Consider the career of Minneapolis Democrat politician Mark Andrew. He served on the Hennepin County Commission
from 1983 to 1999. According to his
LinkedIn profile, Andrew then joined the public relations firm Tunheim, and
served as a Senior Vice President until 2006.
Tunheim claims
credit for leading the effort to create a new baseball park for the
Minnesota Twins during this period, one of Andrew's
clients at the firm. The ballpark,
Target Field, is coincidentally owned
and financed by the good taxpayers of Hennepin County
After leaving Tunheim in 2006 to develop his GreenMark firm, Andrew’s
business took off in 2010 with the completion of the new Twins field (named for
Target, a Tunheim client). The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on June,
22, 2010,
Three years into an entrepreneurial foray into the
greening of America 's
professional sports, former politician and communications consultant Mark
Andrew is starting to make some green.
Andrew, [then] 58, is a former Hennepin
County commissioner who championed the
Hennepin County
Around the time that the Twins were taking the field in the
inaugural season at the new County-owned stadium, Andrew’s firm was really
taking off, as the Star Tribune
reported in 2010,
"Everything I made until this year, mostly some
consulting, all went back into the company," Andrew said. "We will have something close to $1
million in revenue this year, before we pay our [two] employees, contractors
and consultants. That will be three
times bigger than last year."
He said the company makes money two ways. One is consulting for the Twins and others,
including the managers of Target
Center
While Mark Andrew was starting to make it big with
GreenMark, another Mark, former U.S. Senator Dayton, was locked in a fierce
election battle for Governor of Minnesota.
Mark Andrew, a former Chair of the state Democrat party,
contributed $200 to Dayton ’s campaign that year
and another $150 in 2011 to Dayton ’s
re-election effort. In 2013 and 2014,
Andrew donated an additional $1,250 to Dayton ’s
campaign for a second term.
When Dayton
took office as Governor in 2011, one of his early
appointments was to name Tunheim head partner Kathy Tunheim as his Senior
Advisor for Job Creation at the Minneapolis Department of Employment and
Economic Development (DEED).
The Tunheim firm boasts an impressive client list. The list goes well beyond the Twins to
include everything from major corporations to the controversial
construction company URS, to state government agencies, like the Met
Council, to local governments, like Hennepin County, to renewable energy
companies to major nonprofits.
Among the many other appointments that a new governor makes
are the members of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), the governing
authority of the Minneapolis-St.
Paul International
Airport
According to a spokesperson for MAC, the state government
agency hired Andrew and GreenMark in 2011 to develop a solar power project (see Part 1) at
the facility. According to MAC, it paid
GreenMark a total of $65,021 in fees from 2011 to 2012.
In 2013, Andrew ran for Mayor of Minneapolis , finishing 2nd in the
multi-candidate race.
In 2014, the solar project was officially announced by
Governor Dayton and Mark Andrew last week, along with a new study of green
energy issued by DEED.
I’m told by the MAC spokesman that GreenMark has been hired
for additional work involving partnership marketing at the airport facility.
As for the Xcel Energy-sponsored (Tunheim and GreenMark
client) solar project at the airport, if I understand the economics correctly,
it will produce $35 million in total revenue over the next 30 years. Assuming the revenue is level over the life
of the project, it will pay for itself after 21 years, if the equipment lasts
that long.
A 21-year payback is no great shakes in corporate America , but it
is good enough in the Banana Republic of Minnesota.
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