The Independence Party of Minnesota is the latest political party in Minnesota to oppose a proposed ballot initiative that would write a ban on same-sex marriage into the Minnesota Constitution, and it’s the second party with major party status here to oppose the measure.

IP leaders released a video explaining their opposition to the amendment, and the chair of the party released a statement urging Minnesotans to vote “no” in November 2012. Already, the DFL and Libertarian Party have called on voters to reject the amendment, while the Green Party of Minnesota has long supported full marriage equality for same-sex couples.

IP chair Mark Jenkins cited the party’s platform: “We oppose having the government impose state-sponsored morality or values on people of good conscience with differing views.”

“This is why I oppose legislation or a constitutional amendment that puts any government imposed definition on a religious sacrament.”

The Independence Party, always seeking the middle ground, spelled out the reasons why the “radical right” and “liberal left” are not being reasonable on the issue of gay marriage.

“If we can focus our attention on the issues of civil rights instead of marriage, we may extend the rights all of our citizen’s deserve without threatening the sacrament of marriage,” wrote Jenkins. “I’m pretty optimistic that this could work. I hear that individual rights have a big following in conservative circles. If conservatives stay true to their beliefs, gays may just find conservative allies in the pursuit of their individual rights.”

Jenkins said, “I ask members of the Independence Party, and all Minnesotans, to oppose and work to defeat an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that outlaws same sex marriage.”

The party also put out a video opposing the amendment:

The DFL has come out against the amendment and the party’s chair, Ken Martin, released this video promising the DFL would fight the amendment “with everything we have.”

While the Green Party of Minnesota has not yet weighed in on the amendment, it has a meeting this weekend. Its platform has traditionally supported marriage equality for same-sex couples: “We support legalizing marriage for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons by applying the same standards, requirements, privileges, and responsibilities as applied to different-sexed couples.”

The Libertarian Party of Minnesota came out against the amendment during the heated debate in the legislative session.

“The proposed Gay Marriage Ban would expand government control and restrict the freedom of consenting adults to live their own lives as they choose. Libertarians believe that marriage is a private matter between individuals,” the party wrote. “We believe that marriage is a fundamental human right, and that all personal relationships, including marriage, should be at the sole discretion and agreement of the individuals involved, as well as any family, friends, or religious institutions they may choose to involve.”

Dave Bicking

Quick: What rhymes with Bicking? In South Minneapolis’ city council race, Ward Nine challenger Dave Bicking is rolling out an unconventional campaign tool: the Green Party–endorsed candidate now has a song written about him. And to answer that question, “kicking” is the rhyming word — and it’s followed immediately by the word “ass.”

While musically closer to Mark Russell‘s piano-driven political satires, the tune has more of a folk-music plot line: a champion of the little guy goes head to head with corporate foes, in this case stadium-scamming developers. It was written and performed by Eskit, a local musician who does satirical political numbers, including a few in which Bicking has served as clarinetist and chorus member.

There’s no official plan for the song, Bicking says, which was a volunteer effort by Eskit. “It’s more fun than anything. Not every candidate has a campaign song, but every good campaign should have a song.”

Does it capture all his campaign is about? Not quite. “He can always write another four verses,” Bicking says, joking that few would probably listen all the way to the end if he did.

The lyrics:

Dave Bicking keeps on ticking, he makes the big boys frown.
He lets the developers know that they don’t own this town.
And when they pull a stadium scam he says, “By God, you know I am
tired of robbery, corporate robbery. Stop that robbery once and for all!”
Cuz Dave Bicking will be kicking ass at City Hall.
I said that Dave Bicking will be kicking ass at City Hall.

Listen:

For more on the race: Ward Nine: Schiff, Bicking vie again

Photo: tomconlon.org

When Republican Tom Conlon leaves the St. Paul School Board this summer, he’ll also be leaving Minneapolis and St. Paul with only two elected city officials not from the DFL Party. Conlon announced yesterday his resignation from the office he has held since 1991. He will leave the school board July 6 to run an inn in Asheville, N.C. St. Paul will hold a special election in November to fill the vacancy for the remaining two years of his term.

Conlon’s announcement came two days after he cast the only vote against letting Webster Magnet Elementary change its name to “Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary,” St. Paul Public Schools spokesman Bret Johnson tells the Minnesota Independent. 

Conlon opposed the renaming as premature (an opinion in line with Arizona State University’s decision not to award President Obama an honorary degree). It was another in a long line of lonely votes Conlon has taken in conflict with the board’s prevailing DFL majority. 

With Conlon gone, two Minneapolis Green Party members — Cam Gordon on the city council and Annie Young on the park board — will constitute the remaining bulwark against total DFL domination of elective offices in the state’s two biggest cities.

Gordon appears set to win re-election this fall in a walk. His only announced challenger so far, DFLer Charles Carlson, dropped out amid a welter of unhelpful revelations.

Young is another story. She’s in competition with three DFLers to keep her spot as one of three at-large commissioners on the Minneapolis park board. Her opponents are the two other current at-large incumbents and a former commissioner — all three of whom won the party’s endorsement by acclamation at the DFL city convention last weekend.

Beyond the challenge of running citywide campaigns for low-profile seats, the at-large candidates must contend with what’s being billed as the world’s first multi-seat election to be conducted via ranked choice voting (also known as instant runoff voting, or IRV) — without computers that can do the counting.

The Minneapolis City Council heard yesterday that counting ballots in that election is expected to be so complex that voters may not learn who they elected until after Thanksgiving.

Competition to represent the area around the University of Minnesota campus has been hot since the 2001 primary loss by longtime incumbent Joan Campbell:  The 2005 contest to replace Campbell’s retiring successor, Paul Zerby, attracted four DFL rivals who battled for three ballots at the party’s endorsing convention   — has cooled off considerably.

“There obviously must be confidence” in the job he’s doing, Gordon said of his vanishing opposition, though he admitted he could improve and said he looks forward to suggestions from voters when he knocks on doors this year.

Coming from the Green Party, which unlike the city’s dominant DFL often takes a pass on endorsing in local races, Gordon said “it wouldn’t seem strange and unusual to me” for there to be no DFL endorsement in his race.

The lack of a credible DFL opponent “is a testament to Cam’s hard work and the fact that he represents the values and needs of the Second Ward,” says Michael Guest, a political consultant and campaign manager (most notably for DFL incumbent Don Samuels in the city’s Fifth Ward). But Guest (who I asked to comment after running into him just as I started to write this post) downplayed the differences between the two parties: “What DFLers are not [also] Green?”

One way the parties differ is the process by which they select candidates. While the DFL holds precinct caucuses to elect delegates to ward and city endorsing conventions, the Green Party gathers for citywide meetings on March 22 and again in April to discuss city election endorsements they’ll finalize at a May 9 meeting.

Other candidates include Jesse Johnson, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift. Former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has said he does not want the endorsement of the party and has garnered little support.

The Minnesota Greens decided to keep their caucus on March 4 despite the DFL, the Republican Party and the Independence Party moving their caucuses up to Super Tuesday, because the party opposes the lengthening of the election process. The party’s 12 delegates to the national convention will be chosen at the state convention in June.

McKinney has seen her fair share of controversy and accomplishment in her political career. One of her first actions as a politician in 1986 after winning a seat in the Georgia House through a successful write-in campaign spearheaded by her father (she was living in Jamaica when she won her seat) was to change a repressive dress code at the Georgia Capitol that said all women representatives must wear dresses. Thanks to McKinney, they may also wear slacks to work.

McKinney spoke of some contentious moments at the Georgia legislature, particularly her anti-war stance. “The one event that catapulted me to the United States Congress, that was when President George Herbert Walker Bush decided to bomb Baghdad,” she said Monday. “And outraged, I stayed up all night and wrote a speech, went to the floor of the house and said among other things ‘President Bush ought to be ashamed of himself.’ That was when my colleagues got up and walked out on me.”“The four years I was in the Georgia legislature I infuriated people,” she said. It wouldn’t be the last time she infuriated people. Her campaigns were plagued by charges of anti-semitic remarks, especially by her own father and her security staff. Racial tensions have also run high with McKinney calling her Republican opponents “holdovers from the Civil War days” and “a ragtag group of neo-Confederates.”

She raised eyebrows in a letter to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed-bin Talal that criticized U.S. foreign policy. Al-Waleed donated $10 million to relief efforts after Sept. 11, but with the caveat that perhaps if the United States took a more moderate stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, these things wouldn’t happen. It was rejected by charities in New York. McKinney wrote him suggesting he give the money to other charities.

Perhaps one of her more well-known statements was her insinuation that the Bush administration knew about Sept. 11 before it happened. “I thought that was a perfectly good question to ask,” she said Monday. “and so I said let me ask the question pertaining to Sept. 11 that the American people ought to have answered: What did the administration know and when did they know it about the tragic events of Sept. 11?” Because of her work supporting indigenous people in Columbia, the United States and Australia, she “had a long history of upsetting people in the Congress who were not accustomed to being upset,” and said members of Congress were already out to get her for those reasons.

That statement likely cost her reelection in 2006. She said 48,000 Republicans crossed over to vote for her Democratic opponent because of her statements about Bush.

Her time in Congress has also been spent looking into the events of Sept. 11. In 2005, she held hearings on unanswered questions regarding Sept. 11, and the media treatment of those hearings was not kind she said. “The quote ‘mainstream media,’ which is becoming less mainstream because fewer people are subscribing to them — and that’s a good thing — labeled this briefing with these esteemed people as a meeting of conspiracy theorists.”

Her time in Congress was spent on many human rights issues for which she gets very little attention. She’s worked with Congress for action in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central and South America, and sponsored legislation to prevent the United States from sending military supplies to countries with undemocratic governments or human rights violations. She also played a key role in both investigating the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and Rita and securing relief funds for the disaster.

At the meeting Monday, several prominent Green Party Activists endorsed McKinney. Former candidate for mayor of Minneapolis Farheen Hakim introduced then endorsed McKinney. U.S. Senate candidate Michael Cavlin “proudly” endorsed McKinney. Candidate for the 3rd Congressional district, Amy Alexander, also endorsed McKinney.

The McKinney campaign is working to secure federal elections money by raising funds in at least 20 states, and is trying to secure ballot status in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. So far, only Illinois has succeeded in getting McKinney on the ballot.

One of McKinney’s goals is to ignite those who have been disenfranchised and who are upset with the current political system. “We’ve got young people who have been taught a set of values, the difference between right and wrong,” she said. “They see so much wrong, and they see no one being held accountable.”