Last year Rybak and Pawlenty promoted a public gathering near the site in Minneapolis. (At the time, Pawlenty was still in the hunt for the GOP vice-presidential nod but managed to be in town, between trips.)

This year is different. Earlier in the week came news that Rybak’s office would heed victims’ families’ wishes for no public ceremony on the anniversary day.

Then on Thursday, the mayor and governor jointly announced an organized moment of silence at 6:05 Saturday, with flags across the state ordered to fly at half mast.

Momentarily, their cooperation appeared to collapse today when the mayor’s office retracted a just-sent joint press release. But the problem was only one of “layout” differences, Rybak spokesman Jeremy Hanson told the Minnesota Independent.

An effort to construct a permanent memorial has so far taken in only $20,000 for a project estimated to cost more than $1 million.

Rybak, a Democrat, is jockeying for position among the pack seeking to replace Pawlenty after he voluntarily relinquishes the governorship at term’s end in early 2011 — some say in pursuit of the 2012 Republication nomination for president, a scenario boosted by his address to the party’s national committee tonight.

The two have sparred bitterly over state and city budget reductions, coming together only rarely on issues like cutting Minneapolis’ civil-rights complaint unit and Saturday’s low-key memorial for 13 who died when the I-35W bridge fell two years ago.

Mayor R.T. Rybak. Photo: Studio 306

“This is working out exactly as I would want it,” Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said by phone from Washington, D.C. last Thursday.

Rybak, along with nine other mayors, was invited to President-elect Barack Obama’s address on the economy on Jan. 8.

“I have very good access to the Obama administration. It makes me a better mayor and able to bring more back home,” he said.

Obama pushed transportation infrastructure in his speech, but can Rybak expect to bring more of that home to Minneapolis? After all, the city was among very few to win massive federal Department of Transportation funding through its Urban Partnership grants for bus lane improvements downtown and a new toll lane on I-35W. And then there was the new I-35W bridge.

“We absolutely can ask for more,” Rybak said, citing U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar’s chairmanship of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure as another factor in the city’s favor.

The mayor scoffed at Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s response last week to the prospect of $10 million in federal aid for state infrastructure projects.

“The first words out of the governor’s mouth were ‘Minnesota may not want it,’” Rybak said. “My message was very different.”

Rybak, a very early Obama backer, said he has no interest in a job with the Obama administration, and instead looks forward to working in Obama’s America back home – the precise definition of which seemed to slip between city and state as he talked about changes Obama might bring. (Rybak has said he’ll decide soon whether to run for governor).

One project that has appeared in lights on both the state’s and the city’s marquees is the I-35W bridge, which Rybak said fit Obama’s vision for a new generation of infrastructure projects that have green components — in 35W’s case, the capacity to handle transit that Rybak insisted on.

“Obama was very careful to say this cannot have earmarks [for] this project or that project,” Rybak said. But the mayor makes no bones about having a wish list for Minneapolis.

“Probably the biggest one on my list is to do mitigation for Central Corridor, to make a ring road around the University [of Minnesota] campus.”

A ring road is needed because trains running on the future Central Corridor light-rail transit route will take up all of Washington Avenue, a main Minneapolis campus artery, Rybak explained. Locals have feared that digging a tunnel for the trains to travel under Washington Avenue would jeopardize — you guessed it — federal funding.

Clockwise from upper left: Quinn, Blagojevich, Andersen, Rolvaag (MHS)

Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn is calling for the resignation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a man with whom he shared a ticket but apparently little else (except antipathy). Despite making overtures and even having once defended his embattled boss’s integrity, Quinn says he hasn’t spoken to Blagojevich since Aug. 2, 2007.

That’s a contrast with Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty stood by Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau and pleaded her case until the state Senate canned her from her moonlighting stint as state transportation commissioner in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse — which by coincidence occurred the day before Quinn’s last talk with Blagojevich.

So things are different in Illinois and Minnesota, at least in that respect. But the distant relationship between Blagojevich and his second-in-command does have at least one parallel in Minnesota, from the time of the last great statewide election recount in 1962.

The rivals in the race for governor that year were the sitting governor, Republican Elmer L. Andersen, and the sitting lieutenant governor, DFLer Karl Rolvaag. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in those days did not run together on a ticket, so the office-holders weren’t necessarily of the same party.) After each won election to two-year terms in 1960, their 1962 clash was inevitable, according to the 1964 book “Recount” by Ronald F. Stinnett and Charles H. Backstrom.

Rolvaag, who had already served three terms as lieutenant governor, and Andersen, a 10-year state Senate veteran, “had personalities and philosophies so different that they could only resolve into opposition for the governorship in 1962,” Stinnett and Backstrom wrote, adding:

Karl Rolvaag stated several times just prior to his ascension from the “broom closet” to the plush parlors of the Governor’s suite that he had been in the Governor’s office only twice during Andersen’s term.

(The “broom closet” was a small office to which Rolvaag decamped toward the end of the 139-day recount, to make way for A.M. “Sandy” Keith, a fellow DFLer whose separate election in 1962 to the office of lieutenant governor was undisputed.)

By the end of the recount, which gave Rolvaag a 91-vote victory over Andersen, the two men exhibited a civility toward one another not seen between Blagojevich and Quinn — or between current recount rivals Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman for that matter. Still, during the two years they spent working — in theory — together, the relationship was an arm’s-length one on par with the current occupants of Illinois’ Statehouse.

Andersen left Rolvaag alone to do the one duty of a lieutenant governor: oversee the state Senate, which then met only 90 days per year. He might have more profitably given Rolvaag something else to do, even running the state transportation department. Instead Rolvaag enjoyed plenty of spare time in which to plot his campaign to topple Andersen.

The Rolvaag-Andersen contest is one such rivalry that NPR’s Political Junkie blog cites in a useful overview of the governor-lieutenant governor relationship in America, inspired by Quinn’s comments Thursday. Today in 18 states, voters elect candidates to those offices separately. Among the other states, Illinois is one of seven in which candidates are nominated individually (running separately in party primaries in Illinois), only to unite on a single ticket for the general election.

That allows plenty of opportunity for potentially distant shotgun marriages around the country, though few reach the caustic depths of one calling for the other’s ouster as in Illinois today – or the razor’s-edge rivalry of Minnesota in 1962.

Minnesota Publius has identified three instances in which Coleman made the argument. In a video posted by Minnesota Publius from CD 1 Republican Convention, Coleman says Minnesota “would not have gotten that money and that kind of support that quick. Wouldn’t happen.”

Coleman repeated the claim during his appearance on MPR’s “Meet the Candidate” series. Coleman suggested Senate colleagues would have asked, “Why should I accommodate him?”

Listen: Coleman on MPR (:41)

Watch: Coleman at CD 1 convention

The DeSoto Bridge on Highway 23, a close cousin in design to the I-35W bridge that collapsed in August 2007, had already had its “gusset plate review completed,” according to a MNDOT list of truss bridges slated for load rating tests in the wake of the I-35W collapse. An emergency inspection of the St. Cloud bridge just two days after I-35W fell also turned up nothing. But Thursday afternoon, inspectors looking for corrosion saw quarter-inch bends in DeSoto’s gusset plates. Now MNDOT says it will replace the bridge within two years, five years ahead of schedule. Lost in the buzz over another crippled truss bridge and the NTSB’s refusal to hold a public hearing on the 35W collapse was Monday’s release of NTSB reports indicating that the resurfacing contractor had piled tons of construction materials on two of the I-35W bridge’s weakest points (PDF).
Continued: Click “Read more”Unusual for a highway bridge, St. Cloud’s 1959 DeSoto Bridge is painted black. In 1966 the Rolling Stones followed their hit song “19th Nervous Breakdown” with the single “Paint It, Black” — which also appeared that year on their LP Aftermath.

Coincidence?

In the aftermath of Minnesota’s second bridge breakdown, several leading figures in the saga nervously offered the Minnesota Monitor their favorite lyrics from “Paint It, Black”:

  Governor Tim Pawlenty: “I could not foresee this thing happening to you”

Acting MNDOT Commissioner Bob McFarlin: “I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black”

Former MNDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau: “Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts”

Continued: Click “Read more”Paternalistic, statist Singapore instituted an early window-tag version of congestion pricing in 1974, based on the work of Nobel laureate William Vickery. The idea gained adherents locally in the wake of a Met Council study by economist Herbert Mohring in 1994, as wireless technology began to make toll booths obsolete. Elsewhere, this decade has seen Sweden‘s Green Party demand congestion pricing as a precondition to cooperating with the Social Democratic government. The idea caught on with London‘s Labor Party Mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone as well as Michael Bloomberg, the formerly Republican mayor of New York, where a proposed fee to be paid by vehicles entering the city is tangled in a post-Spitzer legislative mess that has to be resolved before end of session at the close of this month. Another exception to the post-ideological embrace on congestion pricing may be San Francisco — like Minneapolis, a beneficiary of Bush’s Urban Partnership program that ties transit funding to new tolls on roads. Citizens in the Bay Area stopped an elevated freeway dead in its tracks, and may prove willing to fight over the the political question of how we should pay for our highways.

 The 35W toll plan, with “dynamic pricing” based on congestion levels, differs from models in which the cost of an entire stretch of roadway is paid through tolls. The proposed toll lanes between Burnsville and downtown Minneapolis will be in effect a premium “fast lanes” for those willing and able to pony up the additional cost of getting places more quickly–a philosophical add-on to the concept of reserving exclusive use of the premium lane on the left for car-poolers and buses as a conservation gesture. Indeed, Knute Berger at Crosscut.com discerns Machiavelli in the selling of congestion pricing in Seattle — another Urban Partnership town — and around the world. 

Evangelicals throughout the Midwest, from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn., have been praying at 24-hour prayer rooms for a month for Interstate 35 in order to “light the highway.” Young people in the movement have been holding “purity sieges” in front of LGBT businesses, abortion clinics and stores that sell pornography. So far, Minnesota has been spared of “purity sieges,” but 24-hour prayer rooms have been set up in Minneapolis, Albert Lea and Duluth.

The scriptural basis for the new movement comes from Isaiah 35:8, which reads, “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.” Because of chapter 35, believers say the highway mentioned must be Interstate 35. In addition, a number of people in the “Highway of Holiness” movement claim to have had prophetic experiences that involve Interstate 35.Highway to Holiness prophet Cindy Jacobs told CBN News that it was an unnamed German prophet who saw the significance of Interstate 35 back in 1984. “And in this dream he saw a highway that went from the bottom of someplace to the top that had a ’35′ sign on it. And God showed him that revival was going to begin at the bottom of this highway and go to the top.”

The collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis in August has also been a topic of discussion among the “Highway of Holiness” believers. “I don’t usually send what the Lord is downloading to me, however this is very timely and significant I believe,” Highway of Holiness Community Coordinator Christine Pickett of Little Canada wrote to the movement’s Web site.

Pickett says that last year’s election of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, and his announcement of a trip to Israel the very same day of the collapse could be an omen. “I think the Lord may be saying that this man and his district and what he is about doing in Israel is connected. I could be wrong — however, I just have to look at the timing and the fear of the Lord comes upon me.”

“We are tired of seeing the destruction of what sin has brought on the world,” Caleb Valdez, a student at Heartland Ministries in Dallas told TV station WFAA. “And so, we believe God has ordained this highway for us to go up and down … to see lives transformed, to see people revolutionized for God [and] for the betterment of this place.”

Photo of I-35 in Duluth, Minn., via Andy Langager.

Her deed? Working at the city’s emergency center after the collapse, the release stated, “she was the first to respond to an unsolicited call from a Connecticut company offering to contribute a shipment of [...] a new, alcohol-free hand sanitizer, for emergency workers at the disaster scene.” Metzger writes that Bleskachek approved the opportunistic press release and that Berkman said he’d Googled Bleskachek to learn of the controversy. “I’m very familiar with what you see and what you read and what you hear [in the media] is always not what is necessarily the truth, in all due respect. It gets taken out of context,” he said. “If the things that she had done were as terrible as portrayed, one would think she would’ve been summarily fired… They didn’t fire her.”

Strib Attack! The Star Tribune was hit by a “denial of service” attack on Thursday, which knocked out employee email and web surfing for about 10 hours and delayed updates to the paper’s websites. DOS attacks aim to shut down a network by barraging it with access requests, thereby overwhelming the system. The paper says it doesn’t yet know who directed the attack.

Got a tip for Media Monitor? E-mail us your media news.

The best vantage point to see the bridge is from a pedestrian bridge over 35W at 24th Street. An observer can easily notice cracks and areas where chunks of concrete have fallen off. Some work has been done to the bridge, as bright new cement can be seen in some parts.

Northeast Minneapolis resident Andrew Tibor takes the bridge every day. “It’s pretty much my only way to get to and from work unless I want to take side streets.”

Asked whether he realized that the bridge had a low structural rating: “Actually, I didn’t know that it was one of the most structurally deficient bridges.  I guess I didn’t really consider it.  You cross so many bridges that you don’t really think much about it because they’re all over.”

It’s hard to notice that it’s a bridge at all, however, because Highway 65 dips below 35W, and the grade stays roughly the same. “It doesn’t even really feel like a bridge,” Tibor said.

Does he still feel comfortable driving it knowing the structural rating? “I will still drive it.  The way I look at it is if it’s my time, it’s my time.  What are the odds of another bridge accident happening on the same interstate just a few miles from the original bridge accident?”

Interstate 35W south of Franklin is listed as number 35 on the Star Tribune’s list of  “Worst Bridges of Minnesota.” This is the first in Minnesota Monitor’s series of weekly looks at these bridges.

If you have feedback on this, or any of the other bridges on the list, please contact us at tipsATMinnesotaMonitorDOTcom.  Next week we will examine #34, Highway 62 eastbound over Interstate 35W.

Fred Phelps is coming!

Fred Phelps… didn’t come.

After the collapse of Interstate 35W, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., dashed off a pair of news releases announcing members of its congregation would come to the Twin Cities to protest at the memorial services of some of the victims. For the past 17 years members of the church — most, if not all, of its current 70 members are relatives of  the Rev. Fred Phelps — have picketed funerals of gay men who died from HIV/AIDS and, more recently, soldiers killed in Iraq.

The sin they see in those who perished when 35W fell? Living in the “land of the Sodomite damned,” an area that tolerates homosexuality — and where the Phelps clan was met with resistance on their last visit.

But church members didn’t end up making the drive, as planned, and their news releases failed to drum up a single like-minded supporter to disrupt the funerals on Wednesday and Thursday.

Which raises the question: Does media coverage of the church’s vitriol, including Minnesota Monitor’s, serve the community — or does it serve the Phelps family and their peculiarly zealous brand of intolerance?

Matt Felling, writing for the CBS News blog The Public Eye, suggests the story should be off-limits.  “The media need to stop empowering and validating these hatemongers with publicity,” he said, citing stories on the planned Minneapolis protests by the Chicago Tribune and the Twin Cities Daily Planet, which reran Minnesota Monitor’s story by Eric Black. “It’s bad enough that they’re saying these things, but what makes things worse is the fact that their message was picked up and disseminated by two different publications.”

Black and I discussed this story before he posted it. We agreed it was a “good story” and that the community service aspect — alerting locals to the protest so they could choose, as the Patriot Guard often does, to show up in solidarity with the families — had to be weighed against the spike in publicity we’d be providing  to people intent on injecting pain into an already grieving community. Then there’s the fact that the Westboro clan is notorious for no-shows in such cases.

Jason DeRusha, a WCCO reporter, told me he thinks journalists should be cautious about giving publicity to a group with less than perfect attendance at its own demonstrations. While he questions reporting on a Phelps visit before it actually happens, he said, “I think it was appropriate for you guys to run a story, but it would have been troublesome for WCCO to run a story.”

Coverage of news on the internet is less limited by time or space, and the format allows for audience feedback and discussion. Plus, there’s not the captive-audience effect. “On the internet, people can choose to click on the story, or they can choose to not click on it,” he said in an e-mail. “People who read Eric’s story chose to read it. On television, we’re linear, and I think there’s more of a responsibility to be cautious about a story like this one.”

If he were news director, DeRusha adds, he would’ve sent a crew to a memorial service, but he wouldn’t have run a piece on the Phelps visit in advance or if no conflict arose because of his clan’s presence.

Since Black consulted me before posting the first Phelps item, I returned the favor and asked him what he thought about me writing this follow-up. His thinking:

First of all, we said the Phelpses were coming and they didn’t come, so we need some kind of followup so we can clear that up.

Second,  I’m sympathetic to the reluctance some might have about “rewarding” the Phelps family with coverage, but I’m not sure it was much of a reward. The Phelps stuff is interesting and, in some twisted way, important, and we’re a news site, so our bias should be favor of publishing.

Lastly, I suppose some people might see a second piece as an effort to attract eyeballs to the site, since I understand the first piece was well-read and linked to by other sites. The Monitor and EricBlackInk.com are a long way from porn sites. But if we start trying to avoid writing about topics for fear we’ll attract eyeballs, what are we doing? So yeah, I say go for it.

Would we run such a piece again? Definitely. This opinion was reinforced on Thursday when I called Westboro Baptist Church to ask why the family hadn’t shown up as threatened. Among Shirley Phelps-Roper’s explanations was the belief that people in the Twin Cities are too darn mean: “When we have to divert a group because there’s something we need to get to more importantly, or we divert the group because we see the location where we’re headed to is so filled with rage that the gloves are off — they’re unabashedly breathing out threatening and slaughter — then we won’t come.”

The more important work they were tending too, she said, was picketing the military funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. The war is proof that God is punishing the United States for immoral ways, she said, citing scripture. “[God] said, ‘I’ll drag you into a war you cannot win, and I will dash your children to pieces.’ Now how are we gonna connect that dot, if we don’t get to those dead soldiers’ funerals?”

She said five groups from Westboro Baptist will be on the road this weekend heading to destinations on both coasts and “all points in between” to demonstrate against Americans who “keep insisting — doggedly insisting — in going the way of Sodom.”

Concluding our call, she said, “We’ve got all the time in the world. You’re going to be fishing bodies out of there for weeks. There will be more memorial services and there will be more funerals, and along the way we will pick some of them off.”

“You’re gonna see us,” she promised. “Absolutely.”

Photo: Westboro church member protesting a 2007 Pride Week event at Kansas University.

Related: Fred Phelps is Coming