Feingold to headline Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis

Netroots Nation had a strong Minnesota presence last year: Sen. Al Franken gave the keynote, and as he finished up, he announced that the progressive blog conference would be hosted by Minneapolis in 2011. Today, another midwestern angle was announced: Franken’s former Senate colleague, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, will be giving an address to kick off the June 16-19 summit.

Feingold, whose name has been brought up repeatedly as a challenger to Gov. Scott Walker next election or should a recall effort be successful in the Badger State, referenced the turmoil in his state over Walker’s efforts to gut the ability of state employees’ unions to collectively bargain.

“If you’ve been following what’s going on in Wisconsin, then you’re seeing what I’m seeing: the ever-increasing, corruptive power of corporations that continue to invade our system of government,” he wrote in an email sent Thursday by Netroots Nation. “Many of you have already been hard at work standing up for the American people and fighting back against the hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate special interests. But our real fight is ahead, as special interests will try to buy their way to victory in 2012.”

“Change won’t come easy,” he continued. “We’ll need to support candidates who will work for the people. We’ll need to call out the media — something the Netroots does well — when they hide from the real story. And we’ll need to keep the pressure on Congress and those in Washington who oppose real change.”

Feingold, who lost his Senate seat in the anti-incumbent GOP sweep last election, “will be Wisconsin’s next governor,” according to Matt Rothschild, publisher of the Madison-based magazine The Progressive. Salon, meanwhile, called Feingold Democrats’ “dream recall candidate.” But there are large obstacles to overcome should he get a chance to challenge Walker, Salon’s Steve Kornacki notes, including a recall, which he calls “one of the more onerous recall procedures when it comes to governors”:

Petitioners would need to gather signatures equivalent to 25 percent of the total number of votes cast in the previous statewide election, and they’d have only 60 days to do it. By contrast, California (where Gov. Gray Davis was successfully recalled in 2003) requires signatures equivalent to only 12 percent of the votes cast in the previous election, with a 160-day window.

Feingold now heads Progressives United, a political action committee founded in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United and aimed at creating “a massive grassroots effort dedicated to mitigating the effects of, and eventually overturning” the ruling, which, as the group’s website puts it, “undercut one hundred years of precedent, and declared that corporations have the same political rights as individuals.”