About 48 percent of Minnesotans support the amendment voters will judge on the November 2012 ballot, 43 percent are opposed to the ban and 8 percent are undecided.

The poll shows that people under 34 overwhelmingly rejected the amendment, 58 to 33 percent, and Minnesotans over 65 overwhelmingly approved of the ban at 70 percent to 26 percent. People who had higher incomes, higher education and lived in the Twin Cities metropolitan area were more likely to reject the amendment.

Predictably, the state split along party lines with Republicans supporting the amendment, 66 to 26 percent, and DFLers rejecting it 60 to 35 percent. Independents were split with 48 percent supporting it and 44 percent rejecting it.

The poll differs sharply with one conducted by the paper in May. That poll found that 55 percent opposed the amendment and 39 percent supported it, but that poll asked people to respond to the statement: ”Please tell me if you would favor or oppose amending the Minnesota constitution to ban same-sex marriage.”

The poll released on Tuesday asked an entirely different question: “Would you favor or oppose amending the Minnesota Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman?”

As other pollsters have found, anti-gay marriage amendments lose support when those polled understand that in addition to defining marriage as between a man and a woman, such amendments bar same-sex couples from marrying.

Public Policy Polling which has been doing monthly polling on a similar amendment in North Carolina noted that there was a vast swing in support for the amendment depending on wording.

“Voters are against ‘prohibiting’ recognition for gay couples. But if you word it in such a way that all you’re doing is defining marriage as between one man and one woman, voters are ok with that,” said PPP’s Tom Jensen. “You’re asking about the same thing in both cases, but the semantics make a huge difference and Republicans clearly know what they’re doing with the language that’s on the ballot.”

MPR reports that the current host of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura said he plans to refer to the United States as the “Fascist States of America.”

“The only way that I could change it I guess would be to run for president and win it,” Ventura said. “Is that what it will take?” When asked if he’s running for the White House, Ventura said “I’m thinking about it. That’s all though.”

Ventura has suggested before that he might have an interest in again running for higher office. In April, Ventura told Good Morning America that he’d consider running as Rep. Ron Paul’s vice president if he ran for an independent party.

Ventura also said that he and his wife plan to pursue their Mexican citizenship, according to Politics in Minnesota.

Ventura has dabbled in the 9/11 truther movement and other conspiracy theories, partly for his television show, since leaving office. The camera crew was present at today’s press conference, according to media reports.

Quist lost the Republican endorsement to former legislator Randy Demmer in 2010. Quist, who is a longtime religious right activist, has run for office several times, including a primary challenge to Gov. Arne Carlson who Quist thought was too liberal.

“I wish to thank all the patriotic Republicans who have been encouraging me to become a candidate for First District Congress,” Quist wrote on his website. “Be assured that I hear what you are saying, and I am now leaning in the direction of aggressively going for it. I will make a final decision soon.”

Quist ran in 2010 for the Republican endorsement and made national headlines for his statements at the Wabasha County Republicans Christmas Party when he said that defeating liberals was more important than defeating terrorism. He lost the endorsement to Randy Demmer, who lost in the general election to Walz.

He’s spent a long time in politics and during his stint in the Minnesota Legislature in the 1980s, he made a name for himself by opposing LGBT rights and ranting against abortion, two topics on which he has authored books.

In the 1988 legislative session, Quist was notorious for his emphasis on social issues. “He alleged that Mankato State University was encouraging the spread of AIDS by sponsoring a counseling center for gays, comparing it to a center for the Ku Klux Klan,” wrote the Star Tribune’s Dane Smith in 1994.

Sen. Mike Parry is the only Republican challenger to have formally announced for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District. He officially kicked off his campaign on Thursday morning with a series of stops in southern Minnesota.

“I’m running for Congress because Congressman Tim Walz and the Washington crowd have sold us out,” Parry said in a statement. “They have mortgaged the futures of our children and grandchildren with their wasteful spending. I look forward to speaking with families across southern Minnesota about how we can bring fiscal responsibility to Washington.”

Hernandez joins former legislator Dan Severson and St. Bonafacius City Council member Joe Arwood. Hernandez said his platform includes bringing “moral principles” to government and praised Herman Cain’s 999 tax plan.

“I do not feel comfortable, given the course that we are on, handing to furute generations the current country that we have now,” he said at a press conference Tuesday. “We must restore a political system of moral principle back in America.”

He said “individual life and family” are the the most crucial units of society.

He called for term limits, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandating Congress pass a budget, a repeal of health care reform, an end to “unconstitutional wars” and tax reform.

“I like the idea of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan,” he said. “Is it perfect? No, but it’s a start.”

Hernandez last ran for office in one of St. Paul’s Senate districts in 2010, losing to DFL Sen. Dick Cohen.

He was also the Minnesota leader of Somos Republicans, a Latino Republican group. A representative of that group told the Minnesota Independent on Thursday that Hernandez has left the group.

On state issues, Hernandez supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

“In 2012, Minnesota voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” he wrote on his campaign website. “I believe that government should have a very limited role in marriage. As a result, I support the referendum in that I believe it is best for the people of Minnesota, rather than politicians or activist judges, to decide this important cultural issue.”

He’s also an opponent of abortion rights.

“The right to life is a core principle described both within the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution,” he says. “As your U.S. Senator, I will work to protect the natural right to life from conception until natural death.”

The intention is to come up with a concrete plan to make real the recent proposal from agricultural leaders, including Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, to voluntarily cut $23 billion from agriculture. That willingness to cut was spurred by a fear that the congressional “super committee,” which is tasked with chopping $1.2 trillion from the federal budget in the next decade, would otherwise cut even deeper into agriculture.

The bill will likely include cuts to direct commodity payments, conservation and nutrition plans. Lobbyists for agribusiness like the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are pushing for Congress to cease direct payments in favor of improved crop insurance, which the Associated Press reports is pitting farmers in the south, who grow crops like cotton that benefit from direct payments, against those in other parts of the country.

One lobbyist described the relationship between lobbyists and congressional aides as “free-flowing and open,” Gannett reports.

The bill, if taken up by the “super committee,” will be forced into an up-down vote, with no amendments to the legislation being possible. That’s drawing alarm from groups critical of farm subsidies, Gannett reports.

“Given the amount of money involved, and given the implications of the farm bill for our food and the quality of our environment, there’s a lot of folks in Congress that ought to have a voice in where this ends up other than the agriculture committees,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Associated Press Monday that the administration wanted the farm bill to increase disaster aid, following a difficult season for farmers.

The congressional leaders plan to release details of the bill by Nov. 1.

Boisclair is the latest member of the Society for Truth and Justice (STJ) to launch a primary challenge. David Lewis, a lobbyist for the Washington, D.C.-based STJ, announced in late-September that he is challenging House Speaker Jon Boehner in Ohio for the Republican primary. Lewis doesn’t live in the district and says he will move there if elected.

And Lewis is making abortion the sole issue of his campaign, as is anti-abortion activist Angela Michael who is running for Congress in the Chicago area.

Boisclair is running against Ellison in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District on the abortion issue as well.

STJ’s founder, Randall Terry, explained the strategy to Catholic Online.

“By running campaign ads in the top 25 media markets, we can reach 1/3 of the nation with a message about the truth and horror of abortion,” he said.

Boisclair is the latest of the STJ staffers to launch a campaign. His campaign website features graphic images of fetuses, and is virtually identical to Lewis’ and Michael’s. In fact, when the Minnesota Independent attempted to contact Boisclair, the email address on his website went to Lewis for Congress instead of Boisclair’s campaign email address.

In a document from Randall Terry posted on Boisclair’s website, Randall Terry lays out his campaign strategy (capitalization theirs):

WE WILL NEVER SAVE OUR ECONOMY, or CURE THESE OTHER ILLS, until we stop killing our children, BECAUSE THE HAND OF GOD WILL BE AGAINST US. Hence, our goal is to create a crisis of conscience for America, by showing the public the gruesome reality of “safe, legal, abortion;” pictures of murdered babies in TV ads. Federal Law Requires that TV Stations Run the Ads of Federal Candidates; Even Ads That Show Babies Murdered By Abortion! Every true pro-lifer in America needs to know this, and embrace this incredible chance to be a witness…a prophetic voice…for the babies. Every pro-lifer in America needs to catch the vision of ENDING THIS HOLOCAUST. “But Randall…” some will say, “surely they will find a way to get around the law; surely they will not run the ads.” WRONG!!! Federal Law
requires that TV stations run the ads that they are given, even if the ad shows aborted babies.

Despite the connections to Randall Terry and the push to get anti-abortion ads aired, Boisclair’s press release announcing his campaign tells a different story.

“I intend to defeat Mr. Ellison soundly in this primary, based upon the issues at hand. Congressman Keith Ellison has failed to represent the ethics and beliefs of this district,” he wrote. “At the onset of his tenure, Ellison took his Oath of office with his hand on a Quaran—a book which mandates violence against Jews and Christians. Ellison consistently legislates for socialist programs, which in effect make us the slave labor force of the federal government. Under his agenda, we are enslaved to heavy taxation, crushing debt, runaway inflation, and we are forced to ‘give’ our hard earned money to his favorite ‘entitlements.’”

Boisclair said Ellison’s track record is “even more nefarious.”

“Mr. Ellison has voted repeatedly to fund Planned Parenthood, a racist organization with a long history of discrimination against minorities, which has consistently targeted black and Hispanic minorities for the abortion of their children. Planned Parenthood is a racist, criminal syndicate, which covers up the crimes of pedophiles, rapists and sex traffickers; it slaughters nearly 1,000 unborn babies every day, and Keith Ellison is their brazen champion, as he hypocritically parades his Progressive Caucus motto, ‘Liberty and Justice for ALL.’”

Boisclair says his campaign will issue three ads on Monday.

Boisclair has long been involved with Terry’s STJ as well as another of Terry’s anti-abortion groups, Operation Rescue. He was arrested in front of Boehner’s office in March. He also protested Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana this spring.

“Michael Pence did a great service for the babies by introducing an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood,” Boisclair said in a press statement at the time. “As a matter of duty to God, the babies, and his constituents, Mr. Pence must be willing to ‘die on this hill’ even if it means standing against the GOP leadership – and a government shut-down – to insure that this ‘criminal syndicate’ does not receive any more of our money.”

He wore a chicken suit at a protest during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in 2010.

And in 2010, he wrote a letter to Catholic bishops urging them to deny communion to politicians that disagree with his stance on abortion.

Your Excellency:

We thank you for your service to us and to all the Church, and, in particular, for all that you have done for the unborn.

We humbly beg you to warn any Catholic Senator or House Member within your See or within your state: “If you vote for child-killing in ‘Health Care Reform,’ you will be denied Holy Communion.”

Is this not a bishop’s pastoral duty of mercy?

Jesus’ witness to the truth (Jn 18) cost him his life. Following Christ’s example many bishops have been martyred, including St. Timothy, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pope St. Clement, and St. John Fisher.

STANDING UP FOR THE BABIES AND THE EUCHARIST IN THIS HOUR WILL SURELY NOT COST YOU YOUR LIFE!

Be of good courage and let your voice be heard!

Sincerely in Christ,

Diana Roccograndi, Gary Boisclair, Andrew Beacham

Late last year, the group crashed a holiday party hosted by NARAL.

At the time he said that the “people at NARAL and DC Abortion Fund have celebrated their selfish, deceptive, wicked ideas and called it a holiday party. We at Insurrecta Nex love them too much to fail to tell them the truth.

Boisclair is also running Randall Terry’s campaign for president in 2012. Terry announced earlier this year that he would challenge President Obama in the Democratic primaries in order to exploit the federal elections law that says media outlets cannot refuse to run a candidate’s advertising. Terry plans national anti-abortion ads in 2012, particularly during the Super Bowl.

“[Terry] wants to bring America face to face with the victims of abortion,” Boisclair said of the campaign. “He wants to be able to pummel Obama’s policies.”

Ron Thomas will be Senior Advisor for South Carolina and Guy Short will become National Political Director based in Des Moines. Short has a reputation as an aggressive lobbyist to such a degree that Republicans in Colorado considered giving him the boot, and Thomas’ stint as a staffer for the South Carolina Republican Party involved promises of federal faith-based funds to churches for electoral support.

According to a release by the Bachmann campaign, Thomas served as President George W. Bush’s appointee as deputy assistant secretary for policy in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and as the designated federal official for the Secretary’s Advisory Committee of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans and Families.

Thomas has also worked for the Republican Party of South Carolina, including during a contentious gubernatorial and senatorial campaign in 2002, where the GOP and Thomas hosted pastors from about 100 African-American churches at a “seminar on faith-based and community initiatives” which was assisted by the Bush Administration’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Steve Benen, writing for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, described the situation as “the first and most blatant example of mixing White House faith-based efforts and partisan politics.”

The seminar was sponsored by the state Republican Party as part of its self-described “outreach program.” The main topic of the event, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, was information on how pastors could “get their part of $30 million in federal money” through the Compassion Capital Fund.

After the event, clergy participants were contacted, not by the White House office, but the state Republican Party. Ron Thomas, political director of the South Carolina GOP, sent acknowledgements to participants on party letterhead with additional information about how religious groups can apply for federal grants through the president’s faith-based initiative. In other words, any lines that may have existed between official White House educational efforts and state GOP political outreach to African-American voters were blurred to the point of non-existence.

Bachmann has also hired Guy Short as her national political director.

Short has a history of down and dirty politics. In Colorado, he was a lobbyist for anti-union efforts, and was so voracious in his attacks on unions that Republican legislators considered having him banned from the Capitol last decade.

Short is a veteran of Bachmann’s campaigns and even her Congressional office. He’s been an advisor to her presidential and congressional campaigns, and as Roll Call reported earlier this year, Short was inexplicably paid out of Bachmann’s congressional office starting in June 2010. Short dropped off Bachmann’s congressional payroll when he formed C&M Strategies, which received about $150,000 in payment from MICHELEPAC and her campaign.

Asked about Short’s duties in the Congressional office, Bachmann spokesman Doug Sachtleben said in an email, “With six years of hill experience as a Chief of Staff, Guy Short worked with every member of the Congresswoman’s staff to ensure that they worked as effectively as possible to serve the constituents of Minnesota’s sixth district.”

Short should be a good asset for Bachmann’s lagging campaign, which has been trying to shore up the conservative Christian base. He’s worked with the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, and he’s on the board of the Colorado Family Institute, a group that opposed rights for LGBT Coloradans.

St. Paul Cathedral. Source: Wikipedia

The director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference claimed Friday that a failure to pass the constitutional same-sex marriage ban in 2012 would lead to a dangerous precedent where bisexuals would be free to marry one person of each gender; bisexuals say he’s got it wrong.

In an interview with Politics in Minnesota, Jason Adkins, the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Catholic church, spoke about his organization’s role in the Minnesota for Marriage coalition, which also includes the Minnesota Family Council and the National Organization for Marriage.

“It’s about preserving an important institution,” Adkins told PIM. “When you’re talking about marriage and changing the definition of marriage, you’re not creating a separate institution called same-sex marriage. You’re in fact redefining marriage for everyone.”

Adkins added that legalizing marriage for same-sex couples would create a slippery slope. “There’s little reason why you’d limit it to two people at all. What if a bisexual wants a partner of each kind, a man and a woman? Are you leaving that group out?”

Lauren Beach, chair of the Bisexual Organizing Project, told the Minnesota Independent that Adkins gets it wrong on several counts.

“This amendment is not about who can or should be able to get married—it is about a mean-spirited attempt to write discrimination into the state constitution to say who can’t,” said Beach. “The Bisexual Organizing Project stands united with the rest of the coalition members of Minnesotans United for All Families in our opposition to the marriage amendment. A quick look at the group’s website will show we are not ‘left out’ of this coalition.”

Beach also said that Adkins’ statement revealed a profound misunderstanding of bisexuals.

“To suggest that all bisexuals need to marry more than one person at a time is a common misconception about bisexuality that demonstrates a deeper need for education about bisexual identities in our society,” she said. “Being bisexual is not synonymous with being polyamorous. Some bisexuals, just like some gay, lesbian, transgender, and straight people, are polyamorous. Many bisexuals, including myself, however, are monogamous, and would simply like to live in a society where their partner’s gender would not arbitrarily limit their ability to access the many state benefits directly tied to marriage.”

A coalition of groups working to convince voters to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage said on Tuesday that it would not follow new rules being proposed by the Minnesota campaign finance board, which watchdog groups say would violate the law.

Minnesota for Marriage is a partnership between the Minnesota Family Council, the Minnesota Catholic Conference and the National Organization for Marriage.

Last week, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board announced it was considering updating its rules to close loopholes in the ballot initiative’s reporting requirements. The board released guidance to outside groups that want to donate to ballot campaigns such as Minnesota for Marriage which supports the amendment or Minnesotans United for All Families which opposes the amendment, and spelled out how those donations would be disclosed.

The guidance would heighten public disclosure around campaign spending and will be debated before the board this week.

On Tuesday, Minnesota for Marriage cried foul and said it would only do what it had planned to in the past, calling the new guidance “illegal.”

“Minnesota for Marriage will disclose all donations we receive, as well as all expenditures that we make, consistent with longstanding Minnesota law,” said John Helmberger, MFM’s chairman. “However, what [campaign finance board] bureaucrats are attempting to do goes well beyond what the law requires, substituting themselves for the Legislature in an illegal attempt to compel disclosure of information not required by law. We oppose such illegal regulations.”

The National Organization for Marriage, which is a part of Minnesota for Marriage, has opposed regulations of its campaign activity in almost every state it has operated in. And in many of those states, the organization has lost its case.

“The CFB cannot illegally force us to report information the law does not require,” said Brian Brown, president of NOM.

In a letter to the board, NOM accused the board of singling it out for special treatment.

“[I]t is apparent that NOM is a singular target of the Board’s proposed new reporting and disclosure regime,” NOM wrote. “The deliberate targeting by the government of a particular citizens organization such as NOM is a violation of NOM’s First Amendment rights protecting it from such government assault.”

NOM is demanding all documentation related to NOM at the campaign finance board.

Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council, another member of Minnesota for Marriage, recently told the campaign finance board that he thinks Minnesota for Marriage should not have to disclose any of the contributions it takes in or the people or entities that donate.

Common Cause Minnesota saw Minnesota for Marriage’s announcement as the prelude to a lawsuit. NOM has filed lawsuit in a half dozen states including Iowa, Maine and California where judges have upheld those states’ campaign disclosure laws.

“Minnesota has become ground zero for a national fight over whether the public should know who is behind political spending,” said Mike Dean, Executive Director of Common Cause Minnesota. “Last year, the legislature and governor required that all political spending by independent expenditure groups and groups supporting constitutional amendments be disclosed.”

He said that Minnesota for Marriage “announced their intention to violate this very provision of Minnesota’s disclosure law.”

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that the public has a right to know who is behind political spending during an election,” said Dean. “This attack on Minnesota’s disclosure law is [an] attack on Minnesota’s desire for fair and open elections.”

At Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida, a gay soldier serving in Iraq was booed by the audience because he asked a question about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. None of the candidates on stage came to his defense.

After the debate, many moderate Republicans spoke out against the audience’s behavior including Minnesota Republican Rep. John Kriesel who called those who booed “morons.”

Stephen Hill, a gay soldier serving in Iraq, asked the candidates what they would do with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell if they took over the White House. As he did, the audience booed, and Santorum responded that he would reinstate DADT.

Santorum overlooked that a soldier serving in Iraq during a time of war had been disrespected by the audience. That drew a sharp rebuke from Republicans who support LGBT members of the Armed Forces.

“Tonight, Rick Santorum disrespected our brave men and women in uniform, and he owes Stephen Hill, the gay soldier who asked him the question about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, an immediate apology,” said a statement from GOProud, a conservative gay rights group aligned with the tea party. “That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done – put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life. It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-gay bigotry that he couldn’t even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service.

Minnesota state Rep. John Kriesel (R-Cottage Grove) condemned the incident.

He wrote on Twitter:

“Booing a soldier during a time of war?!? A new low. Way to look compassionate Florida Republicans. #morons”

He added:

“If someone is brave enough to risk their life and serve their country in a time of war, let them serve. Who cares if they are gay?!?! How many of those people in the audience at the GOP debate that booed the gay soldier serving in Afghanistan are brave enough to serve??”

Only two of the candidates spoke out against it Thursday night.

“It was unfortunate,” Jon Huntsman told Talking Points Memo. “You know, we’re all Americans, and the fact that he is an American who put on the uniform says something good about him.”

Gary Johnson said, “In my opinion, when you have booing this is not indicative of Republicans,” he said. “This is not the Republican Party that I belong to.”