Campaign ads

The national chapter of the Sierra Club has launched an ad attacking Rep. Michele Bachmann for what the group says are close ties to the oil industry. The ads are in their second week of a two-week run on television stations in Bachmann’s district, according to Sierra Club Action, the political wing of the environmental [...]

The furor over the Stupak amendment banning abortion in the House health bill was already highly charged. Now one conservative commentator has dared touch the third rail in the right-to-choose debate: optional knee surgery.

U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen is one of 33 Republicans in Congress who have “a giant target on their back” after voting against an overhaul of health-care system Saturday. That’s according to the Democratic National Committee, which announced plans to target Paulsen and other GOP reps whose districts voted for President Obama in 2008.

DFL Party sample ballot mailings that were supposed to arrive Friday or Saturday still had not reached some Minneapolis mailboxes as of Monday. Minneapolis DFL chair Dan McConnell says the party has been working with the postal service to locate undelivered sample ballots and get them to their destinations by today, Election Day.

They are called “pre-general” campaign-finance reports, but with the general election in Minneapolis only a day away, many candidates’ reports have yet to be filed, according to a website maintained by Hennepin County. In select races that could be close and have reports posted, the money race gives an indication of what the candidates had to work with in the closing days of their campaigns.

The Republican Party of Minnesota uses an intriguing analogy on a postcard to Minneapolis voters: “One-party rule isn’t working in America … or Minneapolis.” But Democrats’ dominance of national government is still a work in progress compared to the DFL’s long lock on Minneapolis, so the slogan’s logic might work better in reverse: “One-party rule [...]

Ward One in Minneapolis’ northeast corner is brimming with resentments and possibilities, to hear candidates for an open city council seat there tell it. A week from Election Day, a crowd of 75 packed the Northeast Library for a Ward One candidate forum. They were treated to a smorgasbord of back-to-basics rhetoric, with a side of chips on the shoulder.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman caps off the long version of his new TV ad by quoting hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s advice to skate to where the puck will be. It’s a quote Gov. Pawlenty has been using for years, as Brian Bakst of the Associated Press notes. Indeed, it’s a favorite among consultants, businessmen and [...]

After citizens approved instant-runoff voting (IRV) in November 2006, it took Minneapolis more than a year to start looking for machines that could count IRV ballots. Then officials rejected the machines they found. Now the city that once made the world’s fastest supercomputers expects to employ 100 election judges for eight weeks to conduct a full hand-count of next month’s city election. Judging by their campaigns, candidates for city office haven’t cottoned much faster to the new system.

A new web ad by a Georgia candidate for governor next year shows what the new-media future could hold for Minnesota’s own 2010 gubernatorial contest. “The Ox vs. King Roy The Rat,” an animated attack by Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine on former Gov. Roy Barnes, is going viral as possibly the worst political ad ever. [...]