Todd Palin’s five-city, two-day campaign across northern Minnesota ended in the city of Moorhead in the northwestern part of the state, just across the Red River of the North from the bigger city of Fargo, N.D. There, Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko took in one last T-Pal stump speech at Scheel’s sporting goods store before interviewing people outside the store, some of whom had traveled two hours or more for the short, five-minute speech. Here are highlights, in a seven-minute video clip that touches on Abraham Lincoln, Saul Alinsky and Pythagoras.

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With an exciting and hotly contested race for an open seat, the candidates and crowd did not disappoint.

On the issues, Terri Bonoff, Ashwin Madia and Jim Hovland largely agreed.  The biggest disagreement appeared on the first question on economic policy, on which Madia distinguished himself from his opponents by saying he opposes the $150 billion tax rebate program currently being issued by Congress.  However, their disagreement was more cordial than on other issues in other debates; even when Madia later repeated a line that “candidates ought to tell you how they’re going to pay for” a program and advocated letting the Bush tax cuts expire, Bonoff did not jump on that position, as she has in previous debates.

All in all, the debate represented a great chance for the hundreds of attendees to hear three strong advocates for the DFL platform.  All three were on their games, got in a few memorable one-liners and displayed expertise, clarity and a little humor — especially when moderator Amy Rotenberg accidentally addressed Hovland as Gov.  Hovland, causing a few laughs and a great reaction from Hovland himself, who stood up with a smile and accepted the previously unknown election to the state’s highest office.  Despite a technical malfunction that left a certain Samaritan blogger looking silly when a projector couldn’t handle the video signal from his laptop, the event was largely on time and fast-moving and covered domestic issues and foreign affairs efficiently and effectively.

Last night’s winner?  Too close to call.  The candidates were evenly matched, having honed their rhetoric and favorite citations over weeks on the campaign trail.  Bonoff in particular has improved her debate style, having largely done away with factoid lines beginning with “by the way” and advanced the argument that her experience in the  Legislature will let her record match up well against that of Republican Erik Paulsen in November.  Hovland has improved as well, still advocating some of the most clearly progressive positions of the three on health care and education.  Madia has made up significant stylistic and factual ground on domestic issues, which were a soft spot for him in earlier debates relative to his strength on foreign policy issues.

The race goes from here to the first of several Senate District conventions, at which delegates to the CD3 DFL convention will be elected this weekend.  Madia said afterward he expects the first SD convention, to be held at Eden Prairie High School this Saturday, to set much of the momentum going forward to the CD convention April 12. Hovland noted in comments afterward that he was building support from across the political spectrum, and both Bonoff and Madia echoed that thought.  Such sentiments are not entirely unexpected, but do not provide any clarity on where the candidates’ support bases are.

The bottom line, sad for policy wonks but welcome news for field organizing types, is that the outcome of this race will likely come down to organizing on the floor of those upcoming conventions.  The race for 91 delegates April 12 is officially on.

*More video is coming as soon as it’s processed*

The event will be held at the Target Center in Minneapolis at 1:30 p.m.  Tickets are free, but must be reserved through the Obama campaign. They can be reserved online at the Obama campaign’s website, or at regional Obama campaign headquarters throughout the state. Student tickets can also be obtained at Coffman Union’s Fireplace Lounge on the University of Minnesota campus.

Obama is locked in a very tight race for the Democratic nomination. His main opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has not yet announced any events in Minnesota. Minnesota is one of 24 states holding caucuses or primaries on Tuesday.

 
1. Noah Kunin accesses the Scott Howell website and goes to the “Netview” page.  Once there, there is strong evidence that he did indeed reach a prompt for a “password.”

 

2. Kunin enters a password of “Allen,” evidently searching for ads on George Allen, and is redirected to a world-readable index page.

 

3. Kunin finds a Kennedy ad, and copies the URL for the ad.

 

4. He then forwards the URL to Tara McGuinness, alerting her to the ad.

 

5. Tara McGuinness clicks on the link to the ad; the site does not ask her for a password to view said ad.

 

6. The Klobuchar campaign discovers these actions, fires McGuinness, and directs Kunin to no longer send links to the campaign.

 

7. The Klobuchar notifies the FBI of a potential violation of campaign law.

 

8. Once FBI reporting is complete, the Klobuchar campaign notifies the Kennedy campaign and the media.

A few conclusions may be drawn here:

 
• Kunin may indeed be in some trouble.  The site did evidently ask for a “password,” and while the site simply redirected Kunin to a world-readable site, he did have to enter something to get there.  One possible mitigating factor, in Kunin’s own words: “While searching for political ads, I clicked on a link titled ‘netview,’ which then brought me to another webpage. No other information was requested. I therefore typed in the name ‘Allen.’ Nothing more, nothing less.”  It is possible that Kunin did not see that the textbox was requesting a password specifically, or that the “password” shockwave movie did not load correctly.

 

• McGuinness comes of somewhat more sympathetically here than initially; she clicked on a link, she didn’t use a purloined password.  She still isn’t off the hook–but it appears that nobody inside the Klobuchar campaign was doing anything related to hacking.

 

• The Klobuchar campaign itself appears to have handled this about as well as possible.  There had to be temptation to cover this up to avoid this sort of scandal.  Kudos to them for doing the right thing and notifying both Kennedy and the media.

Much more to come, including a look at what legal issues remain.

Minnesota Monitor will be covering the meeting, including a possible short interview with Murtha and Rowley before the event.

Please see full press release here.

Otto followed fired another salvo Tuesday. A press release issued by the DFL stated: “With no fanfare or public acknowledgement, State Auditor Patricia Anderson this week released a corrected version of her report on special district finances after DFL challenger Rebecca Otto pointed out over $180 million in errors in the report last week.

]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/59/andersonotto-report-gate-reaching-greater-minnesota/feed 0 http://minnesotaindependent.com/54/more-on-andersonotto-report-gate http://minnesotaindependent.com/54/more-on-andersonotto-report-gate#comments Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:45:50 +0000 Joe Bodell http://www.minnesotaindependent.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=54 The story I broke two days ago on MN Campaign Report has found its way into a DFL press release, as noted by Sara Reller.

Earlier this year, the Minnesota Department of Education amended a 2004 Total Revenue report to account for errors found by Rebecca Otto, DFL challenger for State Auditor.  Why did Auditor Anderson not issue a similar amendment statement along with her most recent accounting error?

]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/54/more-on-andersonotto-report-gate/feed 0 http://minnesotaindependent.com/36/whos-watching-the-watchdog-part-deux http://minnesotaindependent.com/36/whos-watching-the-watchdog-part-deux#comments Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:56:32 +0000 Joe Bodell http://www.minnesotaindependent.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=36 Remember this?  And this?  And then this, and it fizzled?  I have to admit, I was proud of the “RPM Otto-matic Press Releases” title.

State Auditor Pat Anderson has made a colossal blunder in her game of “She said, she said” with DFL challenger Rebecca Otto.  In a recent interview, Anderson said “Otto got it wrong today…She clearly does not understand basic governmental accounting. Otto claimed there were hundreds of millions of dollars in errors, when in fact there were none.”  If there were no errors, why did Ms. Anderson amend the total revenue figure in the report in question after Rebecca Otto’s charges were made public?Screenshots of the offending page can be seen here.  You can clearly see that the total revenue figure cited on this page has been changed.  As far as I know, no email was sent by the Auditor’s office indicating this change, and it’s a biggie – $180.1 million.

To be fair, it appears to be an issue with simple arithmetic – according to a cursory examination of the subsequent figures contained in the report, the larger figure is correct.  However, if the smaller previous figure were used or cited by anyone before the Auditor made this stealth change, it would represent a fairly egregious error.

The only thing that changes, as far as I can see, is that Rebecca Otto examined this report in considerable depth, and forced the Auditor to re-examine the numbers as well, thus identifying this error.  What would have happened had Otto not identified various issues within this report?  Would we all have gone our merry ways, missing this one hundred eighty million dollars from the state’s financial position?  Most importantly, did political expedience outweigh the need to inform the taxpaying public that the original report was in error?

Answers, Madam Auditor – I’m sure your political allies will be more than happy to offer them on your behalf.

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