Photo: TarrylClark.com

Tarryl Clark, the DFLer challenging U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in November, is headed to Las Vegas on Saturday to attend Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of progressive bloggers and candidates which spun off from YearlyKos, a get-together of DailyKos diarists and fans. She’ll have some Minnesota company: Sen. Al Franken is giving the closing day keynote.

“I’m coming to Netroots Nation 2010, and I’m asking you to be a part of my campaign for Congress,” Clark wrote in a post on DailyKos Friday. “Washington isn’t working for the people of my district, and neither is Michele Bachmann. They deserve better. They deserve a representative to will always be on their side. And that’s exactly where I’ll be.”

She praised the DailyKos community for spotlighting some of Bachmann’s more incendiary statements in recent years.

You’ve kept vigilant watch as Congresswoman Bachmann has gone under the white-hot spotlights of the cable talk show circuit again and again. And you’ve called her out: when she called on a conservative crowd to “slit our wrists” and “become blood brothers” in the efforts to defeat health care reform. When she called net neutrality an Obama plot to censor the Internet. When she said the American people needed to be “weaned off” Social Security and Medicare.

Clark, who attended last year’s Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh, will be speaking in a program with Franken at the conference’s closing ceremonies on Saturday.

Reed’s campaign says, “since she’s not a career politician she can’t be attacked for raising taxes,” in a nod to moderates and independents, but she also gave a nod to progressives: “She’s the only candidate who supports a public option that competes with insurance companies and that includes measures to lower costs.”

OutstatePolitics.com has full screen grabs of the mailer.

MPR’s Midday program at 11 a.m. today will be given over to the last debate between Rep. Michele Bachmann and her 6th district opponent, El Tinklenberg. You can find the live feed here at the appointed hour. And come on back to MnIndy for our live blog of the half-hour-long faceoff.

“I want this to be a referendum within the Republican party on the kind of leadership or, more pertinently, the lack of leadership that Rep. Michele Bachmann has shown,” he told Fox’s Ellen Galles.

In an email, he wrote, “It’s been hectic for a small, insurgent, one-man campaign such as mine — but nothing like what’s happening at Tinklenberg HQ, I’m sure.” (Tinklenberg has surpassed $810,000 in donations since Friday afternoon.)

On his website, Immelman writes that he’s been “inundated with messages and phone calls of support.” More importantly, donations — something he didn’t accept for the primary — started coming. “[S]tarting Friday night, small contributions began trickling in, typically in amounts of $10 and $20, but with a couple of $50 contributions mixed in,” he told me. He says he’s seen a trickle but not a flood, adding up to “four digits” of funds. Suffice it to say, “it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what Tinklenberg has received.”

Following Michele Bachmann’s already notorious “anti-Americans” turn on Hardball last Friday –  and the news that her main 6th District opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, raised more than $600,000 over the weekend — the conventional wisdom about Bachmann’s re-election prospects has turned on a dime. Or, as this morning’s Strib puts it: “Suddenly, Bachmann race looks different.”

But even before that debacle, Bachmann faced a challenge back home that’s been little-noted but may pose difficulties for the first-term incumbent: the impact of the mortgage crisis in her suburban and rural district.

As the foreclosure crisis spreads and Alt-A loans start to reset, an issue that was once confined mostly to the city is starting to unravel. Foreclosures are turning toney and leafy neighborhoods into ghost towns. Entire neighborhoods are free of kids and cars, and half-built homes look like bombed-out mausoleums on sprawling lots.

The no-doc pick-a-payment loans that were popular for suburban McMansions won’t actually hit their reset peak until 2010. Yet not only are many of these suburban homes going into foreclosure prematurely; the increasing foreclosures are the first wave of more problems to come for the outer rings.

Today, for example, Michele Bachmann’s district is turning a deep shade of red. The color saturation isn’t associated with the exurbs’ GOP leanings. Instead, Bachmann’s district, which includes Stearns, Benton, Sherburne, Wright, Anoka, and Washington counties, is being hit hard with foreclosures, so heavily that the most recent foreclosure data map provided by the New York Federal Reserve has all of the counties, with the exception of Stearns, bleeding a shade of red that’s as deep or deeper than the one that colors Hennepin County.

Housing Link: Foreclosures by county in Minnesota (from PDF linked in story)

That’s because, according to the most recent study released by Housing Link in Minnesota, Bachmann’s district has a higher foreclosure rate than the rest of Minnesota and the rest of the country. While in 2007 the national average hovered at around one percent, or one out of every 100 mortgages went into foreclosure, Sherburne and Wright were actually at 1.5 to 2 percent that year, and the rest of her district was between 1.01 and 1.5 percent.  What’s more, Housing Link’s numbers represent only the total foreclosure sheriff sales and don’t include the high number of foreclosure filings and notices of default that are pervasive throughout the suburbs right now, numbers often cited by many housing analysts as actual foreclosures.

To put it into perspective, compare this to Hennepin County, which is suffering from the highest number of foreclosures in the state and serious blight as a result of it. The foreclosure rate in 2007 was between 1.01 and 1.5 percent, and is expected to increase to 1.51 to 2 percent this year. But that’s a lower rate of foreclosure than the outer ring is presently seeing.

“The problem in that area is really two-fold,” says Mark Ireland, attorney for the Housing Preservation Project and the Foreclosure Relief Law project in Minnesota.  “One big bubble of subprime is crashing right now. There were subprimes in the suburbs too, mostly originated in 2004 and 2005. And there were a bunch of Alt-As originated in 2005 and 2006 that are just starting to reset. But the problem is accelerated by the energy crisis. People who are commuting 60 to 70 miles to work each day cannot afford the gas, or the payments on their home.”

In Bachmann’s district, foreclosures in Sherburne rose by 97 percent last year. Hennepin County, which suffered from more than 5,000 foreclosures last year, saw its foreclosures rise by 83 percent.

“It’s a huge issue out there,” Ireland says.  “And I don’t think anyone was willing to believe it, partly because these folks made poor financial decisions, getting into homes that were $300,000 and more. They’re not going to have the blight that city’s have out there, because it’s a little more spread out. A house every acre. But you are going to have issues of houses that were just slopped up with pretty low quality materials,” he says.

And he adds that ignoring the problem will only increase the spread. “The problem with ignoring it is twofold. You are not only punishing them for making a bad decision, you are punishing an entire community. People are under water. Home values are declining 10 to 20 percent. It will become a problem that affects everyone.”

Ireland adds that neighbors, and in particular policy makers, have been less sympathetic to the plight of those living in giant brand-new homes they can’t afford. For the most part, they weren’t victims of predatory lending or mortgage fraud that’s so prevalent in the cities.

“It gets into some sort of weird college ethics question about is it the drunk or the bartender to blame?” Ireland says. “I guess where I come down, and I am biased, the person who is the most culpable is the person who is in the best position to say ‘no.’ And to me, that is the banks. They knew the risks of originating these loans. They knew what the default rate was going to be. And they were in a position to stop it.”

And so far, Bachmann’s allegiances have been clear. She’s voted against any help for homeowners and continually sides with banks and the financial services industry as member of the House Financial Services Committee. Her number one campaign contributor is TCF Bank, which is also one of the top-ten mortgage lenders in the state.

If there is any good news for Bachmann in all this, it’s that voters in her district aren’t likely to inject any Obama coattails effect into the race even if Obama does win by double digits in the state at large, as some recent polls have suggested he might.

The 6th District has long been deemed the most conservative in the state, observes political analyst David Schultz. “The main races in which you could see Obama’s coattails playing out are the US Senate and the 3rd Congressional District,” he says. “I don’t see it playing much of a role in Bachmann’s district, though I suppose voters in the Stillwater area and at St. Cloud State could have some impact in that regard.”

Still, says Schultz, “In light of Bachmann’s meltdown in recent days, it’s possible to see her as vulnerable now, which would have been hard to imagine not very long ago.”

Steve Perry contributed reporting to this story.

Michele Bachmann: “A Lobbyist’s Worst Nightmare” (:30)

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When Mr. Olson has posted his welcome comment, fire away!

The live session is over, but please read the comment thread to check out Mr. Olson’s answers to a variety of questions.

Rich Dunn, the chief of staff from the Washington office, told the Minnesota staff Friday that former state Sen. Sean Nienow, who has been Bachmann’s district director, is out and will be replaced by Julie Quist of St. Peter.

Quist has been on the cutting edge of the Minnesota social conservative movement for more than a decade. She was a full partner with her husband Allen Quist in a stunning political accomplishment of 1994, when they defeated Arne Carlson, a sitting Republican governor, for endorsement (although Carlson beat Quist in a primary and was re-elected). The Quists beat Carlson within the GOP base substantially on Carlson’s liberal positions on social issues like abortion and gay rights. In recent years, she has been a leader at EdWatch, a far-right advocacy group on education issues.

Julie Quist and Bachmann are personally and ideologically close and worked together when Bachmann was in the Minnesota Senate and led the charge to kill a state-mandated educational curriculum known as the Profiles of Learning. For Quist and Bachmann, the profiles were a Trojan horse for what they considered a secular humanism agenda. Quist and Bachmann share a passionate opposition to same-sex marriage.

Longtime Star Tribune political reporter Dane Smith described Quist as “a savvy and tireless political operative, organizer and campaigner who was always right there on the edge of whatever issue the social conservatives were pushing.”

Smith said he could imagine Bachmann benefitting from Quist’s skills as re-election time rolls around, but “if she’s looking to moderate  her image or her positions even a little, this is not the move to make.”

Other staff changes

Two members of the Washington staff  have already left in the last few days.  Legislative Assistant Erika Nelsen (a holdover from the staff of Bachmann’s predecessor, Rep. Mark Kennedy) and Legislative Correspondent Tara Westby (an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the state House of Represenatives in 2006) are gone.

Bachmann’s spokester, Heidi Frederickson (also a Kennedy holdover), is no longer returning press calls and will soon leave the office.

A certain amount of staff turnover is common during a congressperson’s first term. But this is an above average amount and Bachmann hasn’t completed the first half of her term yet.

When the dust settles from the current shakeup, Bachmann, who is already on her second chief of staff, will have replaced most of her top management.

The Bachmann office is not confirming any of these changes and is acting totally squirrelly about it. All questions are referred to Washington Staff Chief Dunn, who doesn’t return calls or e-mails.

The receptionist at the Bachmann St. Cloud office hung up on a constituent when he asked to know the name of the head of Bachmann’s Minnesota operations.

Tinklenberg, who is also a former mayor of Blaine, and banker Bob Olson are seeking the DFL endorsement in that race. The AFL-CIO endorsement, while important, is not much of a surprise, since the AFL-CIO strongly backed Tinklenberg in 2006, when he narrowly lost an endorsement race for the same congressional seat to children’s advocate Patty Wetterling. (Wetterling won the nomination but lost the general election to Bachmann.)

But in that 2006 race, the politically powerful government workers’ union, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), endorsed Wetterling over Tinklenberg. AFSCME interviewed the 6th District candidates last night but hasn’t yet announced an endorsement.

Tinklenberg is favored against Olson for the DFL endorsement. If AFSCME were to endorse Olson, the race would appear more competitive. One source told me yesterday that some of the AFSCME leaders had apologized to Tinklenberg for endorsing his opponent in 2006, which would seem to bode well for his chances of getting the AFSCME endorsement this time and put him in a commanding position in the race for DFL endorsement.