After years of ineffective party leadership resulting in a record number of defeats, lack of transparency in party dealings, alleged financial impropriety by former party employees, and numerous Federal Election Commission problems, can you really blame the electorate for abandoning the Minnesota GOP?

On June 13, the party continued its death spiral by electing the same failed leadership that has lost the last two elections. The “old guard” network of the GOP State Central Delegates continued to imitate lemmings gleefully following each other over the cliff to the political abyss below.

Possibly the last chance to reform and re-energize the Minnesota GOP before the 2010 governor’s race has been lost. For me, it was the last straw. I refuse to enable poor performance any longer.

Repya ran for Minnesota GOP party chair in 2007, but lost out to Ron Carey. Earlier this month Tony Sutton was elected as Carey’s successor.

paulsenforcongress.com

U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen’s campaign paid his wife more than $10,000 in the last five months of 2008, according to Federal Election Commission records. (No such revelations about his DFL opponent, a bachelor.)

The payments include seven payroll checks from Aug. 27 to Dec. 11, 2008, that total $9,729, as well as a Nov. 12 reimbursement of $728 on Nov. 12 for travel to Washington, D.C.

Carolyn “Kelly” Paulsen managed the campaign office, Paulsen campaign treasurer Reid LeBeau told Democratic blogger Brian Falldin.

The payments don’t violate the law, Polinaut points out. Attempts at banning the practice have failed in Congress, leaving spousal pay for campaign work legal if sometimes controversial.

Stirring controversy by keeping campaign cash in the family wasn’t a problem for Paulsen’s Third Congressional District Democratic rival: Ashwin Madia is unmarried.

But Paulsen’s campaign tried to make that fact a problem for Madia last fall. Paulsen ally state Sen. Geoff Michel held a Sept. 30 State Capitol press conference to tar Madia as having inadequate “suburban life experience“:

Raising a family in the district. Sending your kids to the public school. Owning a home. Working in the 3rd District. Paying property taxes in the 3rd District. Erik Paulsen has done all these things, and Ashwin Madia has not.

The next day, Michel appeared again before state Capitol microphones (crashing a Madia news conference), this time joined by state Republican Party Chairman Ron Carey, who expanded on the demographic attack:

Erik Paulsen … really fits the 3rd District so well, as one of them. And so people need to understand that there is a sharp contrast between the candidates. …Erik Paulsen is a very good fit from a philosophical standpoint and a lifestyle standpoint … From a demographic standpoint Erik Paulsen fits the district very well.

Rep. Ellison on Apr. 27 before his arrest for civil disobedience (SaveDarfur.org)

Getting arrested for civil disobedience is “unbecoming” the office of U.S. Representative, said outgoing Minnesota GOP chair Ron Carey of Rep. Keith Ellison, who along with four other House Democrats was hauled off during a protest at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., on Monday. But is it?

Ellison and seven others were arrested for crossing a police line Monday in protest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s decision to expel 16 international aid agencies from the country. In Sudan’s Darfur region, some 450,000 people have been killed since civil war began there six years ago. Ellison was arrested along with civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.); Donna Edwards (D-Md.); and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), as well as local activists.

“While we respect his advocacy for the cause of stopping genocide, members of Congress are offered no shortage of platforms to advocate for their passions that don’t involve crossing police lines and getting arrested,” said Carey in a statement. “This is a publicity stunt that is unbecoming of the office he holds and the responsibility he bears as a representative of Minnesota.”

But Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, an assistant professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas, disagrees: he thinks it’s well within Ellison’s role as legislator and that it fits the wishes of many in Ellison’s 5th Congressional District. Further, he thinks Ellison’s a patriot.

“That the Republican party would challenge one’s patriotism based on a creative act of civil disobedience shows a great ignorance of history,” he said. “The history of civil disobedience goes back to before the founding of the country. That’s what the Boston Tea Party was.”

“For me this is an extension of why we elected him,” he added. “I’m thrilled he would represent us in that way,”

Plus, many others have taken the same route — some at the same location, for the same cause. On Apr. 28, 2006, five Democratic legislators were arrested in front of the Sudan embassy in Washington, the same one where Ellison was arrested. The late Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the first Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, was arrested along with Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Jim Moran (D-Virg.), John Olver (D-Mass.), and Jim McGovern, who was arrested in Monday’s protest with Ellison.

“We have been calling on the civilized world to stand up and to say, ‘Enough,’ ” Lantos said at the time. “The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end.”

That was three years ago today — and five months before Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations excoriated world leaders for “shameful passivity” on Darfur.

The GOP’s Carey says the likes of Ellison have myriad “platforms to advocate for their passion.” Five years ago this summer, members of Ellison’s body had full access to one of them. In a “never again” moment, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution calling the killing in Darfur “by its rightful name: ‘genocide.’”

Given this history, it’s no surprise Ellison and his fellow congressional protesters are tired of waiting for more “becoming” ways of bringing relief to Darfur.

Noah Kunin (Aaron Landry, Flickr)

When it comes to rejection and Norm Coleman’s campaign, Noah Kunin knows a thing or two. As senior political correspondent for The UpTake, he’s seen his questions ignored at official Coleman press conferences; his UpTake colleagues have been dubbed not “legitimate media” and refused access to campaign “media availabilities“; and GOP chair Ron Carey called The UpTake a “partisan, liberal blog” as a way of attacking Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who referenced The UpTake’s video feeds in an email.

But what Kunin wasn’t prepared for was the rejection of his absentee ballot. This afternoon, Kunin sent out a message on Twitter from the Senate contest trial that his name  appeared in a database of some 150 names of voters whose absentee ballots Team Coleman alleges were rejected. (His last name was misspelled “Kunim,” an error on the Coleman team’s part, he says; he checked with his Plymouth polling place, where it was correctly spelled.) He hasn’t yet responded to my query for comment, but the Pioneer Press’ Rachel Stassen-Berger, who has likely covered as many hours of the recount and contest as Kunin has, did. “That is righteously funny,” he said.

Update: Reached this afternoon, Kunin said he was unaware that his absentee ballot was rejected. “My brain is pretty blown right now.” He’s confused about why his ballot was rejected. He’s certain his ballot was witnessed correctly, sealed in the proper envelope and mailed properly. In fact, since he was close to the deadline, he over-stamped: “I remember distinctly putting extra stamps on it; I wanted to overpay just to make sure it got there.”

How has this news been received in the courtroom?

“The Coleman campaign has been cool to this revelation,” Kunin says. “We’ll see if I’m called to the stand or not.”

As for the earlier rejections of The UpTake from Coleman’s events, perhaps that problem will ease up a bit. This week, The UpTake was officially accepted into the capitol press corps [pdf].

Photo courtesy of Aaron Landry.

After state GOP chair Ron Carey aped party blogger Michael Brodkorb’s terminology for The UpTake as a “partisan, liberal” blog, the citizen journalism outfit issued a press release correcting an error Carey made — and thanked him for tuning into the same video feeds of Minnesota recount proceedings that media outlets like Fox News and the Pioneer Press have used. A release issued by The UpTake late last night notes that it has been providing an “unedited switched video feed” of the State Canvassing Board’s meetings, but that Carey was incorrect in stating that the organization is the “Official Communicator” for the Minnesota Secretary of State.

“The UpTake is providing this service because the Capitol staff who normally provide both the video feed and webcast were not available,” the release states. “The UpTake volunteered to contribute equipment and technical personnel to continue to provide both. The office of the Secretary of State accepted the offer.  This conversation was transparent and also streamed live online.”

It includes a note of gratitude to Carey for tuning in: “We are extremely pleased that the Chair of the Minnesota GOP watches The UpTake and was able to enjoy today’s State Canvassing Board hearing through our live coverage,” Jason Barnett, Executive Director of The UpTake, said.

Earlier: GOP attacks on The UpTake: Another attempt to smear the process that may deal Coleman defeat?

Paulsen sign, Election Night

Minnesota’s U.S. representative-elect for the Third District, Republican Erik Paulsen, ran one of the best five House campaigns in the country, according to the Washington Post blog The Fix. Paulsen “beat back the anti-Republican trend,” writes Chris Cillizza (citing President-elect Barack Obama’s showing and Al Franken’s apparent success), “by focusing on his own accomplishments in the state legislature.”

The Fix tracked the Third District contest closely throughout the campaign season as one of the nation’s most competitive — and expensive — congressional races, with Democrat Ashwin Madia and David Dillon of the Independence Party vying with Paulsen to replace Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, who is retiring. And Paulsen’s margin of victory was wider than the recount-tight result that most polls appeared to predict (48 percent of the vote compared to 41 for Madia and 11 for Dillon).

But in several ways Cillizza’s summary this morning doesn’t exactly square with how home-state observers might recall the race:

- It may almost be timely, but it’s still a bit silly to cite a prospective victory by Democrat Franken over incumbent U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman as part of any anti-Republican factor in the Third District, since Madia outperformed Franken there.

- With Dillon pulling down more than 10 percent, this contest was a better example of how Republicans win three-way races than how Paulsen bucked an anti-Republican trend that wasn’t a game-changer in any of Minnesota’s congressional races. Even Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, despite her best efforts, won by 3 percentage points, in another race with an Independence Party candidate topping 10 percent.

- Far from focusing on it, Paulsen ran away from his record as one of the most conservative members of the state Legislature.

- What the Republican campaign did focus on (but Cillizza didn’t mention) was how Paulsen, a white homeowner and father of four, fit the district’s “demographics” better then Madia, a single renter of South Asian descent. That point, made by Paulsen stand-ins at not one but two ham-handed state Capitol press conference appearances, was underscored by a National Republican Congressional Committee ad that made Madia’s skin darker and drew worldwide rebuke.

Here’s the full item on Paulsen from The Fix, followed by a video from one of the press conferences where Paulsen’s “demographics,” not his accomplishments, were the focus.

At first glance, the retirement of Rep. Jim Ramstad (R) presented an ideal pickup opportunity for national Democrats. The suburban Twin Cities seat gave President George W. Bush a narrow 51 percent victory in 2004 and looked to be the epicenter of anti-war movement in the state. And, when Democrats nominated Iraq war veteran Ashwin Madia, it looked like a tailor-made pickup. Enter state Sen. [sic] Erik Paulsen, one of the best (and only) recruits for House Republicans in 2008. Paulsen was able to beat back the anti-Republican trend in the state (Obama won the state by 10 points and it appears as though Al Franken is going to win the Senate seat) by focusing on his own accomplishments in the state legislature. A rare bit of good news for Republicans nationally.

(Hat tip to Political Animal for spotting The Fix’s error in ID’ing Paulsen as a state senator — he’s a state Rep.)

The Minnesota DFL Party put together this highlight reel of remarks by state Republican Party Chair Ron Carey and state Sen. Geoff Michel speaking on behalf of Paulsen:

But Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed declares a partisan failing in one canvassing board’s attempt at providing transparency.

He writes: “‘Non-partisan’ Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office has joined forces with the partisan liberal video-blog The UpTake to provide a live video feed of today’s State Canvassing Board meeting.”

Ritchie’s “SHAME,” as Brodkorb — characteristically in ALL-CAPS — puts it?

Writing via official SoS communique that “a live feed will be provided through ‘The Uptake.’” As City Pages notes, “The live feeds usually provided at the state Capitol are not in use this week and The Uptake has been providing an amazing service to people interested in the race by offering free and live video feeds of the state Canvassing Board meetings on their site.”

The UpTake offers the streams without added editorial comment. While their edited videos tend to be perspective-based, the Canvassing Board video feeds have been raw and live — more like C-Span than MDE. “This would be like Governor Pawlenty telling Minnesotans to go to [MDE] to find out information about his budget proposals,” Brodkorb insists. “While my blog is more credible, you get my point.”

A tempest in the teapot? Just an insider media squabble about who’s “legitimate media“? Maybe not.

Within a few hours of his first post, Brodkorb added another, by GOP chair Ron Carey, whose candidacy Brodkorb championed as Carey’s 2007 campaign manager (Brodkorb has also reportedly been hired as media director for the Senate Republican Caucus.)

Like Brodkorb, Carey apparently would also prefer a Canvassing Board blackout instead of commentary-free UpTake streams: “It’s amazing that a partisan, liberal blog” — a description nearly identical to Brodkorb’s — “has been made the official provider of the video for the Canvassing Board,” Carey said.

Then he gets to what might be the real strategy behind such a benign-seeming service as unmanipulated video feeds of public proceedings: Casting doubt on a recount process that shows Carey’s candidate headed for an increasingly likely defeat.

“To make a group with an agenda and a record of attacking one of the candidates before the Canvassing Board the purveyor of information is beyond improper, it calls into question the judgment of those who made the decision for this partisan website to be the sanctioned broadcaster of these important proceedings.”

In a curious but not unrelated footnote, a private memo surfaced today in which RNC chair Mike Duncan told Republican National Committee members that “Republicans have grown accustomed to having our party recognized as the ‘Party of Ideas,’ but we must acknowledge that many Americans today believe the party is stale and does not deserve that label.” He continued, “All Republicans have an obligation to develop principled solutions rather than falling back on ideology alone; we must show how our ideology can be applied to solve problems.”

The program opens with a thumbnail history of progressive Republican governors who have shaped the state over the last 150 years. They range from John Pillsbury, who bolstered aid to victims of the Grasshopper Plague in the 1870s, to Harold LeVander, who helped create the Metropolitan Council and the Minnesota Polution Control Agency in the 1960s. But the bulk of the show focuses on a panel put together by Growth & Justice during the Republican National Convention in September.

The speakers — former Govs. Arne Carlson and Al Quie and retiring U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad (pictured) — couldn’t sound more at odds with typical Republican talking points. Quie bemoans the fact that the U.S. has more people in prison than any other country in the world. Ramstad criticizes President Bush for putting electoral success ahead of effective governance. Carlson lambastes Republicans for their intolerance of dissent within party ranks.

With the Minnesota GOP suffering repeated defeats at the polls in recent years it would seem like the party might be wise to heed such voices. Perhaps Ron Carey will tune in on Saturday night.

How much time is “as much time as you need”? Today’s the deadline for the statewide recount to wrap up, but the game extender will likely be an envelope marked “1/5,” one of five envelopes containing ballots from University Lutheran Church of Hope, the polling place for Minneapolis’ Ward 3, Precinct 1. They’ve gone missing, leaving 133 ballots unaccounted for. (Coleman’s campaign released a statement yesterday stating, “We do not know that there are any ballots missing, and it is premature and simply irresponsible to suggest that they are.”) The Secretary of State’s office has granted a request by Minneapolis officials to keep looking, stating that they could “take as much time as they need.” Technically, that means Dec. 16, when the State Canvassing Board starts looking at the nearly 6,000 ballots challenged by both campaigns.

Hi, Dudgeon: In a press release reprinted in its “awesome” entirety at MNPublius, the GOP decries the search of the church. Entitled “Franken Campaign Calls For Government Invasion Of A Church!,” it references the Franken campaign’s call for “a systematic forensic search of the church that served as a polling place.”

“Today’s demand [...] is both offensive and completely out-of-control. At what point does the Franken campaign simply conduct itself in this recount with some semblance of dignity? Demanding that the government invade a place of worship—and require taxpayers to foot the bill for that invasion—is bizarre and repulsive.”

Minneapolis election director Cindy Reichert suspects the missing envelope is at the city-owned warehouse two miles away, where ballots were delivered Nov. 5; she doesn’t think they’re in the church.

A supermajority in 2010? The Democrats won’t get their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but the Washington Post looks at the future — and personal — stakes in this election’s outcome:

A Franken win would give the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, setting them up for another run at a filibuster-proof 60 in 2010. Coleman lost an embarrassing gubernatorial race to former pro wrestler  Jesse Ventura a decade ago, and another loss to an inexperienced celebrity-turned-politician would embarrass Republicans in an already miserable year.

If the Senate decides this: The New York Observer looks back to 1975 as a primer on how the Senate, charged by the Constitution with being “the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members,” might end up resolving the election. After two recounts in the New Hampshire Senate race came up with different results, writes Steve Kornacki, the Senate’s process that “played out wasn’t nearly as quick, orderly or predictable as [Democrats] thought it would be, an example that could serve as a cautionary note if the current Minnesota race does land in the Senate.”

The pricetag: When all is said and done, what is this all gonna cost?  It’ll likely cost the candidates, who raked in a combined $4 million in donations since election day, more than taxpayers. The Hill says the Secretary of State’s estimate of three cents per ballot — or a total pricetag of just shy of $90,000 — is probably correct. But the GOP’s Ron Carey tells the Washington-based publication that the recount will cost the campaigns and parties “several million dollars, depending on litigation.” The last big recount, Washington state’s 2004 governor’s race, set Democrats back a cool $6 mil.