Politics

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher is getting her second union endorsement for governor in as many days (and her third so far), this one from the 43,000-member Greater Minnesota American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65, Minnesota Public Radio’s Polinaut reports.

Burberry, Britain’s once-staid fashion house, can’t help it if Sarah Palin wears their trademark plaid scarves. “[T]he conspicuousness of the pattern also means that the company has little control over how it is seen, or on whom,” the New Yorker magazine observed, in reference to Palin. Minneapolis has the same problem: today the Mill City [...]

State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill — giving life to what the union terms “the largest job-creating bill in decades.”

The political-numbers-geek website FiveThirtyEight.com was on the money with predictions about the outcome of the 2008 presidential race and Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. So cut ‘em some slack for saying Tim Pawlenty is the man to beat in the 2010 Minnesota governor’s race. Everyone learns from mistakes — and in this case, we learn how [...]

epublican Allen Quist solicits funds saying he and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann “are two peas in a pod.” Now he’s set to announce Thursday whether he’ll make a bid to join Bachmann in Congress by running against Democrat Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First District.

In a matchup between President Barack Obama and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Obama would win by ten points, according to a new St. Cloud State University poll (pdf) released Tuesday. When asked who they would vote for in 2012, 49 percent of Minnesotans surveyed said they’d support Obama, while 39.7 percent said they’d back Pawlenty.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Nov. 5 rally in opposition to Democrat-led health care reform sure has generated press for the Sixth District Republican, but increasingly in ways she might not have anticipated. She ended up apologizing, sort of, for rally attendees who used imagery of Holocaust victims to express their dislike for reforms. Government watchdog group [...]

Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about what comes out of Sarah Palin’s mouth. In particular, Palin doesn’t sound that Minnesotan, say a trio of University of Wisconsin-Madison experts.

Last July, the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed suit to prevent the words “In God We Trust” and “one nation under God” from being engraved on a wall in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center. Today, 41 U.S. House members — including Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann — and three senators filed an amicus brief asking a federal [...]

Michele Bachmann is the most politically vulnerable member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation in 2010, according to the latest analysis from the Cook Political Report. The beltway publication lists the Sixth Congressional District seat as “leaning Republican.”