“This is an exciting first step in this campaign,” Bostrom said in a statement announcing the formation of the “Bostrom for Sheriff” committee. “I am confident that my commitment to professional public service and to the core values of protecting our citizens, partnering with the community, reducing neighborhood crime, practicing fiscal responsibility, and collaborating with other law enforcement agencies are what the citizens expect from their sheriff.”

Bostrom is the son of veteran St. Paul City Council member Dan Bostrom, but is best known for heading up security efforts during last year’s Republican National Convention. Fletcher was critical of security preparations for the national gathering, repeatedly warning that the St. Paul department had failed to recruit enough police officers to ensure that it went off without serious problems.

Fletcher is a polarizing figure. The sheriff’s department drew the ire of social-justice activists last year by infiltrating the (ironically named) RNC Welcoming Committee. A series of police raids in the days leading up to the convention eventually resulted in criminal charges against eight activists who were allegedly plotting to damage property and disrupt the Republican gathering.

The four-term incumbent’s also been at the center of an investigation into the activities of the beleaguered — and now disbanded — Metro Gang Strike Force. Two damning reports released earlier this year alleged that the law enforcement agency routinely seized money from citizens without justification, failed to adequately keep track of its assets and displayed a general disregard for the civil rights of citizens, particularly minorities. The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department was the fiscal agent for the gang strike force.

In 2006, former St. Paul Police Chief William Finney took on Fletcher in a bruising political contest, but the incumbent ultimately prevailed by just over 1,000 votes.

Choi announced his 2010 bid for the Ramsey County Attorney’s office at a press conference today at the Skyline Towers apartment complex in St. Paul. The location was not arbitrary: it’s where Choi’s family initially settled after emigrating from South Korea when he was three years old.

“I’m running for county attorney because I want to make a difference in the criminal justice system and to ensure the safety of our community,” Choi told the audience. “I have a proven record of leadership and I want to continue to serve this community which has given so much to me and my family.”

The current Ramsey County attorney, Susan Gaertner, is running for governor. There are two other candidates currently vying for the post: Ramsey County prosecutor Dave Pinto and former assistant attorney general David Schultz.

But it’s clear from Wednesday’s event that Choi, long active in DFL politics, will be a formidable opponent. He was introduced by St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and was joined on the stage by state senators Mee Moua and Satveer Chaudhary, Ramsey County commissioners Rafael Ortega and Toni Carter and three members of the St. Paul City Council, among others. He’s also received the backing of numerous labor unions, including the city’s police and fire workers.

“When John came to me and said he was thinking about running for county attorney, I quite frankly suggested he shouldn’t,” Coleman (pictured) told the crowd. “That was just being selfish on my part, because I knew that the work that he did in the city attorney’s office needs to continue.”

A Facebook group was created in April encouraging Choi to seek the upgrade in office. Subsequently a counter group was started on the social networking site lobbying against his candidacy. They cited Choi’s involvement in prosecuting misdemeanor charges stemming from last year’s Republican National Convention as evidence of his lack of fitness for the office.

But at today’s event Choi touted his work combating gang violence, mortgage fraud and domestic violence.

“The people in Ramsey County want a proven leader who will effectively manage a prosecution of 300 employees and a $38 million budget. That is no easy task. They want a leader who will prevent juvenile crime and find innovative ways to prevent criminals from re-offending.”

In addition to Clinton, the rally included a who’s-who of Minnesota DFL politicians: State Sen. Taryl Clark and Rep. Mee Moua, State Auditor Rebecca Otto, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Keith Ellison, Mayors Chris Coleman and R.T Rybak, former Vice President Walter Mondale and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

They asked the crowd to volunteer their time and money to Franken and Obama.

Kelliher: “Our biggest enemy right now is being too complacent. We need to work like we are 10 points behind.”

Ellison: “Don’t you feel history coursing through your veins?”

Klobuchar: “Are you tired of that sub-prime leadership in the White House?”

Mondale: “I can feel victory in the air, and here we are just a few days away from what I consider one of the most fateful elections in American history, and it is close and we must fight complacency.”

Franken: “I am privileged to say the Clintons are my friends. But more important, they are friends of the middle class, of working men and women in this state and this country I’m running to represent.”

Clinton: “Unless the wheels come off, Barack Obama’s going to be elected next Tuesday… It’s never too late to get more votes for Al Franken and Barack Obama. You should not give up on that.

“If you elect Obama and you don’t elect Franken, the Republicans in Congress will say ‘Wow, we dodged a bullet.’ You need to understand that if you want the most to come out of this election.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi kicked off the final day of the Democratic National Convention at about 4 p.m. Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson then led the Pledge of Allegiance and Jennifer Hudson belted out the National Anthem, complete with red fireworks shooting off over the jumbotron. People have been waiting for hours to get through security, but Mile High stadium is now about three quarters full.

Democrats wasted no time in attacking John McCain. “I’m Howard Dean; I’m the chairman of the Democratic National Committee — and I know exactly how many houses I own,” the former Vermont Governor said at the beginning of his address. He then painted the GOP nominee as a lackey for the Bush administration. “John McCain is not a maverick,” he said. “John McCain is a yes man.”

On the floor of the stadium I spoke with Omar Adams, a 36-year-old Brooklyn Center resident who’s attending his first national convention. “Barack Obama motivates people,” he says, surrounded by dancing Minnesota delegates. “It was a phenomenal race beteween him and Hillary Clinton. Hillary stepped down gracefully. Now we have an opportunity to elect someone who’s going to make fundamental sweeping changes across our nation.” Adams has been overwhelmed by the convention. “It was phenomenal,” he says of the first three days at Pepsi Center. “I got there at three o’clock each day, stayed until the very end. You just can’t get enough of it. We’re going to have 75,000 people in this stadium. That tells you people are fed up with what’s going on. People can’t afford the things they want to buy. Wages haven’t gone up, yet gas has doubled. We need to stop fighting the war in Iraq and start paying for things at home.”

I also ran into state Sen. Mee Moua and her husband Yee Chang just outside the floor. They’d just waited two hours to pass through security. “It’s been awesome,” says Chang about the convention. “You see all the people here. They’re from all walks of life, all colors and creeds.” Moua says the family interactions of the Obama and Biden families over the first three days of the convention impressed her. “You don’t stage stuff like that,” she says. “It’s those moments of humanity. Not everything was staged and orchestrated. The tremendous affection that people have for one another, it really showed through.”

An early highlight of day four was the appearance by Rep. John Lewis, speaking on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. “We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go,” the civil rights leader told the crowd. “We’ve come a long way, but we must march again. On November 4, we must march in every state, in every city, in every village, in every hamlet; we must march to the ballot box. We must march like we have never marched before to elect the next President of the United States Senator Barack Obama.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi starts the proceedings

A surprisingly common sentiment

The view from the fifth level

DNC chair Howard Dean

The Minnesota delegation gets down

St. Paul City Council member Melvin Carter III, with his mother Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter

Whether you love him or hate him, he’s going to be an unusual candidate.  Among other things, he’s called for a “quickie impeachment” of George W. Bush in 2009, called Rush Limbaugh a “big fat idiot,” and gotten into public scrapes with Bill O’Reilly.  Certainly, Franken’s campaign will not lack for drama.  So it’s understandable that as we approach Franken’s expected campaign announcement this Wednesday, all eyes will be on him.

But DFLers would do themselves a disservice to divide the campaign into Franken and Everyone Else.  There are some talented folks mulling a run against Norm Coleman, and the field for Senate should be deeper than it’s been in recent memory.  Here’s the lineup:Michael Ciresi (DFL-Mendota Heights) announced that he’s forming an exploratory committee, and why not?  He’s got more money than Mac Hammond, meaning that he certainly will have the wherewithal to compete with Franken, no matter how much money Al raises.  Moreover, Ciresi’s work on the tobacco lawsuit gives him instant credibility as a candidate.  Of course, Ciresi did lose to Mark Dayton in 2000, but Dayton wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity, having served a term as state auditor in the early 1990’s–not to mention bearing the name of Minnesota’s most famous department store — make that former department store — and one of the state’s most high-profile families.

State Sen. Mee Moua (DFL-St. Paul) has an only-in-America story that can’t be beat.  The highest-ranking Hmong-American official in the country, Moua fled Laos for Thailand, where she lived as a refugee until her family was able to emigrate here in 1978.  She’s a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s law school, and they don’t let chumps in there.  She’s driven, she’s articulate, and she’d be a great voice for Minnesota.  Can she raise enough money to compete with the likes of Franken and Ciresi?  Are you going to count out someone who emigrated to America in 1978 and graduated from Brown a decade or so later?

State Sen. Tarryl Clark (DFL-St. Cloud) is just barely a sophomore Senator, having been elected in a late-2005 special election.  Yet just over a year after coming to St. Paul, she has already been named assistant majority leader to Larry Pogemiller.  She’s got a strong background in community development and is one of the few out-state candidates in the mix.  She’ll appeal to the centrists and Chamber of Commerce DFLers, but with a number of unapologetic liberals in the race, that’s not a bad thing.

Mayor R.T. Rybak (DFL-Minneapolis) should require no introduction.  The immediate knock on Rybak, of course, is that the GOP will play up crime in Minneapolis.  Of course, that worked so well for them in 2006 when they tried it against Amy Klobuchar that it’s hardly a deal-breaker.  Rybak hails from the left wing of the party, and he’d be able to challenge Franken hard for those voters.  What’s more, Rybak has a strong machine in Minneapolis that should be able to provide both votes and money.  And there would be something entertaining about Minnesota’s two most high-profile mayors of the last decade dukeing it out, wouldn’t there?

Former State Sen. Steve Kelley (DFL-Hopkins)…OK, I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a Kelley skeptic, what with his failure to close the deal in the attorney-general race in 2006.  That’s a total of three statewide races he’s lost, and you usually don’t come back for a fourth.  But Kelley benefits from the fact that the truncated attorney-general race in the 2006 primary made it a bit of a wild card, and he also benefits from the way he bowed out gracefully from the 2006 governor’s race.  And in a crowded field, a guy who’s just been part of a statewide race, even a losing one, has some advantages.

No doubt there are other DFLers who are considering a run.  State Sen. Tom Bakk has been mentioned, as has professor-slash-gadfly Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.  And there’s always someone out there mulling a run whom you’re not expecting.

But my by-no-means-exhaustive list is full of candidates who could compete with and defeat Al Franken and Norm Coleman.  That’s not to say Franken won’t get the nomination, and not to say Franken can’t win. Any state that could elect Jesse Ventura, Paul Wellstone and Tim Pawlenty to statewide office in the space of six years is too unpredictable to rule anything out.  Heck, Norm might even get re-elected; we’re that weird.  But Franken had better not assume the race is Franken’s to lose.  He has a lot more competition that he might expect.