Endorsement

Newspaper election endorsements are out — some packing a wallop as bracing as a stiff winter wind in October, others playing it as safe as pre-Halloween trick-or-treating at a local strip mall. Here’s a roundup of candidate preferences for the U.S. Senate and House that Minnesota papers have so far put in print. The recession sees the major dailies’ editorialists cutting back on costly opinions — either picking favorites without naming the issues they like them for, as both the PiPress and Star Tribune have done in the U.S. Senate race, or beating a wholesale retreat from making a pick at all, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press has done in the presidential contest.

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is confident that its state wide endorsed candidates for office will win the primary on September 12th.

“This meeting is subject to cancellation without further notice. If every endorsed candidate in a statewide primary wins the primary, which appears very likely, then the meeting is automatically cancelled,” stated DFL State Chair Brian [...]

The Minnesota State Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party has had years of trouble connecting with it’s local party units, but things are slowly turning around with Party Chair Brian Melendez. Melendez was elected to be Chair in 2005 stepping in after Mike Erlandson (currently running against DFL endorsee Keith Ellison for Congressional District 5) stepped down early.