—Tom Horner, Independence Party candidate for governor

—Joseph Basel, conservative activist who pleaded guilty Wednesday for his role in using false pretenses to enter Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in January

—Michael Brodkorb, Deputy Chair, Republican Party of Minnesota

—Peggy Flanagan, director of Wellstone Action’s Native American Leadership Program, former Minneapolis School Board member

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—Sen. Al Franken, Democrat, U.S. Senate

—Lynne Torgerson, independent candidate for U.S. House, 5th Congressional District

—Rep. Erik Paulsen, Republican, U.S. House of Representatives

Also: yaks!

—Rep. Paul Thissen, (DFL-Minneapolis), District 63A

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—Independence Party

—Rep. Laura Brod (R-New Prague), District 25A

— Kevin Watterson, public affairs director, House Republican Caucus

—Minnesota Department of Agriculture

—Sen. Mike Jungbauer (R-East Bethel), District 48

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—Alliance for a Better Minnesota

—Colin Lee, Independence Party candidate for state House, Lakeville, District 34B

—Joe Repya, former IP candidate for governor

—Rep. Paul Kohls (R-Victoria), District 34A

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—Margaret Anderson Kelliher, state House Speaker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate

—Marty Seifert, Republican candidate for governor

—Lynne Torgerson, independent candidate for U.S. House, District 5

—Tony Sutton, state GOP chair

—Margaret Anderson Kelliher, state House Speaker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate

— Kevin Watterson, public affairs director, House Republican Caucus

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—David Carlson, Republican state Senate candidate, Eagan

—Lizz Winstead, Minneapolis resident and Daily Show co-founder, one of the many Twitterers using the hashtag #PalinBachmann2012 following Wednesday’s rally

—Minnesota AFL-CIO

—Gene Waldorf, independent candidate for Congress, 7th Congressional District

—Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul), District 66A

—U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota)

—Lizz Winstead, Daily Show co-creator and Minneapolis resident

—Sean Nienow, Republican candidate for state Senate, District 17, Cambridge

—Terry Pearson, Republican candidate for state House, Inver Grove Heights

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Sen. Larry Pogemiller

The sky is not falling. That was the mantra from Gov. Tim Pawlenty one day after the legislative session ended with no resolution to a nearly $3 billion budget deficit. “The legislators are gone, and they’re not coming back,” he gleefully told reporters at the Capitol yesterday during a noon briefing.

Which means the endgame is now in Pawlenty’s hands. He’s vowed not to call a special session or permit a government shutdown. Instead the governor intends to unilaterally slash $2.7 billion from the budget for the next two years through budget gimmickry and what’s known as “unallotment.”

Exactly where he plans to cut won’t be known until at least July 1 when the budget kicks in. But the Republican governor said at yesterday’s press conference that he expects to hold the line on cuts to K-12 education. Which means that local government aid, health and human services and higher education are almost certainly in for additional budget bloodletting. Pawlenty’s budgetary gambit also means that the political consequences for how the fiscal mess is ultimately resolved — for better or worse — will largely be his to bear.

DFL legislative leaders embarked on their on publicity tour yesterday, scheduling seven stops across the state to spin the legislative showdown. Their message: Pawlenty is behaving like a dictator and putting his own political ambitions ahead of the best interests of the public.

“I commend the legislators from both parties for their hard work throughout the session,” said DFL chairman Brian Melendez, in a statement. “Unfortunately, Gov. Pawlenty was unwilling to participate in the process. His national ambitions kept him away from the table.”

Rep. Laura Brod, who has emerged as one of the most prominent GOP voices in the House, counters that the Democrats simply refused to responsibly deal with the budget at a time of economic peril. “They can make whatever assertions they want, but to me it all boils down to how do we jump-start our economy,” says Brod, of New Prague. “It certainly wasn’t necessary to have the legislative session end this way. Everybody knew what would be acceptable to the governor and what would not be acceptable to the governor.”

A quick recap of the state’s current fiscal woes. The budget deficit was initially projected to reach $6.4 billion for the biennium that begins July 1. Disbursements from President Obama’s stimulus package, however, trimmed that figure down to $4.6 billion. The DFL-controlled legislature and Pawlenty then both signed off on additional cuts that cleaved the deficit by roughly another third. Finally Pawlenty used his line-item veto authority to eliminate the state’s General Assistance Medical Program, slicing another $381 million from the budget hole — and knocking more than 30,000 destitute single adults off the health-care rolls.

Pawlenty’s strong-arm tactics haven’t gone unnoticed by national political players. Americans for Tax Reform — arguably Washington’s most zealous anti-tax organization — recently named him a “hero of the taxapayer.”

“I think this was the signal that he’s not running for governor again,” says David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University. “He’s running for national office, or thinks he is.”

But how Pawlenty’s budgetary hardball will play at home is tough to say. The DFL has picked up numerous legislative seats in the last two election cycles and nearly swept the state’s constitutional offices in 2006, with the notable exception of the governorship. Pawlenty’s approval ratings recently have hovered on the wrong side of the 50 percent threshold, typically a sign of vulnerability for an incumbent. And by going it alone on budget cuts, he risks taking the entire blame if popular programs are cut.

“When he does unallotment he’s going to have to own the entirety of it, and I think finally people will hold him accountable,” says Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul). “This time, because he’s out there all alone acting like a monarch, he’s going to be surprised by the response.”

Schultz figures 50 percent of the blame for the budget meltdown can be pinned on Pawlenty’s national ambitions, but he argues that DFL ineptness is equally at fault. “When the Governor releases his budget what do the Democrats do first? They go away for three weeks and do a listening tour,” Schultz says derisively. “They essentially let the Governor set the agenda.”

Rep. Jim Abeler, a moderate Republican who has bucked his party in the past, also argues that Democrats failed to make the hard decisions necessary to deal with the budget. “At a time like this you have to make choices and set priorities,” says Abeler, of Anoka. “I don’t think the majority was able to do that.”

That could have consequences for the DFL leadership, particularly those that harbor grander political ambitions of their own. Three members of the legislature — Sens. Tom Bakk and John Marty, and Rep. Paul Thissen — are actively exploring gubernatorial bids for 2010. And at least two members of the DFL leadership, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark, are on most political observers’ (not-so-short) lists of Democrats eying the Governor’s Residence.

“I think all the major leadership comes out of this looking damaged,” says Schultz. “This wasn’t a good session for them.”

As chairman of the influential Taxes Committee, Bakk is a powerful broker at the Capitol. He was one of the most vocal Democrats throughout the session in insisting that some tax increases would need to be part of any budget solution. The Senate passed legislation that included $2.2 billion in revenue increases, substantially more than the House ($1.5 billion) or the legislature as a whole ($1 billion).

“Maybe I could never get to be governor talking like that,” says Bakk, speaking by cell phone as he drove back to his hometown of Virginia. “If people aren’t quite ready for it then I guess I will lose and I will retire. We just can’t continue kicking the can down the road.”

When it became clear in the waning days of the session that Pawlenty and the DFL leadership were at an intractable stalemate, Bakk tried to negotiate a resolution on his own. On Friday he had breakfast with state finance commissioner Tom Hanson, and then the next evening he met face-to-face with Pawlenty. Bakk set forth a new proposal for closing the budget gap — which included a one-time, five-percent surcharge on state income taxes — but got no response from the governor.

“I guess I tried to do what I could do,” Bakk says. “I never heard back.”

The acrimonious end to the session, with substantial cuts to health and human services funding, ensures that such programs will be at the heart of the 2010 gubernatorial debate. Republicans repeatedly argued that increases in the human services budget, roughly 15 percent annually in recent years, aren’t sustainable and that the agency requires a systematic overhaul.

“There are just some realities that the legislature needs to come to grips with,” says Rep. Paul Kohls (R-Victoria), “the most significant being that the cost increases are not sustainable.”

Pawlenty took the most dramatic step by using his line-item veto authority to eliminate the General Assistance Medical Program, which provides insurance to single adults without children who earn less than $8,000 a year. In an emotional debate on the House floor on the next to last day of the session, Democrats excoriated the governor for balancing the budget on the backs of the state’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

“I think the outrage that Minnesotans are going to feel once the full impact of that comes into play will change the dynamic,” says Thissen, chairman of the Health Care and Human Services Policy and Oversight Committee. “What we saw play out this session is going to be what the next elections are going to be about.”

Ominous news about job losses and financial woes at Minnesota hospitals over the last week coincide with Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s line-item veto of $381 million in General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) grants and his vow to make even more cuts by unallotment. But as bad as the doomsday scenarios are, they shouldn’t include St. Paul’s Regions Hospital closing — a prospect that the DFL warned of over the weekend.

Here are some headlines from the last week that, to some at least, read like plot lines for a series-ending episode of TV’s “House” doctor drama, if not a medical prequel to the post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” movies.

» Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis will lay off 100 staffers.

» Park Nicollet Health Services lays off 240 and closes a clinic in Hopkins. The owner of Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park has already laid off more than twice that number over the last six months.

» Willmar’s Rice Memorial Hospital continues to shed staff. Layoffs have left the city-owned hospital with its smallest workforce in a decade.

» In rural areas of the state, doctors are scarce. Health care organizations must dangle bonuses to attract debt-laden med school grads to the hinterlands.

» St. Peter bucked the trend by expanding a local clinic of Mayo Health System, but Mayo’s flagship facility in Rochester will lose $30 million from Pawlenty’s GAMC veto alone.

» Losing patients, North Memorial Health Care is cutting 100 jobs. A 6-percent decline in stays at the Robbinsdale hospital hides one area in which business is up by 22 percent: charity care.

» Two metro hospitals that care for the poor — Regions in St. Paul and HCMC in Minneapolis — will make deep cuts. HCMC Medical Director Michael Belzer says revisiting state cuts during the 2010 Legislative session will be too late, as hospitals will have set budgets and take actions necessary to meet them by then.

But Regions is not in danger of closing its doors, contrary to a DFL Party announcement (see below) from the closing days of the legislative session.

“That’s not going to happen,” Regions spokesman Vince Rivard told the Minnesota Independent on Monday, adding that a hospital expansion financed with St. Paul municipal bonds is still set to open this summer.

Still a variety of program cuts at Regions and even imposition of new, restrictive geographical boundaries are possible, Rivard said. The hospital sees patients from as far away as Montana but is only obligated to provide Ramsey County residents with non-emergency services.

And Rivard agreed with HCMC’s Belzer that fixes the Legislature next year makes to the governor’s vetos would come too late to forestall drastic cutbacks.

Here’s the press release from the DFL House DFL Caucus that asserted that Regions Hospital could close. It was sent out Saturday, midway between Pawlenty’s Thursday night line-item veto of GAMC and the end of the Legislative session Monday night.

NEWS STATEMENT
Minnesota House of Representatives

May 16, 2009

PAWLENTY VETO MAY RESULT IN FULL OR PARTIAL CLOSURE OF REGIONS HOSPITAL

Local lawmakers speak out against Governor Pawlenty’s deep cuts to
Regions Hospital

After announcing Thursday he plans to make billions of dollars in
budget cuts alone without public or legislative input, Governor Tim
Pawlenty eliminated General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) in Minnesota.
With one line item veto late Thursday night, the governor cut $381
million that was dedicated exclusively to treat the poorest people in
the state – including veterans, senior citizens, and the mentally ill.

Those cuts may result in the full or partial closure of Regions
Hospital in St. Paul. By eliminating GAMC, the hospital will face a $46
million budget cut – 10% of its gross revenue. Regions Hospital employs
roughly 5,000 people and serves nearly 23,000 patients every year.

The following is a statement from local state lawmakers deeply
concerned about these devastating cuts to Regions Hospital and the
potential impact on residents of St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs:

“Governor Pawlenty’s veto pen single-handedly put Regions Hospital in
St. Paul at serious risk of significantly cutting back critical services
or potentially closing its doors. This is a devastating blow to tens of
thousands of citizens in St. Paul and the surrounding communities who
rely on Regions Hospital for quality, expert medical care. It has
threatened thousands of jobs, and the health and safety of our
communities.

This deep and devastating cut could have been avoided. Lawmakers
offered a responsible alternative that would have cut Regions Hospital
only $5.7 million – a budget reduction the hospital could have sustained
without significantly drawing back critical medical services to our
community.

By eliminating GAMC, Governor Pawlenty has cut 30,000 of Minnesota’s
poorest, sickest citizens off health care. Many are veterans, senior
citizens, people with mentally illness, or those who are homeless. 70%
have expensive mental health or chemical dependency challenges, and 40%
have chronic disease that leads to frequent hospitalization. Without
care, these Minnesotans will be at risk of devastating health
implications.

Finally, these cuts have made the state’s budget shortfall even
worse. Eliminating GAMC in Minnesota costs the state $100 million in
federal matching funds. It also requires that inmates in county jails
and sex offenders who are constitutionally required access to medical
care must now be paid for in general fund dollars.

We are deeply disappointed in Governor Pawlenty’s decision to balance
the budget with jobs and deep cuts to hospitals. In the final days of
session, we’ll keep fighting to protect jobs and keep Minnesota’s
hospitals whole.”

Officials whose names appeared at the top of the release are State Reps. Joe Atkins, John Lesch, Karla Bigham, Leon Lillie, Paul Gardner, Tim Mahoney, Mindy Greiling, Carlos Mariani, Rick Hansen, Erin Murphy, Alice Hausman, Michael Paymar, Sheldon Johnson, Bev Scalze, Kate Knuth and Cy Thao.

The occasion: a bill designed to overhaul policies for handling criminal intelligence information by making it easier for law enforcement agencies to keep and share information about citizens.

Under the proposed legislation, intelligence data collected on individuals by law enforcement officers could be kept secret for a year. The information would then be made available to the target of the probe unless it meets a series of criteria related to the prosecution of potential crimes.

The legislation would also authorize law enforcement agencies to share intelligence data with other government officials — not limited to police officers — when necessary to protect the public.

The bill was drafted by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and is sponsored by St. Paul DFLer Rep. John Lesch (pictured). (A companion bill has been introduced by Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley.)

In introducing the measure, Lesch acknowledged concerns about civil liberties but argued that some form of legislation is necessary to regulate the sharing of such data.

“A version of this will happen in future years, if not this year,” he said. “I think it’s important that this discussion be had.”

But the proposed legislation has raised alarm bells among peace activists and civil liberties advocates. They fear that the bill is overly broad and would lead to widespread spying on law-abiding citizens.

Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the legislation would allow law enforcement agencies to keep “political dossiers” on citizens, while only creating an “illusion of security.”

Bernie Hesse, an organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 789, expressed a concern that labor unions would be targeted for engaging in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, like walking picket lines.

“We’re afraid that we might be labeled as a criminal organization,” he said. “We’re very conscious of and appreciate the work that law enforcement agencies do, but we also don’t want to be restricted in some of the things that we have to do to bring about economic justice for workers.”

Retired FBI agent and veteran peace activist Coleen Rowley said that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has been obsessed with collecting intelligence data.

“One of the false notions since 9/11 that leads to this massive intelligence collection has been the idea that we did not have enough dots,” she said. “The failure to connect the dots was the problem, not that there was not enough dots.”

The concerns are exacerbated because of prosecutions stemming from Republican National Convention, which was held in September. Law enforcement relied extensively on undercover informants to infiltrate activist groups and build criminal cases. The most notorious example is the case of the RNC Eight, who are charged with criminally conspiring to disrupt the four-day gathering.

For now the legislation isn’t going anywhere. Lesch acknowledged the concerns about the bill, and moved that it be laid over for further consideration. That motion was adopted unanimously.

Chris Coleman at a December strike by Regina Medical Center workers in Hastings. Photo: Paul Demko

Chris Coleman is going to win re-election as mayor of St. Paul. Barring incarceration or a Spitzer-esque political meltdown, this time next year he’ll be settling into his second term at City Hall. Four years ago, after all, Coleman trounced incumbent Randy Kelly by a ratio of more than 2-to-1, and no opponents have emerged to challenge him this time around.

But judging by his actions, Coleman seems to be winding up for an all-out political brawl. Yesterday’s announcement that John Stiles will leave his post as the DFL’s communications director to helm Coleman’s re-election effort is the latest indication that Coleman may have plans beyond another four years at City Hall.

“This is using the sledgehammer to kill the fly,” says David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University. “He doesn’t need this person, but it’s a great way of sort of building for the future.”

Coleman has been loath to publicly entertain whether that future might include a 2010 run for the governor’s mansion, maintaining instead that his focus is simply on winning a second term.

“We’re taking nothing for granted this year — and bringing on talent of this caliber shows that we’re going to run an aggressive campaign,” Coleman said in a statement announcing the Stiles hire.

But the hiring of a seasoned political operative such as Stiles is certainly a sign that Coleman is at least going to sniff the current political winds to see if a gubernatorial run would be viable.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is also frequently mentioned as a possible DFL candidate for governor in 2010, and he’s also assembled a conspicuously robust campaign operation for a re-election contest that’s likely to be a cakewalk. Rybak’s hired Jaclyn Urness, state field director for Barack Obama’s Minnesota campaign, as his campaign manager.

“I don’t think it’s a secret that both Chris Coleman and R.T. have higher aspirations with the real possibility that Governor Pawlenty will not be running for re-election in 2010,” says Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Jacobs argues that Pawlenty’s recent behavior suggests a run for national political office is more likely in the cards than a third term. He’s struck by Pawlenty’s reluctance to lobby for passage of the stimulus package despite a looming $5 billion budget deficit, positioning himself as a hard-line fiscal conservative.

In addition, Jacobs notes that Pawlenty has been conspicuously more aggressive in fundraising than he was four years ago, with nearly $600,000 in the bank at the end of the year.

“To me the behavior of Tim Pawlenty, in terms of fundraising and in terms of positioning, looks strikingly presidential,” he says.

Both Coleman and Rybak would face the tricky task of winning re-election and then almost immediately jumping into the governor’s race. In St. Paul there’s significant historical evidence that even the nimblest of politicians could find such maneuvering perilous. In 1986, George Latimer attempted to make the leap to the governor’s mansion but lost an inter-party fight to incumbent Rudy Perpich. A decade later Norm Coleman finished second to Jesse Ventura in a three-way gubernatorial contest.

Despite this track record, Latimer believes Chris Coleman’s statewide prospects are quite bright.

“I have no doubt that if things go well that he should look towards going the next step,” Latimer says. “I think that he should keep all of his options open to run statewide.”

Still, some observers noted that while Coleman’s campaign operation may seem suspiciously robust for the political task currently at hand, such preparations are also simple prudence.

“Political fortunes shift rather quickly, and it always pays to be prepared,” says state Rep. John Lesch, who served as Coleman’s legislative aide when he was on the St. Paul City Council.

“People are going to look very critically at how he runs his mayoral race. You’ve got to make sure all your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.”