Republican Sen. Scott Newman of Hutchinson told the Minnesota Nurses Association late last week that they would not get a meeting with him because they endorsed his DFL opponent Hal Kimball, according to DFL-leaning blog, Bluestem Prairie. In fact, Newman’s office said that no groups who supported his opponent will get a meeting and, according to the Associated Press, Newman said he will not speak to the media regarding his office policy. Update: The Star Tribune spoke with Newman who said the policy was a mistake.

In an email to Minnesota Nurses Association’s Eileen Gavin, Newman’s legislative assistant said the group would not get a meeting:

Hi Eileen-

Unfortunately, Senator Newman will not see any organizations that donated to/supported his opponent Hal Kimball. After some careful checking, I discovered that the MNA had donated to Kimball’s campaign. Your association will be unable to schedule an appointment with Senator Newman.

Kim Kelley

Legislative Assistant

The Associated Press attempted to follow up on Bluestem Prairie’s reporting, but was told that Newman would not speak with the press over the issue. “[Kim] Kelley says Tuesday she can’t comment on her e-mail and says Newman won’t be interviewed about it,” the AP reported.

But, according to the Star Tribune, Newman said it was his new legislative aid who made a mistake.

“It’s clearly my responsibility,” he added. “But this is a brand new [legislative assistant]. . .what she put out is not – it is not my policy.”

“If this nursing organization wants to see me, they will see me,” said Newman. He said he was unsure whether similar emails were going to other groups. “I certainly hope not, but I don’t know,” he said.

Here are submission guidelines for the Minnesota Associated Press (DOC):

* AP Members Want: Train wrecks, airplane crashes, drownings, fatal auto accidents (if there are multiple victims or unusual circumstances) and unusual accidental deaths;
* Meetings where action of regional or statewide interest is taken or where a prominent person speaks;
* Riots, demonstrations, strikes;
* Major fires (involves loss of life, public disruption or destruction of a structure/site known statewide), explosions, oil or other chemical spills.–Unusual bank robberies (exceptionally violent, hostages taken, serial robber, etc.);
* Weather news, including ice and hail storms, heavy snows, damaging rains and floods, record heat and cold, tornadoes; and,
* Human interest stories. The odd, the offbeat, the heart-warming.

Don’t Share:
* Non-fatal auto or boating accidents;
* Motor vehicle chases, unless major damage or loss of life occurs;
* Routine city council, school board or other public meetings, unless an issue being discussed at other meetings around the state — such as state budget cuts — is discussed;
* Bomb threats (unless a MAJOR public disruption results), petty crimes, minor drug busts, minor or non-fatal fires;
* Suicides or obituaries unless the person is known regionally or statewide or unusual circumstances are involved; and,
* Publicity handouts, including local pageant winners, fund-raisers and charity events.

Reinish adds, “To be clear, I’m not asking the AP and others to water down their reporting to shield us from negative news. I just want quality reporting that reflects what’s truly happening in our communities, not the junk news reporters are told to sniff out.”

“The funnyman turned freshman senator has quietly made himself a force to be reckoned with in Washington,” wrote Newsweek. The magazine gave him props for getting key amendments added to major legislation, namely the health care reform and financial reform bills.

“The senator from Minnesota turned out to be more under-the-radar than in-your-face,” the AP reported, echoing the sentiment. “He quickly blended in to the clubby institution, bonding with a conservative Republican over country music and shepherding amendments to bills as they slogged through the process.”

Franken said he’s kept his head down on purpose.

“What I’ve tried to do is be effective,” Franken told the AP. “I think that going in when you have a certain level of celebrity, it’s even more important to demonstrate to your constituents and to your colleagues that you’re there to do the work.”

But former foe Norm Coleman isn’t buying it.

“Avoiding controversy and keeping your head down is a good thing perhaps in a campaign, but ultimately being a senator is more than that,” he told the AP. “I don’t see much of him. I can’t say that he stood out for staking a position on a major issue or anything.”

GOP chair Tony Sutton said that some of Franken’s statements have justified the “angry liberal” label the party has tried to attach to him.

“His true personality is coming out,” Sutton told Newsweek. “He’s a good fundraising tool for us.” He said Franken “turned out to be the knee-jerk liberal everyone thought he would be.”

AP source Jared Reise (in hat) with "Among the Oats" cast. Photo: MN Fringe Festival

It’s apparently hard for reporters to find an ordinary voter to comment on the extraordinary struggle over Minnesota’s vacant U.S. Senate seat. The latest example: The Associated Press cited one person — who didn’t vote for either Al Franken or Norm Coleman — in its story Monday about Minnesotans being “tired” of the Senate battle. Jared Riese turns out to be an unlikely but not entirely inapt electoral Everyman.

UPDATE: The AP talked to 24 voters for the story, writer Brian Bakst tells the Minnesota Independent, but national editors removed all but one. Most were indeed tired of it all, according to Bakst. Read an excerpt from the AP’s in-state version after the jump.   

The AP’s headline fooled Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post into seeing more than one voter quoted. He wrote in his blog, The Fix:

What’s clear is that the average Minnesotan is growing tired of the back and forth. The Associated Press penned a piece today entitled “Minnesota Senate race leaves voters tired of law drama” that featured a series of quotes from residents of the Land of 10,000 Lakes expressing their disinterest [sic] in the entire thing.

But despite the headline, the AP story contains not a series of quotes but a single quote from one average Minnesotan:

Some Minnesotans, like actor Jared Reise, are past caring who wins and just want the state to regain its second senator.

“This is a very important time to have everybody there, with the way the economy is,” said Reise, of suburban Eagan, who didn’t vote for either man on Nov. 4. “It’s a little long-winded, this whole recount.”

UPDATE: Bakst tells MnIndy by e-mail that Riese said he voted for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley. He was one of two dozen randomly selected people whom the AP’s Liz Riggs interviewed in downtown Minneapolis. Here’s an excerpt from the fuller version of their AP story:

Meanwhile, voters are losing patience.

“Enough is enough,” said legal secretary Julianne Hill, a Franken voter from St. Bonifacius. “I think there’s been plenty of review and plenty diligence and I think it’s time for Coleman to give it up.”

None of several Coleman voters interviewed by The Associated Press would speak for attribution. While some were ready to move on, one was adamant that her candidate take it to the bitter end.

It’s not the first time that an “average voter” quoted in a widely circulated story about the Minnesota Senate dispute has turned out to be other than average. Christina Capecchi, writing for The New York Times last November, didn’t reveal that her “ordinary voter,” who voiced concerns about where Al Franken’s votes came from, was really a veteran Republican operative who had served on former U.S. Sen. Rod Grams’ campaign and Senate staffs, run as a GOP candidate himself, and been named in a Franken campaign-practices complaint.

But the AP story raises a different question: Can a man who never had a dog in the Coleman-Franken fight speak to the tiredness felt by the nearly 3 million Minnesotans who did vote for one candidate or the other? Probably not. But although he’s far from average, Jared Reise, it turns out, brings a lot to the Everyman role in which the AP cast him.

Reise appears from his blog to be a thoughtful guy who’s almost past caring about more than the Senate contest. He wonders after a dozen years in and out of the Twin Cities theater scene whether calling himself an actor is worth it. He tells his temp agency to “cram it.”

And he throws himself into presenting an absurdist play about three men stuck in oatmeal together that could be a metaphor for the Senate contest if you remember Independence Party runner-up Dean Barkley.  A well-liked if ill-attended entry in last year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival, “Among the Oats” (video) left the actual oats to the audience’s imagination. But the play’s bickering is as real as what the Coleman and Franken camps do in court every day — and one of the actors even manages to threaten to take their dispute to the Supreme Court.

Though thousands marched through the streets of St. Paul today without incident, it was difficult to ignore a roving group of protesters who were sometimes marching and sometimes dashing their way through a parade route they reinvented by the minute.

The police gave chase from the beginning, even as less ambitious protesters gathered on the State Capitol lawn for the sanctioned march. Cell phones were abuzz with word of law enforcement officers in riot gear gathering at multiple intersections. There were early reports of pepper spray.

I left the State Capitol before the marchers did, alternately shadowing riot police and the roving protesters. For hours the game was the same: mostly black-clad protesters would round a corner chanting and dancing. The black-clad riot police would form columns. There would be a tense standoff and then, as quickly as they came, the protesters would disappear around another corner. It went on and on like this and eventually I gave up and went for water.

Then I received a Twitter message on my phone from user RNCo8announce:

We are now at the reconvergence time 3:15. There is confirmed activity of a group marching north on wabasha from 4th

Rushing to the spot, I passed this:

It was a Minneapolis Police Department squad being hauled away on a flatbed. The game had changed. Throughout downtown a handful of the day’s protesters had become much more aggressive, even violent. By the time I found the “reconvergence” it was at Kellogg Boulevard, where its participants were dragging newspaper boxes and trash receptacles into the street to block traffic — delegates or otherwise. Riot police looked on, but made no move. A few of the inconvenienced drivers left their cars to clear the roadblock themselves.

The mood among the protesters was still somewhat festive at this point. The Dead Kennedys were blaring from a stereo strapped to a wagon.

The protesters moved up the road until they were in front of the Crowne Plaza Hotel — RNC home to Texas delegates. Smooth-jazz-infused pop music was playing from speakers mounted in the hotel’s awning.

Nearby, a wall of National Guard troops with shields and batons stood two deep behind a row of police in riot gear. An officer with a bullhorn announced “This is your final chance!” — the crowd control chemicals were next. The police began marching forward, their rhythmic chanting (“Move! Move! Move!”) hushed by their gas masks.

They stopped to give the protesters one more chance to move along, which the energetic mob had done reliably all day. The riot police made a hole and horse-mounted police — horses and police wearing gas masks — approached the protesters and brushed up against them:

The protesters stayed where they were. The riot police advanced again and stopped. A woman confronted them, yelling: “I hope your parents see you on YouTube!”

An Associated Press photographer stood ready — very ready:

As most people — protesters, reporters and curious onlookers — watched from the sidewalks and green space along Kellogg, one protester pleaded from the street in a hoarse voice: “Get off the sidewalks and into the streets! These are our streets!”

In the distance, a lone drummer beat a snare drum at a heartbeat’s pace.

With voices made nasal and hushed behind their gas masks, the riot police yelled:

“Hold up!”

“Watch your line!”

“You guys tighten this up in here! Hold the line!”

Soon there was another advance, this one a bit faster. An officer took the red pepper spray canister from its thigh-holster and sprayed — sweeping from the protester in front of him to the reporters, myself included, at his side (all of us wore our press passes in plain view). We were just 20 minutes into the “reconvergence.”

In a fleeting moment of complicated levity a protester matched that initial burst of pepper spray with his own burst of Silly String, yelling: “You’ve been shot!”

Public Enemy’s “911 is a Joke” played from the wagon.

Now they were spraying in earnest, entangled as they were in Silly String. The cans were routinely misfiring and being tossed to the ground. There were sirens.

An observer for the National Lawyers Guild, clearly marked, was sprayed extensively from a roughly two foot distance just after this photo was taken:

Next it was a blue smoke canister. The AP reporter with the mask can be seen running from the street at the right:

After that, it was the “impact rounds” — fired from a 40mm rifle. Riot police fired these repeatedly during the Kellogg Boulevard incident and at other points during the day.

At one point a young male, one of the protesters, charged the line of riot police. He was tackled and struggled a bit against the force of four fully-uniformed riot police.

Finally, there were the exploding tear gas canisters. A few seconds after they are tossed by law enforcement they explode, creating a fog of tear gas and sometimes a torch-like flame.

At one point, an officer looked in my direction (there were others behind me) and tossed a canister that landed at my feet. I jumped as it exploded and ran back to snap this picture:

This guy, a photojournalist with official RNC press credentials, was soaked with pepper spray and collapsed at the feet of protester-medics once the chaos had ended.

I witnessed only two arrests when it was all over, which meant the roving protesters were roving again. The riot police stayed in formation — a line covering the entire width of Kellogg, its sidewalks, and its green space. One officer left the line to clear out yet another roadblock, assembled from, among other things, this:

With the air clear but the riot police still in formation, a bus lumbered up next to where the soaked photojournalist had collapsed just a few minutes earlier. It was a bus chartered by the Humphrey Institute. Two riders exited and paid no mind to the grimacing reporters and onlookers all around them.

From the bridge behind the bus, you could see — and hear — this:

The tear gas below was quick to waft up to onlookers on the bridge, with children among them. It was another brutal burn and a first taste for people who had simply wandered onto the scene. This riverside game of cat and mouse ended with the largest number of arrests of the day — bringing the total to at least 284 by late evening.

All photos by Jeff Severns Guntzel, who can be reached at jsguntzel at gmail.com

]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/6740/day-one-diary-all-roads-lead-to-kellogg-boulevard/feed 10 http://minnesotaindependent.com/3796/mde-non-shocker-ap-profile-of-gops-brodkorb-omits-many-paid-party-gigs http://minnesotaindependent.com/3796/mde-non-shocker-ap-profile-of-gops-brodkorb-omits-many-paid-party-gigs#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 17:10:34 +0000 Paul Schmelzer http://www.minnesotaindependent.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=3796 Text corrected: see note below The Associated Press profiles Republican blogger Michael Brodkorb today, praising his two “direct hits” on Al Franken over the Democratic senate candidate’s tax problems. The…]]>

Text corrected: see note below

The Associated Press profiles Republican blogger Michael Brodkorb today, praising his two “direct hits” on Al Franken over the Democratic senate candidate’s tax problems. The piece by Patrick Condon says that Brodkorb “shrugs off Democrats’ claims that he’s a Republican operative by saying he’s never been paid to blog.” The Minnesota Democrats Exposed blogger repeatedly makes that claim, and goes to great pains to express his independence, but as Minnesota Monitor’s Robin Marty reported in September 2006, Brodkorb’s ties to the Republican party are deeper than those of a mere enthusiast engaged in pro-GOP blogging as “a labor of love” (as the AP story puts it).

The AP only mentions in passing Brodkorb’s past work as research director for the Republican Party of Minnesota and leaves out specific reference to a part-time gig as “press consultant” to former Republican senatorial candidate Mark Kennedy; according to Federal Elections Commission reports, he earned $4,500 per month at that job. The AP also doesn’t mention the check for $5,500 Brodkorb received on September 3, 2006, for research services provided to the Michele Bachmann campaign.

Brodkorb, reached by phone Friday morning, did not dispute that he has had paying jobs for the GOP, but declined to comment further, saying he felt unfairly treated by Minnesota Monitor in Marty’s September 2006 article.

Editor’s Note: This item contains a correction. It originally stated, wrongly, that the AP article failed to mention Brodkorb’s past work as the state Republican party’s research director.