Minnesota in the News, Feb. 1

Part I: Election 2008, Farm Subsidies

Lots of Minnesota related news today, so this will be a series of short takes in several parts:

Robert Novak reports on the 2008 Senate race and the 1st Congressional District race in his Feb. 1 edition of the Evans-Novak Political Report. Conclusions? Novak terms Coleman “perhaps the most endangered incumbent senator in 2008″ and says that Gutknecht won’t be running to regain his seat as he is selling “his well-located Capitol Hill condo and leav[ing] everything behind — including all of his furniture and even his Select Comfort bed.”

more insideBush wants to cut off farm subsidies to those earning more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income. Democrats have been proposing such a ceiling for years; Paul Wellstone was a particularly vocal advocate of subsidy reform. Yet this puts Minnesota congressman Collin Peterson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, in a precarious position. Peterson, a conservative Democrat, has long been a champion for farmers at all income levels, and has unabashedly said he supports earmarks, which he claims his primarily rural district needs in order to get funding for its miles of open country roads.

This would put him in somewhat of a conflict to his fellow congressman, newcomer Tim Walz, also a member of the Agriculture Committee. Walz’s district relies heavily on an agricultural base as well, and part of his successful campaign strategy in 2006 was to call for accountability in congressional earmarks.

Knowing these two men