying the top 26 donors identified by the Star Tribune as either Democrat-leaning or Republican –leaning.

I use the word “leaning” as even Donor No.1, Education Minnesota, gives trace amounts to Republicans.  Likewise, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce donates money to both the Republican party and the Democrat party, but I classify them in the Republican camp for the purposes of estimating the total Republican disadvantage.

Of the top 26 donors, all but 7 lean toward the Democrats in their donations.  Adding up the dollars given by each donor during the 2007-2012 period, Democrat-leaning donors gave $20.5 million and Republican-leaning donors gave $6.2 million.  That works out to more than a 3 to 1 advantage for the Democrats.

Also notice who is not on the list.  There is not a Koch brother, Citizens United, or Karl Rove to be found.  The bêtes noires of the left are noticeably missing from Minnesota politics, despite their ubiquity in local progressive propaganda.

If Republicans were enjoying a 3 to 1 fundraising advantage, just imagine the cries for campaign finance reform and getting money out of state politics.  Instead, the silence is deafening.

Left and Lefter, the Race for House District 64B

The Geography of Politics, Part 1

I’m always amazed at how the state’s most-quoted political scientists spend their days chasing the newest Tea Party phantom while earthshaking developments on the other side of the aisle go unnoticed.  You would think that—in a state with one-party-rule—the rivalries within the ruling party would hold their interest more than insider moves in a party long out of power.

Whatever.  In the interest of doing the job Minnesota’s political scientists can’t be bothered to do themselves, over the next few weeks I will be developing two series focusing on the intersection of geography, demography, and politics in Minnesota.

In my parallel series focusing on demography, I examine the bizarre plan of the Met Council regional government to relieve poverty by dispersing poor people throughout the metro region.

In this series, I will explore the role geography plays in state politics.

Endorsement

In a little-noticed and quickly-buried development this week, the Minnesota’s Campaign Financed Board levied a $100,000 fine against the state’s Democrats for illegally coordinating campaign efforts.  The fine, one of the largest levied in state history, was for conduct involving an organized series of photo sessions with state senate candidates. 

The professional photographs were used in “independent” advertising on the behalf of 13 Democrat candidates for state senate.  Of the 13, 11 of the candidates won, flipping control of the state senate from Republicans to the Democrats.

Jim Carlson, Alan Oberloh, Vicki Jensen, Tom Saxhaug, Kevin Dahle, Kent Eken, Melisa Franzen, Laurie McKendry, Matt Schmit, Gregory Clausen, Alice Johnson, Susan Kent and Lyle Koenen were named in the Board’s investigation.

Of the 13 Democrat state senate candidates involved, several were running in Twin Cities suburban districts.  Three--Alice Johnson, Melisa Franzen and Gregory Clausen—were endorsed by the Star Tribune newspaper.  None of the three were senate incumbents in the last election: all three won.

My take after reading the Board's report on its investigation is that control of the state senate rests in the hands of a group that cheated to win.  The matter involves no small sum: the illegal coordination represented campaign contributions of more than $300,000 above the legal limit.

Voters are owed more than a “we’re putting this matter behind us” explanation from everyone involved.

What I Saw at MNsure Today

For the first time since September, I made my way to St. Paul to attend a meeting at the headquarters of MNsure, the embattled state agency charged with implementing the local Obamacare health insurance exchange.

This afternoon, Scott Leitz—the newly appointed interim CEO of MNsure—along with MNsure’s board chair, Brian Beutner, held a press conference followed by a meeting of MNsure’s Board of Directors.

Here are a few observations from the back of the room:

Turnaround Ahead

The cascading failures at MNsure reveal an organization in need of a turnaround.  The two men standing at the podium this afternoon were “steady as she goes” helmsmen, not turnaround specialists.  MNsure is in dire need of a skill set not on display today.

The German Connection

During today’s press conference, interim CEO Leitz was asked about a recent junket to Germany.  The reporter was referring to this trip (1st bullet) in which Leitz traveled to Europe accompanied by the co-chairs (Rep. Joe Atkins and Sen. Tony Lourey) of MNsure’s legislative oversight committee.  The committee has not met since September.  Once it resumes meeting in January, it’s probably too much to ask the literal fellow travelers of CEO Leitz to provide the unsparing supervision which is so sorely lacking at MNsure.

Customer Stories

Each MNsure board meeting opens with testimony from a customer.  As I’ve documented before, these “typical customers” often turn out to be partisan plants.

Reporters at the press conference cited case after case of real customers unable to navigate the MNsure system.  Those are the customers that the board needs to hear directly from, rather than the sycophants whose songs of praise will make board members feel better about themselves.

The press conference featured ever-slipping deadlines, earnest promises of future transparency (in contrast to the opacity currently on offer), and a tech surge backed by unknown funding sources (somebody has to pay for those dozens of IBM’ers running around).  However, until the Governor and MNsure’s management realize that the agency’s problems are ones of substance, rather than appearance, expect little to change.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

A tip from The Network led me to this organization chart for the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

It turns out that the new interim “CEO” of the embattled state healthcare insurance exchange MNsure, Scott Leitz, was until today, the Assistant Commissioner for Health Care Administration.

His deputy, James Golden, is now better known as a tropical vacationer, accompanying the former Executive Director of MNsure to Costa Rica last month.

As Golden’s direct supervisor, Leitz would have likely had to approve Golden’s two-week vacation.

As Leitz’s deputy, Golden would be first in line to assume Leitz’s position at DHS, at least on an interim basis.

These are the sort of questions that I hope get answered at tomorrow’s press conference.

Priorities

As summer was drawing to a close, questions were being raised about funding for the controversial new Vikings stadium.  The oversight committee, the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Sports Facilities, hadn’t met in four months.

Back on September 10^th, a “frustrated” State Representative, Joe Atkins (D-Inver Grove Heights), ran to the Channel 5 TV cameras and demanded that the Commission meet.

Last night on Channel 5, State Senator Sean Nienow (R-Cambridge) was wondering why another legislative oversight committee hasn’t met over the last four months.  The MNsure Oversight Committee, co-chaired by Rep. Atkins, hasn’t held a meeting since September 24^th. 

MNsure, Minnesota’s local branch of Obamacare, has lurched from disaster to catastrophe since its shaky October 1^st start—even while top state government healthcare officials vacation together in tropical Costa Rica.

By their actions you shall know them

The Vikings get the headlines, but MNsure’s troubles will have a larger impact on the economy and the public health of the state.  More Minnesotans have lost insurance coverage than gained it in the 3½ months since the health insurance exchange launched.  Oversight has been non-existent.  Indeed, Atkins’ committee is not scheduled to meet again until January.  Strange priorities.

Minnesota Means Good Government

The State of Minnesota prides itself on two things: being the Land of 10,000 Lakes and the land of good government.

So the fact that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Treasury Department are proposing new restrictions on the political activity of tax-exempt 501(c)(4) non-profits should be seen as good news for the state’s politics.

The Politics of Poverty, Part 1

Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten recently wrote about the Metropolitan Council regional government and its efforts to remake the region’s demography using data collected through a “Fair Housing and Equity Assessment.”  Kersten writes,

Using these data, the council will lay out what the region’s 187 municipalities must do to disperse poverty.

A User’s Guide to the TakeAction Series

It turns out that I’ve written quite a bit about the political charity TakeAction Minnesota this year.  My interest in the group—who they are and what they do—centers on several topic areas, listed here in no particular order:

Ideology—TakeAction follows a far-left political ideology under the “progressive” liberal banner.  The success TakeAction has enjoyed in elections, lobbying, and fundraising has pushed the state Democrat party even further to the left.  With Democrats having a near-monopoly on political power in Minnesota, TakeAction’s influence among the state’s Democrats means that the state’s public policy choices represent the preferences of a small fraction of the state’s electorate.

Follow the Money and TakeAction! Part 3A

Since I wrote the original Part 3 of my TakeAction series back in January, I’ve come across the names of a few additional financial backers of the Minnesota political charity.

SourceWatch lists then-U.S. Senator Mark Dayton as a past funding partner of the charity.  This is interesting because these days, now Governor Dayton is not known for being generous to charities, political or otherwise.

Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee
Nathan Cummings was a Canadian-born American business executive who built up a fortune in the brand name food industry, most notably Sara Lee.  His New York-based legacy foundation has contributed to TakeAction in recent years

According to the Foundation’s IRS Form 990 Federal income tax returns, in 2011 it gave $60,000 to TakeAction Minnesota’s Education Fund for the “Medicaid Expansion Project.”  In 2010 the Foundation gave $60,000 for TakeAction’s “Make Health Happen Campaign.”  In 2009, it also gave TakeAction $60,000 for the same project.

All For One
The One World Fund of Andover, MA, has supported TakeAction in recent years.  According to One World’s IRS Form 990 Federal income tax returns, in 2012 the Fund gave $25,000 to TakeAction “to unite the power of diverse individuals.”  The Fund’s 2011 and 2010 returns also show $25,000 donations to TakeAction for the same purpose.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Still Ain’t Satisfied, A Foundation With Attitude, is a Minneapolis-based non-profit operated by Shayna Berkowitz and Phyllis Wiener.  The Foundation is reported by SourceWatch to be among TakeAction’s past funding partners.

Who is TakeAction? Part 3, the Brand New Party

At the Minneapolis Hilton ballroom last Friday night, more than a thousand of the faithful gathered to pay tribute to the year’s progressive heroes.  It was the TakeAction Minnesota Annual Awards Dinner (and dancing!) 2013.

Branded the Progressive Prom™, the event drew A-list headliners Governor Mark Dayton, U.S. Senator Al Franken, and Minneapolis Mayor-Elect Betsy Hodges.  Hodges had just been declared the winner of last week’s election and both Dayton and Franken face 2014 re-election battles in what’s turning out to be an increasingly tough environment for incumbent Democrats.

Who Is TakeAction Minnesota? Part 2: the TakeAction Takeover

In Part1 I take a look at the political philosophy behind the far-left super-PAC TakeAction Minnesota.  In Part 3 I discuss TakeAction's emergence as a statewide political machine.

The group marked another triumph on Monday, when TakeAction organizer Dai Thao was elected to St. Paul’s City Council, becoming the city’s first Hmong council member.

Mr. Thao defeated Noel Nix, a city hall insider and the candidate in the race endorsed by both the Star Tribune and the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce.  And therein rests the real story. 

Who Is TakeAction Minnesota? Part 1

Earlier this year I wrote a series of posts on the powerful political charity TakeAction Minnesota.  That series focused on what the group does.  Now that TakeAction has succeeded in electing the next mayor of Minneapolis, it is a good time to take a look at who the group is.

The Morning After the Night Before

At least for the next few days, pundits will be combing through the 2013 election returns for any signs and portents of 2014 and beyond.  Let me offer a few words on what I think the results mean for one city.

Minneapolis has elected a new mayor.  I did not vote in that election, having fled the City of Lakes some years ago to escape the high taxes, underperforming schools, and crumbling infrastructure.  Many of my former neighbors followed.   Unfortunately, they have continued to vote for the same politics in our new home city that produced the high taxes, underperforming schools, and crumbling infrastructure in our old one.

Minneapolis has elected a new mayor, despite the best efforts of its Ranked-Choice Voting experiment (RCV).  Under RCV, you get to vote for up to three candidates for each office.  Although the outcome of last night’s election is clear to all observers, election officials will continue to count votes for some time to come, carefully tabulating the 2^nd and 3^rd choices of voters choosing among the nearly three dozen candidates.

Updated: For the Children

[Updated with election results, below.]

Yesterday, I received this PDF via The Network.  It appears to be a script to be read over the phone to the parents of children attending Eden Prairie Public Schools.  It concerns the proposed property tax levy on the ballot for next Tuesday's election.

I don't live in Eden Prairie, so I have no firsthand knowledge of the situation.  I do know how much the state's Democrats have put into taking credit for all the additional taxpayer funding they voted for Minnesota's public schools.  They also claim that all that additional spending would result in lower property taxes.

Eden Prairie did not get the memo, it appears.  What ever additional funds the schools received from the state were not nearly enough for the Eden Prairie schools, who are asking for additional tax funding from local residents.

The Revolving Door: Outgoing Democrat Politician Edition

Ending the speculation about his next step, outgoing Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak announced that he will be running the educational non-profit Generation Next when he leaves office in January.

The three-term Democrat mayor will become the group’s executive director and will focus his efforts on reducing the achievement gap among minority students.  Good for him, I hope his efforts find great success.

In what has become an automatic perk for outgoing Democrat officials, Rybak will also be teaching a class at the University of Minnesota.

On the Media: Signal-to-Noise Ratio Edition

One thing that I’ve learned in three years of public commentary is that, in order to comment on public affairs, it is necessary to be a critic and student of the media.

I also have learned that little of the content in the media—however defined—represents actual information. 

In Praise of Political Parties

In this space, I’ve documented how a single Democrat donor—Alida Rockefeller Messinger—has leased Minnesota’s politics for the past decade or so for the bargain-basement price of $1 million per year, give or take.  Perhaps she is ready to pass the porch to another donor.  The names may change at the top of the table, but the party label does not.

The vehicle that Messinger has used to secure power in our state has been the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and its fundraising arm, WIN Minnesota.  Both entities are organized as 501(c)(4) tax-exempt charities.  According to its most recent publically-available IRS income tax return, Messinger serves on WIN Minnesota’s board of directors.
 

The Shape of Things to Come

Bear with me, in this edition of the Column, I will be tying together a few loose threads that, when linked together, may help to explain our otherwise inexplicable national situation.

Thread 1: Rasmussen Reports does a weekly tracking poll of whether Americans think our country is heading is the right direction or the wrong direction.  Not surprisingly, in this Federal shutdown month of October, the “right direction” numbers have been registering in the teens, while the “wrong” direction crowd has numbered in the 80’s.

What is surprising is that 17 percent of Americans think we are going in the right direction.  I’m surprised the number is that high because, if pressed, I’m not sure that I can describe what direction we’re headed in.  Not that I think there is any consensus among the 80 percent, who feel otherwise, about what direction we should be headed in.

The Moderate Impulse

Now that the Federal government shut down has ended, the debt ceiling raised, and the republic saved—at least for another few months—we can step back and contemplate, “What next?”

As per the Feiler Faster Thesis, the American public has already moved on, concerned with the implosion of Obamacare and the latest antics of the Kardashian clan.

Inside the Beltway, the recriminations continue: credit must be apportioned; blame must be cast before the political feels ready to lurch toward the next manufactured crisis.

Met Council: Doing Real Damage

I have written recently [here, here, and here] about the plans of the Met Council regional government to undertake a radical redesign of the area’s housing and transit patterns under the banner of its Thrive MSP 2040 plan.

For its part, the Met Council says they are responding to changing housing preferences: namely the desire of young millennials and empty-nester baby boomers to live downtown.  But what if the assumptions underlying Met Council’s planning are exactly wrong?

Three-Card Monte Government

Having never fallen off a turnip truck, in all my years of urban living I’ve never participated in a game of Three-Card Monte. 

For my more rustic friends, this playing card con game works exactly like the old shell game and is designed to separate the unwary mark from his money.

Minnesota taxpayers, like the hapless card players, can’t keep up with the shell game of our tax money.  We think we are paying in our hard-earned tax dollars into the public treasury for the public good, but through accounting slight-of-hand, the money disappears into the hands of private interests.

Met Council Rides into Town on a Smile and a Shoeshine

This morning I was able to attend a Twin Cities North Chamber of Commerce forum on the Met Council’s Thrive MSP 2040 plan for the seven-county metro region.

Defending the Met Council’s vision for urban, transit-oriented growth was council member Jon Commers, who represents western St. Paul.  Raising questions about this exercise in central planning was Katherine Kersten of the Center of the American Experiment, a non-profit think tank.

 

The Banana Republic of Minnesota: Render Unto Caesar Edition

Minnesota’s Commissioner of Revenue, Myron Frans, penned a column in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The column’s disingenuousness is matched only by the complete inappropriateness of the exercise.

Commissioner Frans opens his piece as follows,

I'll take the Minnesota way any day:  Tax policy and investment under Gov. Mark Dayton has produced results.

He goes on to say,

This year, we [Gov. Mark Dayton and I] worked with the DFL majority in the Legislature to pass a fair and balanced budget.

For those readers who do not follow Minnesota politics, Gov. Dayton is a Democrat and DFL is the local branch of the Democrat party, abbreviated for Democrat-Farmer-Labor.

The Banana Republic of Minnesota: Now It Can Be Told

In a late-summer series of posts, I described how the Minnesota arm of Obamacare, MNsure, was going to distribute taxpayer-funded grants for “outreach” to loyal Democrat and liberal interests.  In a twist only Nancy Pelosi would appreciate, MNsure would only reveal the identity of grantees and the dollar amounts involved once the checks went out.

Now it can be told.  Today, MNsure announced the grantees and the dollars.

The Democrats' Met Council Plays the Long Game

The Twin Cities’ regional government, the Metropolitan Council, is embarking on an ambitious exercise in central planning for a 7-county area under the banner of Thrive MSP 2040.  As reported in local media, the Met Council hopes to completely remake the landscape of the metro region.  The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported last month,

Young "millennials" and the gray-haired baby boomers leading the so-called "silver tsunami" are rejecting big, outer-ring townhomes and looking for more modestly sized housing near transit, jobs and services.

For the seven-county Twin Cities area, population growth will be centered in St. Paul, Minneapolis and the developed inner-ring suburbs for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, growth will continue in the less-developed edges--but more slowly than previously thought.

Those are the latest predictions from the Metropolitan Council, which on Wednesday released preliminary population figures that forecast the metro growing by 893,000 residents by 2040

As I’ve written before, this view of the Metro’s future is based entirely on wishful thinking.  There are no trends visible in actual census data that would justify the Council’s shift to promoting core urban growth at the expense of suburban growth.

 

Minnesota’s New Feudalism

I’ve written lately of the transformation of the North Star state under the one-party rule of the Democrats under the banner of The Banana Republic of Minnesota.

Author Joel Kotkin has taken to describing the transformation of his home state of California under one-party Democrat rule as the New Feudalism.  Since Minnesota’s liberal progressives see the Golden State as a model for all of America, Kotkin’s analysis may give us a glimpse into our own future.
 

Follow the Money: SEIU Edition

In a recent post, I touched on the activities of the Minnesota chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  Even among labor unions, at the national level, SEIU has a reputation for strongly supporting President Obama.  In this post, I dig into SEIU’s involvement in the 2012 elections.

The Invisible Koch Brothers

A lot partisans won’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.  For many on the left, the brothers David and Charles Koch—oil industry billionaires and Republican donors—collectively serve as Emmanuel Goldstein and all-purpose bogeyman to frighten the children of progressives at bedtime.

But facts are stubborn things, and the Koch Brothers have been non-factors in Minnesota politics.

A few years back, the left-leaning Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper did a series on money in state politics.  It tracked political donations from January 1, 2001 through August 2008.

Number 1 on the top 200 donor list was Alida Rockefeller Messinger—ex-wife of current Democrat Governor Mark Dayton—giving a total of $9,165,357 during the eight-year period.  The next highest amount was $7 million lower.  For more than a decade, Minnesota’s politics has been dominated by a single leftist donor, with access to the nearly limitless Rockefeller oil fortune.

A man named David A. Koch is ranked 20^th on the list, donating $438,360, barely ahead of a few lesser members of the Dayton family.  He is not the David H. Koch of Koch Brothers fame.  George Soros appears on the list at 44^th.  Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos ranks at 50^th.  NBA commissioner David Stern appears on the list at 102^nd.

Neither Koch Brother appears on the top 200 list.

Anatomy of Bias: New York Times [Updated]

Media bias is turning out to be the theme of the week.  In this edition of “Anatomy of Bias,” we take a look at a national story with a suspiciously local angle.

The Dead End Sitting in the Middle of the Road

How Political Centrism Always Leads to Bigger Government

As it does once a month, this Sunday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a commentary written by the state’s designated political centrists, former Democrat Congressman Tim Penny and former Independent candidate for governor, Tom Horner.

This month’s theme from Messrs. Penny and Horner was the Federal government shutdown, “If Congress won't lead, others must.”  They write,

A full-fledged debate over the appropriate role of government at the beginning of the 21st century is overdue. However, instead of a thoughtful discussion that explores legitimate ideological differences regarding the size and role of government, we hear only each side blaming the other.

I don’t know about Penny and Horner, but I hear that debate every day.  The problem is not a lack of debate, but that true “balanced solutions” cannot exist when the “ideological differences” are ones of kind and not degree. 

The Anatomy of Bias: Minnesota Public Radio

You would think that, at this late hour in the proceedings, the question of whether the legacy news media exhibit political bias would be settled.  And for the most part it is.  Polling conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2012 indicates that 67 percent of the population believes that the media is biased either “a fair amount” or “a great deal.”  Pew reports that,

The number of Americans who believe there is a great deal of political bias in news coverage has edged up to [a record] 37% from 31% four years ago.  Republicans continue to express more concern about media bias than do Democrats, but the rise in recent years has occurred across party lines.

Still, it’s a lesson worth relearning from time to time.  A more interesting question would be how such biases present themselves.  It is still relatively rare that a legacy media figure will make flat out statements along the lines of “Republicans are bad, Democrats are good.”

 

The Age of Herbert Stein

Even with the warm weather lingering into October, I’m declaring an end to summer and marking the return of The Column.

We have entered Day Two of a Federal government shutdown, the latest in a series of a dozen-and-a-half such shutdowns that have occurred over the past forty years or so.

The latest deadlock between Congress and the President is the result of the unbridgeable divide between the parties that I’ve been writing about for the past two years.  The differences between Democrats and Republicans are ones of kind, not of degree.  Since there is no overlap in what the two parties want, there is no natural point of compromise.

More interesting than the national story is the local dispute between the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians.  This dispute/lockout/strike had dragged on for more than a year and has cost the Orchestra its celebrity conductor and more than a full season worth of concerts.

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters, Part 4

In this series, I chronicle the activities of Public Safety Matters Campaign, a police-union-backed effort to defeat Republican candidates for the Minnesota State Legislature in 2012.

Until very recently, Republicans and police unions tended to get along.  In Part 2 of this series, I note how Republican Tim Pawlenty received police union support in both of his runs (2002, 2006) for Minnesota Governor.

 

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters, Part 3

In Part 1 of this series, I introduce the Democrat-supporting political expenditure group Public Safety Matters Campaign.  In Part 2 of this series, I did deeper into the organizations behind the effort and the Minnesota Republicans they targeted in the 2012 election.

During the waning days of the 2012 election, I received four Public Safety mailers.  Each was a large, two-sided color postcard [1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B] attacking Keith Downey in his run for the State Senate.

The first three words of Mailer No. 1 describe Downey as “Incumbent Keith Downey.”  At the time, Downey was a member of the State House of Representatives.  He was not running for re-election to the House, but rather was running for an open Senate seat.  In no sense of the word was Keith a Senate incumbent.  Truth is always the first casualty.

The thrust of the mailer is a variation on the old “Fireman First” political strategy: since Downey didn’t vote to increase the state’s budget as much as Democrat Governor Mark Dayton wanted, he was guilty of voting for devastating cuts to the budget.  Police, firemen, and other vital services are always the first casualty of these “cuts,” cleverly disguised as massive budget increases.

The mailers trot out the left’s favorite victims.  They contain footnotes that support none of the claims made in the text.  The group’s donors were not disclosed until well after the new legislature was sworn in.  Standard stuff from the left these days.

All of this is to be expected from Democrat partisans.  What was surprising about these mailers was the list of recipients.  At the time I received the mailers, I was the Republican-nominee for Downey’s House seat.  That I and other solid Republicans received this mailing revealed part of the strategy: to paint Downey as a “soft-on-crime” politician and depress turnout and support from Republicans and conservatives.  Those who know Downey immediately saw the falsehoods behind the campaign.  Newer residents of the district and residents of the larger Senate District not having Downey as their Representative, however, may have been fooled.  In a race as close as 2012’s, all it takes is a few lies to swing the election.

Expect the same tactics to re-appear in 2014.  Desperate to hang onto power and with a disastrous 2013 record that can’t be defended, Minnesota’s Democrats will tell any lie and spend any amount of money to maintain their one-party rule.

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters, Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the recently-created political group Public Safety Matters Campaign.  This less-than-year-old group had an outsized influence in the 2012 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature by going after Republican candidates on an issue that is usually one of their strengths: law enforcement.

In this part, I take a look at the targets of the group’s 2012 campaign.

 

In the Matter of Public Safety Matters Campaign, Part 1

As Minneapolis Star Tribune political reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger famously wrote on Twitter earlier this month, 

There’s still more stories hidden in the last decade worth of spending on Minnesota Legislature races.  More to Come.

Never were truer words spoken.  Consider the curious case of Public Safety Matters Campaign.  Public safety, in this sense, means law enforcement, police.

Established on October 1, 2012, in the waning days of the 2012 election, Public Safety Matters Campaign has no Chair.  Its treasurer is Dennis Flaherty, the executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association (MPPOA).  The address for the two groups is the same St. Paul location.

All Things Considered, Again

In the first part of this series, I discussed the sponsorship by the state government agency MNsure of the news programming of Minnesota Public Radio.  In this post, I discuss some of the troubling aspects of this business relationship.

Minnesota Public Radio is a private, non-profit corporation, organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.  Its parent company, the St. Paul-based American Public Media Group, is also organized as a 501(c)(3).

American Public Media owns companies across the country, from South Florida, to Southern California, the Rocky Mountains, and across the Midwest.  According to its most recent Federal tax return, American Public Media Group had annual revenue[1] of $18,655,077, earning[2] a respectable profit of $339,897.

Last year, its current CEO, Jon McTaggart, was paid[3] $494,497.  Its outgoing CEO, William Kling, was paid[4] $541,183.  American Public Media owns three, for-profit[5] companies.