Margaret Anderson Kelliher

State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill — giving life to what the union terms “the largest job-creating bill in decades.”

That override has haunted the six Republicans who helped Democrats get the bill passed Pawlenty’s veto — most recently on Monday, when news broke that state Sen. Steve Dille won’t seek re-election.

One week ago, Kelliher won the backing of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, who called her the “most electable candidate in the race.”

Margaret Anderson Kelliher

Gubernatorial candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher picked up an endorsement from Minnesota’s largest union of state professional employees today. MAPE — the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees — announced its support for Anderson Kelliher, who is speaker of the state House of Representatives.

MAPE, which has nearly 13,000 members, interviewed each gubernatorial candidate in Roseville on Monday and Tuesday, before selecting the Minneapolis Democrat as its choice.

“We believe Speaker Kelliher’s proven leadership skills and her ability to manage the state in difficult times make her the strongest candidate,” said MAPE Statewide President Chet Jorgenson. “Speaker Kelliher is willing to bring people together to solve problems in a crisis. She has a history of respect for state workers and the jobs they do. It is for these reasons that MAPE’s elected officials endorsed Speaker Kelliher for governor of Minnesota.”

“We believe she is the most electable candidate in the race,” said MAPE Executive Director Jim Monroe. “Speaker Kelliher can raise the necessary money, has the necessary experience to guide this state in hard times and has a superior campaign structure.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: A Mill City effort to oust Michele Bachmann. City residents (and noted DFLers) Al Franken, Margaret Anderson Kelliher and R.T. Rybak will host a fundraiser for state Sen. Tarryl Clark’s Sixth District congressional campaign. [Polinaut]

SAUK RAPIDS: GOP guv-candidates try “speed-dating.” OK, now that’s connecting with voters. Get a room big tent!  [St. Cloud Times]

ST. PAUL: The Petters affair. Not his alleged Ponzi scheme, but the revelation at Tom Petters’ trial about his “intimate” relationship with employee-turned-prosecution-witness Deanna Coleman [WCCO-TV; Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal]

MOOSE LAKE: Gov. Pawlenty to punish purchasers of TVs for sex offenders. Lock them up and throw away the key, with no big TV? Works for sex offenders. [Associated Press]

NEW ULM: Taunters punished. Parents protested suspensions and other penalties after an entire spectator section was ejected from a high school football game, part of a rash of bad behavior at local athletic events. [New Ulm Journal]

CARVER COUNTY: Talkin’ crap. On review, Pawlenty’s Pollution Control Agency decides to put the freedom to speak about septic systems first. [Star Tribune]

]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/48391/am-mn-vote-for-referendums-yes-and-no-say-newspapers/feed 1 http://minnesotaindependent.com/47238/seifert-kelliher-wont-run-for-reelection http://minnesotaindependent.com/47238/seifert-kelliher-wont-run-for-reelection#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:06:22 +0000 Andy Birkey http://minnesotaindependent.com/?p=47238 Former House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, said on Thursday that he would not seek reelection no mater the outcome of his campaign for governor. Seifert stepped down as Minority Leader in June when he announced his campaign to replace Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who announced in June he wouldn’t be seeking a third term.

“The decision was made a long time ago not to run, regardless of how the governor’s race goes and before Governor Tim Pawlenty announced he was not seeking re-election,” Seifert said. He held a press conference in Marshall Thursday morning and has another one scheduled for St. Paul this afternoon.

Another leader at the Legislature, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, told the Star Tribune on Monday that she won’t be seeking reelection either. Kelliher is running for the DFL nomination for governor. She won’t step down as House Speaker, but she says she “won’t be the speaker in 2011.”

The Minnesota Progressive Project caught that scoop back in November.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning … 

ST. PAUL: Seifert tops GOP straw poll. State Reps. Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer and former state auditor Pat Anderson are the state party’s preferred global-warming deniers for governor. [ECM Publishers]

WINONA: A town hall on Afghanistan. U.S. Rep. Tim Walz will host it Friday. [Winona Daily News]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Somalia prez speaks. Sharing the stage with Sharif Sheik Ahmed at Northrop Auditorium were U.S. Sen. Al Franken, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. [Minnesota Daily]

MINNEAPOLIS: Nazis go home. “Triumph of the Will” it was not, as counter-protesters made the Midway YWCA safe for a seminar about white privilege. [Twin Cities Daily Planet]

TWIN CITIES: St. Paul Pioneer Press congratulates Star Tribune with full page ad. Because Hallmark doesn’t sell “Getting out of bankruptcy” cards. [Minnesota Public Radio]

MINNEAPOLIS: Rosemary Williams is D.C.-bound. She’ll bring her foreclosure protest to a demonstration outside the National Building Museum today for World Habitat Day. [Minnesota Public Radio]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MANKATO: She’s in. State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher made it official on the family farm: She wants to be governor. [Mankato Free Press]

MINNEAPOLIS: Email effusiveness could cost city big. Council members are supposed to remain quasi-judicial when they hear zoning appeals, but a real judge ruled that emails prove Lisa Goodman did not, in the case of a development she despised. [City Pages; Star Tribune; Downtown Journal]

RAMSEY COUNTY: Nun crossed line. Now she’s on trial for trespassing, but Sister Elizabeth A. McKenzie had a higher calling: to get an antiwar message to delegates at the 2008 Republican National Convention. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

BEMIDJI: “A bake sale to get a math book.” That’s the way it is for schools across Minnesota due to delays in state payments imposed by Gov. Pawlenty. [Bemidji Pioneer]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: U.S. Constitution-signing commemorated. But law-school profs must not have compared notes when they chose topics for today’s topical but also water-related lectures: “Protecting the Great Lakes Against Thirsty Southerners” and “Torturing the Constitution” (about waterboarding). [Associated Press]

SIDE LAKE: Big pot bust in the Big Woods. A million-dollar crop could mean a million-dollar fine and 30 years in prison for farmer Thorsten Otterness, whose green acres were spotted from the air by the multi-agency Boundary Waters Drug Task Force. (And unlike their metro counterparts, the task force members didn’t keep the plane for themselves.) [Duluth News Tribune]

The mock election was held at three locations in Minneapolis Tuesday, the day a primary election would’ve taken place were it not for the inaugural use of IRV this fall. It was open to anyone, whether a DFLer, a resident of Minneapolis or none of the above.

The tally after the first round of ballot-counting:

Margaret Anderson Kelliher, 34 percent
R.T. Rybak, 30 percent
John Marty, 12 percent
Paul Thissen, 10 percent
and eight other candidates at or below 3 percent each, plus write-ins

In the next step of IRV ballot-counting, all candidates but Rybak and Kelliher were eliminated, with the lower-ranked votes on ballots favoring those candidates transferred to the top two.  Marty, a state senator from Roseville, and Thissen, a state representative from Minneapolis, were last to be eliminated, and so effectively took third and fourth place, respectively. The final round results:

Kelliher, 55 percent
Rybak, 45 percent

The total number of ballots cast was 271, spokesperson Kelly O’Brien tells the Minnesota Independent, with a rough breakdown of 136 at a Lyn-Lake location and 80 in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis, and 55 at a North Minneapolis site.

In an email to supporters this afternoon, the six-term Minneapolis legislator positioned herself as a consensus-builder, alluding to her role in improving the state’s infrastructure after the I-35W collapse and in passing “Minnesota’s nation-leading renewable energy standard.”

This filing is her candidacy’s “first step,” as her email subject line states — the next one is raising funds and staffing up — but she says she’ll wait a few weeks to “formally announce” that she’s in.

Photo: johnmarty.org

Late results of a very early straw poll in the race for DFL governor show state Sen. John Marty slightly ahead of former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton for the lead, with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman running neck-and-neck close behind. The number of DFL gubernatorial candidates (and near-candidates) who gathered at Farmer John’s Pumpkin Patch outside Austin on Saturday: Ten. Number of straw-poll voters: 129. Here are the results (via mnpACT):

21 – John Marty (16.28 percent)

20 – Mark Dayton (15.50 percent)

16 – Chris Coleman (12.40 percent)

16 – R.T. Rybak (12.40 percent)

12 – Tom Bakk (9.30 percent)

10 – Matt Entenza (7.75 percent)

10 – Susan Gaertner (7.75 percent)

10 – Paul Thissen (7.75 percent)

6 – Steve Kelley (4.65 percent)

4 – Margaret Anderson-Kelliher* (3.10 percent)

4 – Tom Rukavina (3.10 percent)

*Anderson-Kelliher was in Philadelphia for a legislative leadership conference and sent state Rep. Terry Morrow in her stead, according to mnpACT’s Dave Mindeman.

State Sen. Tom Bakk, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner,  House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and state Rep. Paul Thissen have made “firm drop-dead commitments” to stick to the DFL’s nominating process. That is, if any of them doesn’t get the official nod from the party, they won’t run.

Four others — former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, former House DFL Leader Matt Entenza, former state Sen. Steve Kelley and state Sen. John Marty — won’t make any such pledge, although Black points out that Dayton “isn’t seriously seeking the DFL endorsement.” (He couldn’t get through to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.)

Since Entenza has said he’d abide by the party’s process only if all “serious” candidates do as well, Black surmises that, since Dayton likely won’t abide, Entenza won’t either.

Will it matter? Black concludes:

Lastly, it should be noted that the value of the DFL endorsee isn’t what it used to be. For decades, anyone who defied the endorsement process and risked party unity by mounting a primary challenge would be shunned. But that is no longer true. The last two gubernatorial endorsees did win nomination without serious primary challenges, but before that, primary battles were more common than uncommon and several challengers won the nomination. This year will be another test of the value of the endorsement.