The doll — dressed in a Dracula cape and dubbed the “Re-Count” — was conceived the day after Election Day 2008. Coleman’s legal challenge outlasted the off-season, so the Saints were able to give the prizes to fans before state courts confirmed Franken’s recount win.

It’s the second year in a row that the Saints have earned industry praise for a politically-themed promotion.

Last year the minor-league baseball club nabbed Ballpark Digest’s top “Promotion of the Year” award for its toe-tapping bobblefoot giveaway — a miniature bathroom stall memorializing U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s antics in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Other winning efforts this year included a Mega-Candy Drop, Gluttony Nights and Kids Eat Free. No other team was honored for promotional work in the political sphere. It’s unclear whether that counts towards Minnesota’s top ranking on civic-life indicators.

L to R: 2007, 2008, 2009

The Republican National Convention. Michele Bachmann at Living Word church. The Flying Imams. Larry Craig in the airport bathroom. Norm Coleman’s donor database breach. The “missing” Somali youth. Candidate Palin and President Obama. The Franken/Coleman recount.

Since our launch as the Minnesota Monitor in late summer 2006, the Minnesota Independent has published nearly 8,000 stories on an array of topics, winning a bunch of awards and having a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

Join us for a special birthday happy hour at the Red Stag Supper Club on Thursday, Sept. 10 from 6 to 8 pm, and give us a hand (ahem) in celebrating our third birthday!

Photo: Dierdre Conde, Flickr

Alleged anti-gay harassment at the hands of teachers at a north metro school district cost taxpayers $25,000, the Star Tribune reports. The settlement addresses exactly the kind of hostile school environment an anti-bullying bill vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty was supposed to address.

Two Anoka-Hennepin School District teachers, Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson, were accused of harassing a student they believed to be gay during the 2007-2008 school year, but those allegations were resolved in an out-of-court settlement of $25,000, paid out by the school.

Referencing the scandal involving Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, Cleveland reportedly asked the male student, “Would you like to have [another allegedly gay student] go with you so he can sit in the stall next to you and stomp his foot?”

Filson compared the the student to a Wisconsin man who had sex with a dead deer, according to a Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation. A classmate quipped, “Hey, Mr. Filson, doesn’t that sound like something [the student perceived to be gay] would do?” The teacher laughed at the comment and agreed, according to the complaint.

Cleveland reportedly told the class the boy had a “thing for older men” after he wrote a paper on Benjamin Franklin, and also told the students his “fence swings both ways.” When the boy reported on Abraham Lincoln, Filson likewise said the boy likes his “men older.” He also allegedly said the student “enjoys wearing women’s clothes.”

In the most recent legislative session, a bipartisan bill, the Safe Schools for All Act, aimed at addressing hostile school environments passed the Minnesota Legislature only to be met with a veto by Gov. Pawlenty who said in his veto message that the bill was “unnecessary.”

Advocates decried the veto. “The Safe Schools for All bill is smart public policy, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as a diverse coalition of people representing disability, immigrant, education, religious and child welfare concerns,” said Monica Meyer, public policy director for OutFront at the time. “It’s a sad day for Minnesota.”

Sean Aronson, the Saints’ media relations director, says the marketing team came up with the idea the day after the recount started, but no one had any idea the election battle was to last so long. “Nobody likes to see this go on forever,” he told the Minnesota Independent. “But in a way, we’ve benefited from it. This is really relevant.”

He doesn’t expect the new doll to be as popular as, say, the Bobblefoot, which has sold for more than $200 on Ebay (here’s one with a buy-it-now price of $189), but he’s certain “people are going to want this.”

Perhaps the collector’s value would go up were it a talking doll. But that’s something Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley is glad didn’t happen, he told the Saints. “Norm-Al will look great on someone’s shelf — silently.”

Here’s a look at the team’s political promotions:

Larry Craig Photo: WDCpix

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s mistake wasn’t letting the clock run out on appealing his airport bathroom sex-solicitation case to the Minnesota Supreme Court — it was bringing the wrong case in the first place. That’s the view of Charles Samuelson, executive director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN), who thinks that a refusal to acknowledge his homosexuality impeded Craig’s ability to make his legal arguments.

In an interview with the Minnesota Independent, Samuleson didn’t disagree with Craig attorney Tom Kelly, who said that asking the state’s high court to take the former Idaho senator’s appeal “would have been a futile exercise.”

“[The Supreme Court] can only take what his lawyers bring,” Samuelson said, and Craig had his attorneys bring only “a very small and limited technical issue about his guilty plea.”

But Samuelson said an appeal might have been effective had Craig made civil liberties arguments that the ACLU-MN raised in a friend-of-the-court brief. “Our issues would probably be more attractive to the [state] Supreme Court,” Samuelson said.

The ACLU-MN asserted that Craig’s arrest in a police sting meant to ensnare men seeking gay sex at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men’s room was a classic example of government suppression of unpopular speech.

“The problem is he was reluctant to say he’s a gay man,” Samuelson said, adding that Craig’s recent retirement from office likely lowered the stakes beyond the point at which Craig would press his case, no matter what the issue.

The Metropolitan Airport Commission (MAC), whose police set up the sting and pursued charges against Craig, seems to be in a similar frame of mind. The MAC, which is now fighting hard to extract as many dollars as possible from Delta Air Lines, turned away an apparently serious offer to buy, for $5,000, the bathroom stall where Craig’s alleged foot-tapping sex solicitation took place.

“We would not want to do that to the senator,” MAC spokesperson Patrick Hogan said.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission told staff Tuesday to renegotiate a draft deal that would ease a repayment requirement of $245 million bond debt under promises Northwest made to keep its headquarters here, the Pioneer Press reports. Now that Delta owns Northwest and intends to break that promise, the MAC wants to exact new pledges on money and jobs — but how much and for how long is at issue.

Meanwhile, in the legislative session that started Tuesday, elected representatives will take up schemes to make money through airport privatization inspired by a lucrative, 99-year deal at Chicago’s Midway Airport. But, writes Conrad deFiebre at Minnesota 2020 (via), there’s a more local lesson for legislators in the sad tale of the Twin Cities’ once-public transit system that private owners (including the just-deceased Carl Pohlad) drove into the ground four decades ago, necessitating a new public bailout.

The agency that runs the airport refused an apparently serious offer to buy the men’s room stall made famous by Craig’s 2007 conviction for disorderly conduct in a sex-solicitation sting operation by the airport police. The Metropolitan Airport Commission (MAC) spurned the $5,000 offer, which arrived by certified mail, according to MAC spokesperson Patrick Hogan.

“We would not want to do that to the senator,” Hogan told the Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane, Wash., which is just over the state line from Craig’s home state of Idaho. “We’d want to treat this case like we do any other, and we don’t sell fixtures for novelty purposes.”

Read more and see those intact fixtures for yourself in a new YouTube video after the jump.

Craig tried to take back his guilty plea, but – unlike issuing a presidential pardon – copping to a misdemeanor is irrevocable. That’s what the state Court of Appeals told Craig when it rejected his appeal earlier this month.

The revelation about the rebuffed purchase offer is part of a story on Hogan’s claim that sight-seers’ “special interest” in the bathroom has dwindled since Craig’s arrest. The men’s room’s status as a tourist attraction ended the gay cruising activity that the MAC police sting had targeted, Hogan said. That in turn allowed MAC officials to reverse their decision to extend stall walls to meet the floor, a project that would have cost several times the amount of the would-be stall-buyer’s offer.

The airport survived a boycott by Craig supporters only to find the MAC in heavy talks with Delta to renegotiate Northwest’s contracts following the airlines’ merger. The publicly owned and operated airport even faces privatization threats in the state legislative session that starts next month. By not remodeling the mens’ room, the airport commission can argue it has saved enough to afford its high-minded refusal to play-for-pay with at least one well-heeled sex-scandal devotee.

Still, Hogan sounded more like an enthusiastic tour guide than the spokesman for a thrifty public agency when he gushed, “The restroom looks exactly as it was when the senator was arrested.”

Here is a video re-enactment of Craig’s visit to the Minnesota airport men’s room, released Monday by satellite radio talk show host Michelangelo Signorile:

Larry Craig Photo: WDCpix

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) cannot withdraw his guilty plea in the infamous 2007 Minneapolis-St. Paul airport bathroom sex case, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today in an “unpublished” opinion. That means Craig is stuck with having copped in District Court to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct for allegedly signaling an interest in engaging in sex via foot taps from one restroom stall to another in which an undercover police officer was staked out.

The decision’s “unpublished” status means the court doesn’t want its ruling used as precedent in future cases — interesting, in view of charges that Craig sought special treatment or was being singled out for preferential or especially harsh treatment because of his status as a U.S. senator. Craig issued this statement:

I am extremely disappointed by the action of the Minnesota Court of Appeals. I disagree with their conclusion and remain steadfast in my belief that nothing criminal or improper occurred at the Minneapolis airport. I maintain my innocence, and currently my attorneys and I are reviewing the decision and looking into the possibility of appealing. I would like to thank all of those who have continued to support me and my family throughout this difficult time.

Whether the 28-year Senate veteran who is retiring this year plans an appeal isn’t known; Craig’s office has not yet returned a phone call to the Minnesota Independent. One recorded message said the staff was busy boxing up his files.

The case hinged on Craig’s plea, as cited in today’s ruling:

I am pleading guilty to the charge of Disorderly Conduct as alleged because on June 11, 2007, within the property or jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Airports Commission, Hennepin County, specifically in the restroom of the North Star Crossing in the Lindbergh Terminal, I did the following: Engaged in conduct which I knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment or [sic] others, which conduct was physical (versus verbal) in nature.

And the offense that’s at the root of all this? As cited in today’s opinion:

The complaint stated that appellant “peered” into the restroom stall occupied by the officer for as long as two minutes and that the officer “observed the Defendant tap his foot several more times and move his foot closer to the stall occupied by [the officer.  The officer] moved his own foot up and down slowly.  [The officer] observed the Defendant move his right foot so that it touched [the officer‟s] left foot, at which point the Defendant‟s foot was within the stall area of the stall occupied by [the officer].”

Hudson, Toussaint and Kalitowski

A three-judge panel consisting of Judge Natalie E. Hudson, Chief Judge Edward Toussaint, Jr., and Judge Thomas J. Kalitowski issued the decision. The opinion has two parts. First, the panel denied Craig’s arguments that his plea wasn’t specific about what action he was pleading to, and that there wasn’t an adequate judicial record of the hearing where his written plea was entered. (There is a record, the judges said; Craig simply didn’t provide them with a transcript.) It was Craig’s fault, the judges wrote, that he didn’t ask for a second hearing to establish what had occurred at the first — but at the time, Craig was still hoping to keep the case hush-hush.

The court didn’t buy Craig’s insistence that no “others” were bothered by his conduct (besides the officer in the next stall) as the charge requires. The judges said they took “others” to mean people who were also in the restroom at the time, and anyway the presence of “others” beyond one other person can be theoretical.

Craig’s late-in-coming entrapment defense also didn’t move the judges, who found that, for one thing, the senator initiated the bathroom dialog, and for another, failing to assert entrapment isn’t grounds to take back a guilty plea.

In the second part of the opinion, the Court of Appeals panel found that the law under which Craig was charged does not inhibit free speech to an overly broad extent. The senator knew that his foot-tapping might “arouse ‘alarm, anger or resentment’” as required under the law, and also that it was an invasion of privacy.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) filed an amicus brief in the appeal at the request of Craig’s attorneys, ACLU-MN Executive Director Chuck Samuelson told MnIndy in an interview today. Samuelson conceded that the Court of Appeals “didn’t like our arguments,” which focused on the free-speech aspects of the case. But he contends, “Their reasoning is wrong.”

They talked about the language ‘to arouse’ … that inciting language. They say [Craig] was doing it. But they ignored that the guy who started it [the airport police sergeant] was not Craig [the official charge quoted above notwithstanding].

Frankly the court is really conflicted on this one. My gut tells me they just wanted this case to go away. The ACLU’s position in these sorts of laws have been used against gay men for a long, long time. If the police were concerned about public sex in the bathroom, then they should have followed best practices of police departments — put a sign on door, send cops through … the activity will probably disappear from that restroom and move someplace else. …

This really is entrapment, in our opinion. There is a line there that we think this sergeant crossed. By [the court's] reasoning the police officer is more guilty than Craig.

This a classic first amendment case of government suppression of unpopular speech. If this is inappropriate, what’s the status in heterosexual pickup bars? They [Craig and the officer] weren’t engaging in or planning on having sex in the bathroom. They were planning it [for somewhere else].

There is a double standard. Speech is speech. This never got more than speech. You can’t regulate this speech and then not regulate the speech of heterosexual people. … We don’t have police officers posing as [sexually available] women or whatever. …  The antidote to bad speech is more speech — the sign on the door [prohibiting bathroom sex].

With this ruling, Craig regains his rightful place as Minnesota’s most prominent issue of public-sex-in-a-bathroom-stall — eclipsing the more recent occurrence at the Metrodome during a University of Minnesota football game, where a sex act actually took place in a bathroom stall.

“The conduct at the football game,” Samuelson says, “now that was conduct.”

The Obama campaign logo is among the 72 contenders for this year’s People’s Design Award, a project of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Voting, which is open to the public, now has the mark in fourth place, well ahead of John McCain’s logo. When I logged on, the Republican’s entry appeared just beside the technological wonder he claims to have invented — the BlackBerry. 

Likewise, politics dominates the finalists in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ “Cover of the Year” contest.

Despite McCain hurling the “celebrity” epithet at Obama (ironically, while at the same time, FEC records show the Republican paying $5,500 to the American Idol makeup artist for services rendered), neither men make the best celebrity covers. Of the 27 best covers across all categories, McCain and Obama together grace one, a New York magazine cover showing a photoshopped version of the pair on a beach. Obama is featured on two others, one for TIME and another for the New Yorker, which renders in ink Obama in bed beside Hillary Clinton awaiting the dreaded “3 a.m. call.”

Other political entries: The classic New Yorker cover showing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a Larry Craig-esque bathroom stall game of tap-tap. Getting three finalist nods is New York magazine’s cover showing sex-scandal-plagued former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. An arrow pointing to his crotch ends, in Barbara Kruger’s trademark red and white, with a single, stout word: “BRAIN.”

With another convention in the wings, I contacted the artists to see if they had any updates to their self-published book, GOP 100: Deconstructing Dumbo. While they said the book is still fresh four years later and doesn’t necessarily need updating, they had one: a retitled piece showing an elephant in prison stripes (reminiscent of this year’s convention logo). It’s now called “Larry Craig.” But Sockwell, who has created illustrations for clients from the New York Times and Apple to Newsweek and the U.S. Holocaust Museum, agreed to share some illustrations from the book here, along with each work’s title. And next week, he’ll give MnIndy an exclusive illustration that traces the evolution of the Democratic donkey and Republican elephant logos.