But her speech — now posted in two videos by the Independence Institute (which Bachmann once accidentally called the Liberty Institute) — also covered other issues. She said “insurance companies are evil” (before immediately retracting it), likened the government to Al Capone and the mob, and dubbed Minnesota “Franken country.”

At 15:00 in the first video, she presents her solution for health care:

Government creates cartels… They are very much like the mob in Washington, D.C. That’s Washington. It’s Capone. You pay your protection money and you get it and then government creates a cartel for you. It’s a great business, if you can get it. That’s how the joint works. That’s what they’ve done with insurance companies. They’ve created partial monopolies in each state, so that really — Insurance companies are evil. And don’t take it that I’m saying that; I am not saying that. But what I’m saying in terms of free market is if we have true competition across all state lines then you can have insurance companies creating products that people truly want to have. From there you increase the tax-free accounts that people can set up to pay for whatever their health care expenses is…

At 18:00 on the second video, she gives a rousing finale to her comments:

You can win these seats back. Don’t feel defeated. Hey, I got elected in Franken country! Just think, in Minnesota we elected Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, Al Franken, Jesse Ventura and me. How did that happen? It’s possible!

The Independence Institute presents… Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann – Q & A Session

Photo: KSTP-TV

Updated: As first reported by the Minnesota Independent, only one candidate for any office has his own booth at the Minnesota State Fair: Republican state Rep. Marty Seifert. And now his staff is evoking the memory of another State Fair, another booth and another candidate for governor: Jesse Ventura.

Seifert is only one among the legion of hopefuls seeking to replace retiring Gov. Tim Pawlenty in 2010. The general election is more than 14 months away, but a State Fair booth is still a heckuva deal at $750, a Seifert campaign spokesman told KSTP-TV yesterday as he tacked campaign signs to the volunteer-built superstructure.

The booth helps Seifert stand out from the crowd, as it did for Ventura, whose “Retaliate in ‘98″ campaign turned a corner during the 1998 fair, just weeks before his surprise third-party victory in the general election for governor. As Seifert campaign spokesman Ben Zierke told KSTP’s Tom Hauser:

This is a political place, the Minnesota State Fair, as you mentioned. Jesse Ventura, just down the block here, you know, when he ran for governor.

From Jacob Lentz’s 2001 book “Electing Jesse Ventura: A Third-party Success Story“:

Of course, politicians had booths. And Jesse Ventura had a booth.

Ventura had an inexpensive opportunity to reach — and charm — a large percentage of the state’s voters on an individual level. His booth was almost always swamped with people who may have been less excited about his candidacy than the entertainment value of his green and black “Ventura for Governor” bumper stickers and black T-shirts with “Retaliate in ‘98″ written across the chest in neon-green lettering. …

Ted Mondale was at his own booth, campaigning for the DFL nomination, and said of Ventura, “This guy worked insanely hard. I was at the state fair campaigning, and Jesse was always there, from morning till night.” Dane Smith, a longtime Twin Cities political reporter, remembered Ventura’s performance as the first time he took serious notice of the man. …

They passed out nearly 8,000 green and black bumper stickers … and over 6,000 buttons. The state fair also gave a huge boost to the popularity of “Retaliate in ‘98″ T-shirts, which were later sold over the Internet and at all campaign events. … Perhaps most important, Ventura’s popularity at the fair convinced Bill Hillsman, the ad guru who would eventually join Ventura’s campaign, that Ventura had a chance to win and was worth Hillsman’s energy.

The 2010 campaign for governor may be underway, but it’s still 2009. Volunteers will staff his booth 12 hours per day, but Seifert’s own daily shift will only be for one to two hours.

Ventura, famously, didn’t have time to bleed. But he made time for the Minnesota State Fair.

Seifert and his volunteers will be giving not only their time but also their money to the fair. Politicians, even those with booths, don’t get free passes, State Fair spokeswoman Brienna Schuette tells the Minnesota Independent:

The Minnesota State Fair has an “everyone pays” gate policy, so everyone entering the fairgrounds must present an admission ticket, including politicians and elected officials. No politicians or elected officials have asked us for free tickets this year.

UPDATE: Zierke tells MnIndy the Seifert campaign is paying for volunteers’ tickets to the fair.

Here is the KSTP report:

Molnau at 2008 NLGA conference. Photo: MN North Star

Carol Molnau, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor and former transportation commissioner, has been re-elected chair of the National Lieutenant Governors Association’s (NLGA) Midwest Region.

From the official state press release:

“Lieutenant Governor Molnau was selected by a bi-partisan group of her peers from every region in the nation as a leader among her colleagues,” said NLGA Executive Director Julia Hurst.

“I am honored that my colleagues designated me to serve in NLGA leadership this year,” Lieutenant Governor Molnau said. “I look forward to working with them and share best practices that will benefit the constituents of Minnesota and other states.”

The state Senate stripped her of her commissionership following the I-35W bridge collapse, but Molnau envisions a political future for herself, even after Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s decision not to run for re-election.

She may run for governor or Congress in 2010 and in the meantime remains NLGA chair of all she surveys. Besides Minnesota, the Midwest region includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Including Molnau, five of the Midwest’s lieutenant governors are women, more than in any other region. Nationally, there are 12 women among the 55 lieutenant governors serving U.S. states and territories, with Molnau and Indiana Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman the only Republican women.

In the only two lieutenant-governor elections this year, in New Jersey and Virginia, both Democratic Party candidates are women (and both are Jewish). In fact, the tally of female lieutenant governors is guaranteed to increase because the Republican candidate in New Jersey is also a woman.

That’s unusual in most states but wouldn’t be so in Minnesota, where the last five gubernatorial elections have involved two or more women as major-party running mates, and the last five lieutenant governors have been female.

Marlene Johnson, elected on the Democratic ticket with Rudy Perpich in 1982 and 1986, was the first woman to hold the post. After Johnson came Joanell Dyrstad (Republican, elected with Arne Carlson in 1990); Joanne Benson (Republican, also elected with Carlson, in 1994); Mae Schunk (Reform Party, later Independence Party, elected with Jesse Ventura); and Molnau (elected with Tim Pawlenty in 2002 and 2004).

Photo: The Beat Museum

Jesse Ventura resurfaced this week with news that he’ll be hosting a new television series exploring conspiracy theories on TruTV. The show, dubbed “Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura,” has been booked for seven episodes. After the show’s first taping in San Francisco, the former Minnesota governor found time to stop in at The Beat Museum.

Museum curator Jerry Cimino wrote up an entertaining account of his encounter with Ventura. The former pro wrestler didn’t seem to have much of a clue about The Beats, other than a vague, nagging familiarity with that dude Ferlinghetti. Here’s a bit of the conversation:

“When I left office as Governor I had dreadlocks put into my hair and I drove all over Minnesota on my motorcycle for months and nobody ever recognized me and nobody heard my voice because nobody wanted to speak to me because I was a big guy with dreadlocks on a motorcycle. It was great!”

“That sounds like an interesting experience.”

“It was. You wanna know the worst part about dreadlocks? They’re heavy. They really weigh you down, especially when they get wet like when you get out of the shower.”

By constitutional mandate, redistricting takes place every 10 years: Each state’s legislature must redraw the lines that define congressional and legislative districts. But it rarely happens the same way twice; when politicians fail, judges step in to finish the job.

Stakes are especially high in Minnesota, as the state may lose a congressional seat after the 2010 U.S. Census reapportionment. And if Minnesota loses a congressional seat, the redistricting process will decide whether the district of Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann or another incumbent will be relegated to the history books.

The bill, carried by Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller (DFL-Minneapolis), takes up recommendations from a group led by former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Gov. Arne Carlson.

The Mondale-Carlson group (technically, the Advisory Board for the Minnesota Redistricting Project of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota) proposed saving time and sweat by getting judges to draw congressional- and legislative-district lines before legislators themselves get involved. The reverse sequence — Legislature, then courts — is responsible for the state’s current political lines.

But some who were among the closest to the work of reshaping Minnesota’s political boundaries last time around seem to think the existing system worked pretty well.

Redistricting reform got nowhere last session, but this year Pogemiller pushed through his bill by a vote of 39–28 in the final days before the state Legislature adjourned. Next stop: the House’s Committee on State and Local Government Operations Reform, Technology and Elections, which could hold discussions on the topic before considering the bill itself when the legislative session resumes in February, according to legislative staff.

UPDATE: In an email, Committee Chair state Rep. Gene Pelowski promises that the committee “will be looking at redistricting over the summer and this bill will be included.”

Reform advocates, led by Mondale and Carlson, have argued (pdf) that the current system is “broken” — badly enough that it won’t do for the next round of redistricting after the 2010 census.

The new system would create a commission of five retired appeals court judges to make the first maps of new district boundaries based on the latest census data. The majority and minority caucuses from both the House and the Senate would appoint one judge each. The four judges would together choose a fifth to join them.

Their first plan would go to the Legislature for an up-or-down vote — no changes allowed. If that fails to pass, the commission would work up a second plan, which again would be subject to an up-or-down vote by the Legislature. Only if the second plan fails to pass would legislators have a chance at concocting their own plan.

Musical chairs

Demographic estimates predict the count in Minnesota may fall about 2,000 people short of the number needed to retain the state’s current complement of eight congressional districts. If that happens, the question of which party’s incumbent loses a seat in Congress will fall to the state’s redistricting process — and will likely make the decennially debilitating battles over creating new legislative boundaries look like cake walks.

So the rules for what could become a titanic game of musical chairs matter deeply. And exactly who applies those rules depends on who wins the race for governor next year. If Democrats retain control of the state Legislature but lack veto-proof majorities in both houses, then a Republican in the governor’s mansion keeps things complicated, as both the state’s legislative and executive branches must approve a new plan.

On the other hand, if a Democrat succeeds Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the struggle for the DFL becomes one of drawing the most advantageous plan possible under constitutional requirements.

The last time the state took on this task, after the 2000 census, it was not simply a matter for one party, or even two. For the first time, redistricting was a three-way partisan game: The Independence Party’s Jesse Ventura was governor, Republicans held the House, and the DFL controlled the Senate.

Each assigned a staffer to draw a redistricting plan. (Wielding somewhat less influence were the minority caucuses from each legislative body, whose redistricting staffers included one Michael Brodkorb for the Senate Republicans.)

Veterans of the trenches

Over the past few weeks, the Minnesota Independent interviewed key staffers from each party as well as the man who ran redistricting for the state Legislature: Peter Wattson, now secretary of the Senate.

All had a hand in drawing — or, in Wattson’s case, evaluating — maps that eventually got redrawn by the courts. But all seem satisfied by the result.

Wattson said the redistricting process last time was “pretty orderly, actually.”

Greg Peppin, who drew redistricting maps for the Republican House majority, recalls that “everyone felt that the plan was pretty fair.”

Vic Thorstenson, Peppin’s counterpart for Senate Democrats, said: “We were pretty happy with the court’s plan.”

Joe Mansky, who represented Ventura and the Independence Party, concurred: “We were pretty happy with the outcome,” he said.

That doesn’t mean all four oppose Pogemiller’s plan. Thorstenson and Wattson still work at the Capitol and wouldn’t give their opinions on the reform proposal.

Peppin, now a political consultant, said “the process is just steeped in politics” and reckons that a judicial panel assigned first crack at drawing maps “will not be able to do it better than the Legislature.”

Mansky supports the plan, in part because it hearkens back to a commission Ventura formed for the same purpose.

Popularity and obscurity

In his current role as elections manager for Ramsey County, Mansky became a familiar face this year to the dedicated followers of the Norm Coleman/Al Franken Senate race, due to long hours he spent on the witness stand of the recent election-contest trial.

But seven years ago, the trio toiled over their redistricting maps in relative obscurity — outside of the state Capitol, that is.

“We mapmakers were very popular,” Peppin recalls. Legislators of every stripe were eager to know how things were shaping up — particularly for their home districts. “There was a reason for changing the locks and giving us all fresh keys,” he said.

Thorstenson’s recalls his home-away-from-home during those days the same way: “I was in a room at the State Capitol that even the janitors weren’t allowed to go into.”

Coming: Scenarios past mapmakers see for the redistricting to come

Here’s Ventura on LKL (via City Pages’ Blotter). It’s Jesse, so he talks about waterboarding Dick Cheney and lots of other stuff, too:

In an item titled “Trouble’s Home Address,” The New York Times reviews notable (and alleged) scandals involving public figures and their homes. Except for former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, all are from New York, the latest being Adolfo Carrion Jr., a former Bronx Borough president who landed the top job at the new White House urban affairs office that Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has gushed over. After the jump, the Minnesota edition of “Trouble’s Home Address.”

“What is it about home repairs and politicians that can lead to ethical trouble?” asks the Times. Partly it’s simply that, for pols as for ordinary mortals, homes are the biggest thing they own (or used to own). 

We knocked on this door last summer, when then-Sen. Norm Coleman’s low-rent tenancy in a GOP fundraiser’s basement apartment was raising eyebrows, in a post titled “Scandal sheets: Coleman not first Minnesota pol to make news in bed.”

Others on the list included state House candidate Sue Ek, St. Paul City Council candidate Kris Reiter, former St. Paul school board member Al Oertwig, former Gov. Jesse Ventura, former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger and former Minneapolis City Councilor Lisa McDonald — several of whose scandals involved whether their homes were in the districts they represented.

Since then Coleman has earned a second and possibly third place on the Minnesota list. First came the revelation last December that a kitchen renovation at his St. Paul home went overbudget by $86,000 in 2007 — just as Nasser Kazeminy, a Coleman friend and benefactor is alleged to have been trying to funnel $100,000 to Coleman’s wife through a Texas company he owns and the insurance firm where she works.

Then in January came news that the Colemans had refinanced the house 12 times in 14 years. At that point shock over Coleman’s homes required raising a third eyebrow.

Photo: MPR

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann rallied on a dead-end street outside Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) studios in St. Paul today, where the embattled member of Congress debated Democrat El Tinklenberg for 30 minutes (archived MnIndy liveblog here, archived MPR audio here). At his News Cut blog, MPR’s Bob Collins shows and tells scenes of political theater he judges unrivalled since the days of Gov. Jesse Ventura. The sign-wavers were there for Bachmann to meet and greet before the TV news crews, and a Bible-reading circle convened in MPR’s lobby — “presumably to protect Our Lady of HUAC from getting all contaminated by those evil secular humanist public radio people,” as one Daily Kos commenter put it.

The economic sky is not falling, according to Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley. Or at least the federal government hasn’t provided sufficient factual evidence to justify a hastily arranged, $700 billion bailout package for Wall Street. “I am not convinced that we have to rush to judgment on this,” Barkley said at a press conference this morning at the Capitol. “Let’s take our time to do it the right way. These questions that I’ve posed have to be answered before we put $700 billion of taxpayers’s money at risk.”

Among the questions raised by Barkley, who is seeking to oust Sen. Norm Coleman: Who decided that a decision on the bailout package must be reached by Monday? Where did the $700 billion figure come from? Where is the evidence for a credit crunch? What percentage of the financial sector is involved in the current crisis?

Barkley also stated that the dire predictions and truncated debate is reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. “They’ve known this was coming for a long time,” he said. “Why did they wait until seven days before Congress was going to adjourn to bring this out. I think it’s incredible that they waited this long if things were this bad. The timing just doesn’t seem right to me.”

Earlier this week Barkley stated that he would “probably have to hold my nose and hold my breath and vote for this because the alternative is collapse.” But his opinion changed after talking with financial experts and reading up on the current situation. “I’ve had time now to do research and ask questions,” he said. “The more questions I ask, the less convinced I am that the world’s going to end if we don’t do something right away.”

Barkley conceded that the wretched state of the economy and the partisan sniping in Washington could bolster his candidacy. “This is just another example of Congress’s inability to do anything right,” he said. “Both Democrats and Republican were asleep at the switch on this one. They let this happen.”

More details to follow…