State Auditor Rebecca Otto and Attorney General Lori Swanson were re-elected on Tuesday night. The Associated Press called the race for Swanson early in the night, but didn’t project an Otto win until well into Wednesday morning. Swanson took an early lead and stayed above 50 percent throughout the night, while Otto only bested her opponent by a handful of points.

Otto faced a challenge from former Republican State Auditor Pat Anderson, who held the position from 2003 to 2007.

The fact that they have both held the office has become a campaign issue.

Otto said that during Anderson’s term, the office made errors in its accounting, and she claimed that Anderson made errors on her campaign finance reports.

Anderson’s supporters, on the other hand, issued a deluge of government data requests which flooded the auditor’s office this summer.

Lori Swanson, the incumbent DFL Attorney General, faced a challenge by Republican Chris Barden, a psychologist and lawyer.

The race drew little attention, but both traded barbs about each other’s ethics late in the campaign. Swanson said that Barden’s crusade against “repressed memory syndrome” would hamper his ability to handle mental health cases as attorney general.

Barden said that Swanson’s office has been plagued by scandal since she took office.

Sean Niemic's Facebook profile photo

Between mid-May and the end of June, Minnesota Democrats holding three constitutional offices found themselves deluged with dozens of data requests from the Minnesota Republican Party and fellow travelers. As State Auditor Rebecca Otto shot down the information requests as “smears” designed to debilitate her office in an election year, her Republican opponent Pat Anderson fired back with a question: “What is so bad that you do not want voters to see it?”

Amid this pre-election posturing, Sean Niemic, a University of Minnesota student who filed more than a dozen of the requests, waded in to the political maelstrom. He sent out his own press release and wrote letters to media across the state denying partisan motives and accusing Otto of “stone-walling” the  student newspaper he edited, the Minnesota Republic, which he described as an “investigative news-gathering” operation.

Despite framing his kerfuffle with Otto in the rhetoric of journalism, Niemic has been intimately involved in conservative partisan politics. He’s managed a Republican campaign for the state House of Representatives and served as an officer for a student group supporting the Republican opponent of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, with whom he filed nine information requests. His sporadically published newspaper  has collected tens of thousands of dollars in University of Minnesota student fees that Niemic plans to use to pay the costs for these data requests that Otto described as partisan “fishing expeditions.”

In the wake of blogger Andrew Breitbart’s deceptively edited videos, some observers say the legacy media needs to be more skeptical of a group the New Republic recently dubbed “conservative pseudo-journalists,” who are adept at whipping issues to a froth in the name of journalism while scoring political points. The debate surrounding these information requests aren’t about whether the requesters  should receive the information — political partisans still legally have the same rights to obtain public data as anyone else — but about whether the final product is presented to the public as fair, accurate journalism when it’s really just partisan spin.

Data requests from conservatives come in early summer

The Minnesota Data Practice Act allows citizens access to public information that’s collected by government, typically for a fee that covers the department’s cost of gathering the information. In June and July, the Republican Party, Minnesota Majority, the Minnesota Freedom Council and Sean Niemic filed data requests at the offices of the Minnesota Secretary of State, State Auditor and Attorney General — all of whom are members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and involved in heated campaigns with Republicans. The Republican Party of Minnesota denied there was any concerted effort.

There were political undertones to the data requests from the start. Niemic’s requests were broad and time-consuming to compile, specifically asking for intra-office correspondence that contained a number of keywords like “DFL,” “fundraiser” or “campaign.”  Otto reacted to the requests from Niemic and conservative groups by sending out a press release that asked whether “Republican politics is going too far?” Niemic’s response raised the bar, calling the office’s attempts to estimate the cost and time necessary for his requests an “act of intimidation,” and asking why Otto doesn’t want to be “open and transparent.”

Jane Kirtley, Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota, said the overly broad wording in Niemic’s requests isn’t typically the best way to get information from government entities, although the document custodians in government would ideally work with the requester to help them find the data they specifically want, rather than just giving them a cost estimate they probably can’t afford.

Both the Secretary of State and State Auditor’s offices confirmed they’re working to come up with estimates, although both said it will take considerable time to work out the details of each request and would cost hundreds of work hours to fulfill. Niemic said responses to his requests are trickling in, and that he’ll decide whether to accept them based on final cost.

Back Cover of Minnesota Republic, Volume 2, Issue 6

Behind journalistic defenses, partisan leanings

In the wake of Andrew Breitbart’s deceptively edited video postings about USDA official Shirley Sherrod and ACORN, government officials are increasingly wary of information requesters who have an “agenda that goes beyond informing the public,” said Kirtley.

In his letters and press release, Niemic paints the Minnesota Republic as a “news-gathering operation” that seeks to hold public officials accountable, as is the “responsibility of the public and of the press.” Although Niemic freely admits he’s been involved in conservative movement for years, his letters and press release slamming Otto and Ritchie gloss over the fact that  he’s also engaged in more partisan activity.

Niemic served as the campaign manager for Republican Ole Hovde’s bid to replace state Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, in 2008 and said he’ll be helping Hovde again this time around, although he probably won’t serve as campaign manager. Niemic was also listed as an officer for Students for Dan Severson for Secretary of State at the University of Minnesota until just a few weeks ago, which would mean Niemic likely held the position, at least on paper, when he dropped nine information requests on Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office. (Niemic said his roommate, Quinn O’Reilly, listed him as an officer in the Severson organization without his knowledge, but his roommate said he received Niemic’s permission to list him as an officer).

Explicit partisan involvement flies in the face of 50 years of American journalism, Kirtley said, where the idea was that the media is there for the public good and not to promote one cause or another. “Oftentimes, it’s difficult for members of the general public to tell the difference between doing journalism the old-fashioned way — however flawed that might have been — someone who is gathering news or information for the benefit of the public, from someone who’s pursuing a political agenda,” Kirtley said. “Once you’re truly tied to a political movement or political party, the fact of the matter is you’re not independent anymore.”

Niemic insists he’ll treat the data he receives fairly: “What I’m doing is not uncommon in newspapers, part of being a public official is you have to be responsive to journalists and the public,” he said. “I’m not going to make any judgments, I’m not going to write my headline before [I receive] the data I requested.”

But he hasn’t been writing many headlines lately. The group that publishes the Minnesota Republic received $20,000 from University student fees in the 2009-2010 academic year to fund nine issues, although it was only actually published twice, according to its online records. (Niemic said he doesn’t recall how many issues were published and can’t confirm the number because he doesn’t have access to the archives). Despite this lack of follow-through and consistent yearly criticism about the organization’s financial accountability from the university’s student fees committee, the committee this year, which Niemic briefly headed before being deposed by the administration, awarded the organization a budget of $49,300 for the 2010-2011 academic year. It’s mostly this public money, along with an expected $2,000 in reported ad revenue, that will pay the costs of Niemic’s information requests.

Unreliable media sources

There’s no question that Niemic is legally entitled to public information, just as any citizen, journalist or political operative would be, Kirtley said, although both parties appear to be at fault for how these data requests exploded into politics. The question is whether everyone with the ability to request or publish information is a journalist. The mark of partisans like Breitbart, Kirtley said, is that they often forego the media’s traditional job of providing accurate context and background , instead focusing on scoring political points.

That’s a value Niemic also neglects in his defense of Breitbart’s video, which is widely acknowledged to misleadingly portray USDA official Sherrod as a racist. “It was an accurate representation of the clips [Breitbart] was given. If the full video had carried that headline, then it would have been misrepresentation,” Niemic said. “If there’s anybody to blame for why she lost her job, I think fingers should be pointed where the buck stops, not at a journalist who was posting a video.”

The idea of presenting news that is “fair and balanced” is a principle to which people who call themselves journalists should still aspire, Kirtley said, especially as the legacy media withers and demand for quick stories increases.

“There’s nothing wrong with pursuing a political agenda — it’s what they gather, what they produce and what their goals are that are very different from traditional news organizations,” she said. “I’d like to think there’s going to come a point when the public is going to realize that some of these sources are not reliable sources for unbiased information.”

Rebecca Otto, Pat Anderson

State Auditor Rebecca Otto criticized her opponent, former Republican State Auditor Pat Anderson, for a number of errors on Anderson’s campaign finance reports. Otto says Anderson has made numerous accounting errors in both her campaign records and during her time as auditor.

Otto alleges that Anderson has made errors in campaign reports dating back to 2002, including a recent filing from 2009. Otto also says that she has found errors in Anderson’s accounting while Anderson was auditor. Anderson lost to Otto in 2006.

“Anyone can make a mistake, but Pat Anderson has a consistent pattern of errors in the numbers, both in and out of office,” Otto said in a press release Monday. “We can’t afford a State Auditor who makes error after error, year after year, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

To back up her claims, Otto provided documentation of her claims which can be viewed on her campaign website.

For instance, on Anderson’s filings for her run for governor, she “misstates her ending cash balance,” Otto says. “The reporting form instructs candidates to subtract the total campaign expenses of $26,420.99 from total receipts of $29,659.00. Pat Anderson says that number is $3,584.66, but actually doing the math gives a different number: $3,238.01.”

“I think we have very clear differences,” Otto said in a statement early Friday morning. “Pat spent her time in office grandstanding for partisan causes as a self-described ‘liberals worst nightmare’ while making hundreds of millions of dollars in financial errors. I’ve done nearly three times as many investigations as she did, and earned the national nonpartisan Excellence in Accountability Award for my work on innovation and efficiency.”

Otto is referring to $12 million in accounting mistakes she says Anderson made in 2006 in auditing state payments to school districts.

Anderson also came under fire in 2006 when a series of laptop thefts from her office caused private data on 500 public employees and 1,900 participants in state programs to end up in the hands of unknown thieves.

Anderson says that Otto has been as much as six month late on some audits.

Also endorsed on Thursday: Dan Severson for Secretary of State and Christopher Barden for Attorney General.

Image: Minnesota Independent

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s recently announced plans to axe state refunds for political contributions of $50 or less has set off an email stampede, as candidates urge donors to give before the program dies July 1.

In the $2.7 billion of unallotments he unveiled on Tuesday, Pawlenty included a complete cutoff of $10 million in state funding for the cash-back campaign donation program. The program has no official name in state law, but the state Department of Revenue calls it the Political Contribution Refund Program.

Republicans get more money through the program than their rivals, but Pawlenty still dissed it as welfare for politicians. On his WCCO-AM radio program this morning Pawlenty allowed, “It’s a nice program,” but he said it was a lower priority than schools and health care.

A growing number of candidates and both other major parties have jumped on the short-notice deadline to make pitches via the Internet for refundable donations. (UPDATE: Republicans, remarkably, have joined them.)

In a Web solicitation, Independence Party Chair Jack Uldrich characterized the cut as hacking off the IP’s arm.

Democrats have used less vivid imagery but are communicating urgency all the same, with email subject lines like “Time is running out,” “Just 14 days to  get your refund” and “Campaign Alert!”

In particular, those aiming to replace Pawlenty made sure to whack him as they made their appeals for fast cash. Here’s former State Sen. Steve Kelley:

By cutting off the Political Contribution Refund Program, Tim Pawlenty is impacting your voice in the governor’s race.  Over 90,000 Minnesotans use the PCR program annually to make a refundable contribution to the candidate of their choice. … Before the program expires, make a refundable $50 contribution (or $100 for couples) to a Governor who will put education first!

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner was even more pointed in her email plea:

In addition to making cuts that will disproportionately affect the poor, children and the elderly, the Governor also proposed eliminating a program that helps ordinary Minnesotans participate financially in the campaigns of their choice. … While Tim Pawlenty and other Republicans can afford to run their campaigns with large donations from PACs and wealthy individuals, we would prefer to run ours with money donated from all levels of givers.

Gaertner had a ready metaphor for donors unfamiliar with the soon-to-be-eliminated program:  ”Think of your contribution as a temporary loan to the campaign.”

State Auditor Rebecca Otto, also a DFLer, curiously made a pitch for donations of as little as $5 rather than the maximum refundable amount of $50: “Can you afford to support my work with a monthly donation of $5, $10 or $15?” her email asked.

Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, told the Minnesota Independent that his department doesn’t recognize pledges or plans as “contributions” under the refund program. He said donors or candidates with questions about the program’s phase-out should consult online memos from the campaign-finance board (pdf) and the Department of Revenue (pdf).

Pawlenty told his radio audience today that he’s heard more guff from legislators on the donation-refund program than any other unallotment item. Maybe that’s because it’s the one they can still do something about.

Here are some samples of appeals from candidates and parties, including those mentioned above plus state Rep. Paul Thissen and state Sen. John Marty (both gubernatorial candidates), and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Click on an image to enlarge. If you have seen or received other similar communications from candidates, please forward them to MnIndy.

Susan Gaertner

Steve Kelley

John Marty

Rebecca Otto

Mark Ritchie

Paul Thissen

Independence Party

DFL Party

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.”