Of course, they weren’t really Palin’s purchases — and that’s another Minneapolis connection in the Times story. Jeff Larson, the locally-bred Republican consultant whose FLS Connect GOP phone-solicitation firm has been in the news again lately, fronted Palin the $130,000 for her clothes. (The Republican National Committee paid him back.)

The occasion for retelling the story of Palin’s Minneapolis shopping spree is her new book, in which Palin has her own version.

The Times interviews Lisa Kline, the designer who dressed Palin and the members of her family for the 2008 GOP convention. An excerpt:

Neiman Marcus opened for Ms. Kline and her assistant at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, she said, and the two split up and spent a rushed 90 minutes or so gathering what they needed. Ms. Palin and her family were not there; nor was anyone from the campaign. Instead, the two stylists relied on a couple of salesclerks and a store manager.

“There was no conversation. There was no chitchat. It was just, ‘We need two pairs of pants in size yadada,’ ” Ms. Kline said. The purchases were rung up, but Ms. Kline was not asked for payment of any kind.

“Apparently it had been prearranged,” she said. …

Ms. Kline said she does not recall who asked her to expand her styling to the entire Palin family or who set up the appointment at Neiman Marcus, which later became so controversial because it undermined the candidate’s image as a populist.

The Burberry brand that Palin favors has had a bad rap back in Britain as having become too populist:

During the 1970s, the brand became popular with the British football casual cult, leading to it to being associated with chavs, hooligans and members of football firms by the 1990s. The brand became something of a national joke, particularly when actress Danniella Westbrook was photographed with her young daughter wearing matching Burberry outfits. South Wales police ran a drive against anti-social behaviour under the name Operation Burberry and Burberry admitted that “Burberry is now synonymous with Chavs and thugs.”

Palin will make a return visit to Minnesota on her book tour, with a stop at the Mall of America on Dec. 7. (But don’t go there dressed like a chav in your Burberrys, or the security guards’ll be on you.)

Coleman wrote his own fundraising letter on behalf of Bachmann in September. Franken was a listed co-host for a fundraising event for Clark, a DFL Party state senator, in Minneapolis last week. Maureen Reed is also mounting a 2010 challenge to Bachmann.

Coleman’s comments Tuesday came in response to a question from his Harvard audience about whether “death bed” rhetoric and “Nazi imagery” were hurting the Republican Party. “I don’t think that the signs you mention are part of the party or central to the discussion,” Coleman countered.

In the course of his response, Coleman brought up “the Michele Bachmanns out there.” He disputed a link between extreme rhetoric and elected officials or the Tea Party movement. “Your basic notion is mistaken,” he said. “You’re taking something way out on the fringe and you’re applying it to the legitimate anger that folks have.”

But earlier, Coleman seemed ready to harness anger himself with this line in his speech: “Pity the politician who comes between a citizen and their constitutional Second Amendment rights.”

Coleman, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, is treading on Franken’s former stomping grounds: the Minnesota funnyman-turned-statesman was a math major at Harvard.

He has cast himself as someone who can bring young people into the Republican Party, showing off his savvy by naming things like travel agents and 8-track tapes that the students in his audience don’t use. Besides, he asserted, young people don’t deal with social issues on a day-to-day basis. “Very rarely are you going to think about what’s going to happen on Roe v. Wade today,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he looks for middle ground on social issues. He advocated “doing those things that support young women so they don’t have to have an abortion.” Gay marriage is “a pretty narrow issue,” he said, citing civil unions as a possible compromise on the more contentious issue of how to define marriage.

“The philosophy of conservatives really is more in line with your generation,” Coleman said. “I just think we haven’t done a good job of articulating it.”

Coleman articulated this reason for having lost his re-election battle to Franken last year: his yes vote on bailout bills to stave off a depression in October 2008. “But for the collapse of the economy, I don’t think the race would have been close,” he said.

Ben Smith of the Politico reports that the DNC won’t be paying for media to carry that message — yet — but will begin by sending messages to constituents who are on the Obama campaign email list.

Paulsen may have had in mind preempting such an attack when he released a statement via YouTube about his “no” vote within minutes of having cast it Saturday night.

Paulsen was one of seven GOP lawmakers targeted by a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad campaign over health care last summer. (Another of those seven, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, cast the sole Republican vote in favor of the pending bill.)

The National Republican Congressional Committee earlier put Paulsen on its own list of vulnerable Republicans in Congress.

Paulsen’s latest campaign-finance reports show he raised nearly $1 million this year. Democratic challengers to the first-term Republican are only beginning to emerge.

Photo: Minnesota Independent

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is running for governor. The development comes as no surprise. Political observers predicted it for months. Rybak hardly hid his interest in seeking the state’s top office. He even garnered a union endorsement for the office that he wasn’t officially seeking. So the announcement Thursday that he had filed papers to form a gubernatorial campaign committee was hardly even newsworthy.

But Rybak’s political gamesmanship — running for re-election as mayor, while coyly hinting at a 2010 bid for the state’s top office — could prove too clever for his own good. Today the state’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board issued a ruling that the Democrat wrongly utilized funds from his mayoral committee to pursue his gubernatorial ambitions.

In particular, the board faulted Rybak’s campaign for a poll commissioned in May that quizzed citizens outside of Minneapolis on questions that clearly seemed designed to test the waters for 2010. The watchdog agency ordered Rybak’s gubernatorial campaign committee to reimburse his mayoral committee $26,500 in order to cover the costs of the poll.

The Republican Party of Minnesota, which initially filed the complaint against Rybak’s campaign with the board, reacted gleefully to the ruling.

“Today’s ruling holding R.T. Rybak accountable for his deliberate attempt to circumvent our state’s campaign finance laws is to be commended,” said state GOP chairman Tony Sutton in a statement. “Rybak campaigned for governor across Minnesota for months without lawfully establishing a campaign committee and recording his expenditures. It appears that the sole purpose of his campaign for mayor was to provide a slush fund for gubernatorial ambitions.”

Rybak’s campaign countered with its own statement taking issue with the board’s findings. “Mayor R.T. Rybak has been honest and forthcoming regarding his consideration of a run for governor, and our campaign has been careful to not raise contributions or make expenditures for the purpose of influencing a campaign for governor until a formal decision was made,” it said. “The Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board has found that certain expenses incurred by the mayor’s campaign should be counted as expenses related to a governor’s campaign. Although we disagree with the basis, we will accept the board’s finding and take action to account for these expenses and reimburse the mayor’s campaign for them.”

Rybak’s flirtation with a gubernatorial run failed to have any negative repercussions on Tuesday’s mayoral contest. He romped to a third term with more than 70 percent of the vote. But will the campaign finance board’s ruling have any detrimental impact on his political viability for 2010?

David Schultz, a political science and law professor at Hamline University, doesn’t believe it will prove significant. “Does he have a scarlet A on his forehead? I doubt it,” Schultz says. “Except for some insiders most people aren’t going to care about this issue.”

Indeed, candidates have been rebuked by the campaign finance board in the past for infractions and not suffered electoral consequences. In 2002, for instance, then-state Rep. Tim Pawlenty’s gubernatorial campaign was fined $100,000 for improperly coordinating efforts with the Minnesota GOP. Of course, he’s now serving his second term in the state’s top office and eyeing a national presidential bid.

Schultz does believe, however, that the Rybak snafu highlights the need for changes to the state’s campaign finance laws in order to increase transparency and accountability. In particular, he thinks there should be more frequent disclosure requirements for political contributions and expedited hearings on potential violations of campaign statutes.

“We still have this incredible opaqueness and lack of transparency in terms of our campaigns,” Schultz says. “This is the kind of thing that should have been caught, policed and dealt with months ago.”

He notes that the mayoral contest was already decided by the time the campaign finance board ruling was issued, meaning voters weren’t aware of the violation when they cast their ballots. “Maybe this might have made a difference to some people in the mayor’s race,” Schultz says. “I don’t know if it would have put him under 50 percent, but it might have made a difference.”

The board announced the rulings today, but reached its decisions at a meeting on Thursday — the same day Rybak registered a gubernatorial campaign committee. He won re-election to a third term as mayor on Tuesday. The rulings were prompted by complaints filed by the Republican Party of Minnesota.

The board also heard evidence about Rybak driving to events around the state meant to showcase candidates for governor — with mileage costs that Rybak bore personally but that the Minnesota GOP said constituted an in-kind gift.

But it was the survey costs that the board focused on, and they didn’t buy Rybak’s defense that the polling work was on behalf of his mayoral campaign against much lesser-known challengers:

The response on behalf of Mayor Rybak contends that the survey was to support a re-election bid for Mayor of Minneapolis. But this response does not persuasively explain why a survey to support the Mayor’s re-election would have a geographic calling area that included metro area residents that are not eligible to vote in Minneapolis.

The board found the survey questions revealing:

As an example, the survey asks if the respondent voted in 2006, (the last time the office of Governor was on the ballot), and if the respondent intends to vote in 2010. The office of Governor is on the ballot in 2010, the office of Mayor of Minneapolis is on the ballot in odd numbered years (2005 and 2009).

The board ordered Rybak to form a gubernatorial campaign committee (which he did), which must transfer to his RT for Minneapolis mayoral campaign the cost of the conducting the survey last May.

The board also ruled (pdf) on whether St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman violated state statute by failing to register a fundraising committee while exploring a bid for governor. The complaint from the Minnesota GOP noted that Coleman had participated in gubernatorial forums with other candidates and openly discussed his plans for the state if elected to the office. The board determined that Coleman was indeed a candidate for governor earlier this year and spent personal funds in excess of $100 to support his campaign.

The Board considered possible reasons why Mayor Coleman would travel to locations throughout the state to participate in gubernatorial candidate forums and present information on what actions he would do if elected Governor. In the Board’s view the only reasonable explanation for those actions is that Mayor Coleman was seeking nomination or election to the office of Governor.

But the board also ruled that Coleman did not improperly use funds from his mayoral campaign to support a gubernatorial bid. Coleman has since announced that he will not be running for governor, but the board stated that that decision did not alter its findings in the matter. The administrative body ordered Coleman to submit a detailed accounting of his expenditures on behalf of his gubernatorial campaign by February 1, 2010.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Rybak is DFL’s “strongest candidate” for governor. So says Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza. [The Fix]

HUGO: 10,000 loons? The crowd at U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House call” protest included a Hugo couple who call her “a very effective representative.” [St. Cloud Times]

ST. PAUL: Now his Trice will really get Dusty. Dems’ one-man answer to the Minnesota Democrats Exposed hangs up his spurs. [DustyTrice.com]

MINNEAPOLIS: “The K” is #1. The University of Minnesota’s student radio station, Radio K, has the nation’s best student media website. [UMNews]

DULUTH: Market improves for uninhabitable homes. City government will pay $40,000–60,000 each if the council accepts $3 million in federal funds to create a “blight-free Duluth.” [Northland's News Center]

ST. PAUL: “DFL: Pawlenty’s partying gift to MN is instability.” That typo (?) proves MN Publius doesn’t just parrot party pronouncements. [MN Publius]

The Minnesota Independent stopped by the PAC’s swanky reception and saw one friendly face wandering through the crowd: Tony Trimble, familiar from his months of service as recount attorney to former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Trimble cut a slightly more rumpled figure than the Freedom Firsters around him dressed mostly in crisply glamorous black attire.

Standing alone were several banks of computer monitors displaying the Freedom First web site.

Polinaut has audio of Pawlenty’s dinner speech.

Johnson charged her campaign $1,154 for hairdresser appointments and $986 for dry-cleaning during the current four-year election cycle. No other city council candidate used campaign funds for personal grooming, the article notes. Johnson also tapped political donations for cell phone bills and AAA car coverage.

Reporter Erin Carlyle asked Hamline University political science and law professor David Schultz about the legitimacy of such spending. His verdict was not flattering to the city council president.

“Campaign funds are supposed to be spent for things that are campaign-related, not expenses that you would normally incur as being a human,” Schultz said. “I would hope that hygiene is something that you would spend money on as a normal person.”

Minneapolis City Hall. Photo: Hennepin Co. Library

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 how much the candidates have had to work with in the closing days of their campaigns.

For instance, in the mayoral race, incumbent R.T. Rybak has filed his latest finance report but Papa John Kolstad, a leader among 10 challengers, has not — rendering what would certainly be a David-and-Goliath comparison impossible to make before the election.

In Ward One, where the new occupant for one of three open council seats in Minneapolis will be decided Tuesday, DFL endorsee Kevin Reich had raised nearly 20 times as much money ($23,048) as Susan Howitz Hanna ($1,221), a rival DFLer who picked up the Star Tribune’s endorsement a week after the close of the filing period.

Larry Ranallo, a third DFLer with signs throughout the ward (and even as far as nine blocks outside the ward), hasn’t filed either a pre-primary or pre-general campaign finance report, according to the Hennepin County website.

Such filings are required once a campaign spends or receives $100. The pre-general reports were supposed to be filed Oct. 27.

In a South Minneapolis park board rematch between incumbent Carol Kummer and repeat challenger Jason Stone, Kummer raised more than $7,000 during the Sept. 2–Oct. 20 reporting period — almost twice the sum Stone took in.

Kummer was beneficiary of a maximum $300 gift from park board attorney Brian Rice and more from police union groups his firm represents — a donor constellation that also bankrolled campaigns for and against ballot referendums concerning the park board earlier in the year.

Another park candidate on Rice’s gift list is Bob Fine, who currently represents the city’s southwest corner. Fine is one of five current or former at-large park commissioners vying for the three citywide seats up for election. He had $6,000 in cash on hand on Oct. 20, more than incumbents Mary Merrill Anderson ($2,300) and Annie Young ($1,100).

Pre-general reports for former commissioner John Erwin and current park board president Tom Nordyke were not posted at the Hennepin County site as of noon Monday.

Nordyke was also among tardy filers for the pre-primary report deadline in September.