Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

TWIN CITIES: Slow-motion raid wrests 1,200 undocumented janitors from jobs. Obama incrementalism means Bush-era workplace raids continue, only slower. [Minnesota Public Radio]

ST. PETER: R.T. Rybak attended his first gubernatorial candidate forum. As a gubernatorial candidate, that is. [Minnesota Daily]

ST. PAUL: A skyway too skinny. It’s four feet short of the minimum width so wheelchairs may pass, but never mind — the Galtier Plaza skyway is “classy,” says the city’s director of safety and inspections. [MinnPost]

AUSTIN: Swastika-wearers ignored. Last month anti-immigration demonstrators drew opponents riled enough to get arrested, but this time around the protest was comparatively quiet. [Austin Daily Herald]

MINNEAPOLIS: The eight best days of autumn. It’s a week later, but the first official results from the Nov. 3 election will come Wednesday, thanks to the hand-count of ranked-choice ballots. [Star Tribune]

ST. PAUL: A town with pity. A free concert recalls the late Gene Pitney, the man who sang “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance.” [Associated Press]

The board announced the rulings today, but reached its decisions at a meeting on Thursday — the same day Rybak registered a gubernatorial campaign committee. He won re-election to a third term as mayor on Tuesday. The rulings were prompted by complaints filed by the Republican Party of Minnesota.

The board also heard evidence about Rybak driving to events around the state meant to showcase candidates for governor — with mileage costs that Rybak bore personally but that the Minnesota GOP said constituted an in-kind gift.

But it was the survey costs that the board focused on, and they didn’t buy Rybak’s defense that the polling work was on behalf of his mayoral campaign against much lesser-known challengers:

The response on behalf of Mayor Rybak contends that the survey was to support a re-election bid for Mayor of Minneapolis. But this response does not persuasively explain why a survey to support the Mayor’s re-election would have a geographic calling area that included metro area residents that are not eligible to vote in Minneapolis.

The board found the survey questions revealing:

As an example, the survey asks if the respondent voted in 2006, (the last time the office of Governor was on the ballot), and if the respondent intends to vote in 2010. The office of Governor is on the ballot in 2010, the office of Mayor of Minneapolis is on the ballot in odd numbered years (2005 and 2009).

The board ordered Rybak to form a gubernatorial campaign committee (which he did), which must transfer to his RT for Minneapolis mayoral campaign the cost of the conducting the survey last May.

The board also ruled (pdf) on whether St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman violated state statute by failing to register a fundraising committee while exploring a bid for governor. The complaint from the Minnesota GOP noted that Coleman had participated in gubernatorial forums with other candidates and openly discussed his plans for the state if elected to the office. The board determined that Coleman was indeed a candidate for governor earlier this year and spent personal funds in excess of $100 to support his campaign.

The Board considered possible reasons why Mayor Coleman would travel to locations throughout the state to participate in gubernatorial candidate forums and present information on what actions he would do if elected Governor. In the Board’s view the only reasonable explanation for those actions is that Mayor Coleman was seeking nomination or election to the office of Governor.

But the board also ruled that Coleman did not improperly use funds from his mayoral campaign to support a gubernatorial bid. Coleman has since announced that he will not be running for governor, but the board stated that that decision did not alter its findings in the matter. The administrative body ordered Coleman to submit a detailed accounting of his expenditures on behalf of his gubernatorial campaign by February 1, 2010.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Rybak is DFL’s “strongest candidate” for governor. So says Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza. [The Fix]

HUGO: 10,000 loons? The crowd at U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House call” protest included a Hugo couple who call her “a very effective representative.” [St. Cloud Times]

ST. PAUL: Now his Trice will really get Dusty. Dems’ one-man answer to the Minnesota Democrats Exposed hangs up his spurs. [DustyTrice.com]

MINNEAPOLIS: “The K” is #1. The University of Minnesota’s student radio station, Radio K, has the nation’s best student media website. [UMNews]

DULUTH: Market improves for uninhabitable homes. City government will pay $40,000–60,000 each if the council accepts $3 million in federal funds to create a “blight-free Duluth.” [Northland's News Center]

ST. PAUL: “DFL: Pawlenty’s partying gift to MN is instability.” That typo (?) proves MN Publius doesn’t just parrot party pronouncements. [MN Publius]

Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

Minneapolis’ first try at instant-runoff voting (IRV) Tuesday went well, judging by a low number of spoiled ballots. But the number of ballots cast was also low, spoiling the system’s otherwise successful debut.

An Election Day that turned cold and rainy dumped water on IRV’s promise as a boost to voter turnout, which failed to match (let alone exceed) the 30 percent figure from the last city election in 2005.

“It worked pretty well,” said Council Member Cam Gordon, a Green Party leader who has fought long to bring IRV to Minneapolis. “People seemed interested in having a variety of choices [in candidates].

Still, he conceded, “I wish we had a bigger voter turnout.”

Gordon, who lost and then won in consecutive nail-biters in the last two city elections, coasted to victory Tuesday in Ward Two over Republican challenger Allen Aigbogun with first-rank votes on 85 percent of the ballots cast – the high water mark in all the contests for city office this year.

Only Anita Tabb, who ran unopposed for park board, won with a greater proportion of the vote (97 percent). Mayor R.T. Rybak gained 77 percent of the vote to best 10 rivals for a third term.

Gordon told the Minnesota Independent that he might have won the first time he ran in 2001, when DFLer Paul Zerby narrowly edged him in the general-election contest, had IRV had been in place then.

DFLer Allen Kathir, who placed a distant second Tuesday to DFL-endorsed incumbent Council Member Diane Hofstede in Ward Three, had an opposite reaction.

The old system of holding early-September primary elections — for which turnouts were typically microscopic — might have given him a better shot.

Had he gotten 348 votes – the number he received Tuesday — in the ward’s 2005 primary, he would have earned a higher-profile berth to take on Hofstede one-on-one in the general election.

A surprise newspaper endorsement gave Ward One DFL candidate Susan Howitz Hanna enough of a boost to place third in first-rank votes in an open-seat race that appears to have narrowly skirted a runoff.

DFL endorsee Kevin Reich squeaked by with barely 14 more votes than needed for the 50-percent-plus-one threshold for outright victory in a single-seat contest.

Hanna holds out hope that the race will be sent into a runoff by the hand count that’s required for every race because the city’s tally machines aren’t certified for IRV elections. But by randomly assigned sequence, Ward One will be last among the city’s 13 wards to be counted, putting that date with destiny off by as much as a month.

Mark Fox, an independent who finished last in the five-way Ward One race, would be the first candidate eliminated in a runoff. In Fox’s view, Reich’s bare-majority support, from “less than 12 percent of the people,” means “Minneapolis government is pretty evidently non-representative.”

“If this [election] were a council meeting, I would ask for a quorum call,” Fox wrote in a morning-after email.

Minneapolis City Hall. Photo: Hennepin Co. Library

They are called “pre-general” campaign-finance reports, but with the general election in Minneapolis only a day away, many candidates’ reports have yet to be filed, according to a website maintained by Hennepin County. In select races that could be close and have reports posted, the money race gives an indication of how much the candidates have had to work with in the closing days of their campaigns.

For instance, in the mayoral race, incumbent R.T. Rybak has filed his latest finance report but Papa John Kolstad, a leader among 10 challengers, has not — rendering what would certainly be a David-and-Goliath comparison impossible to make before the election.

In Ward One, where the new occupant for one of three open council seats in Minneapolis will be decided Tuesday, DFL endorsee Kevin Reich had raised nearly 20 times as much money ($23,048) as Susan Howitz Hanna ($1,221), a rival DFLer who picked up the Star Tribune’s endorsement a week after the close of the filing period.

Larry Ranallo, a third DFLer with signs throughout the ward (and even as far as nine blocks outside the ward), hasn’t filed either a pre-primary or pre-general campaign finance report, according to the Hennepin County website.

Such filings are required once a campaign spends or receives $100. The pre-general reports were supposed to be filed Oct. 27.

In a South Minneapolis park board rematch between incumbent Carol Kummer and repeat challenger Jason Stone, Kummer raised more than $7,000 during the Sept. 2–Oct. 20 reporting period — almost twice the sum Stone took in.

Kummer was beneficiary of a maximum $300 gift from park board attorney Brian Rice and more from police union groups his firm represents — a donor constellation that also bankrolled campaigns for and against ballot referendums concerning the park board earlier in the year.

Another park candidate on Rice’s gift list is Bob Fine, who currently represents the city’s southwest corner. Fine is one of five current or former at-large park commissioners vying for the three citywide seats up for election. He had $6,000 in cash on hand on Oct. 20, more than incumbents Mary Merrill Anderson ($2,300) and Annie Young ($1,100).

Pre-general reports for former commissioner John Erwin and current park board president Tom Nordyke were not posted at the Hennepin County site as of noon Monday.

Nordyke was also among tardy filers for the pre-primary report deadline in September.

Photo: wikipedia

China may be ready to buy American pork again now, with fears subsiding about catching H1N1 flu from eating pigs, but hamburger has fallen from grace as a token of interstate tribute.  

With observers saying he’s a safe bet to win re-election next week, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has made a second bet with the Mayor Jim Schmitt of Green Bay, Wis., over the less-certain outcome of another contest: this weekend’s Vikings-Packers rematch.

But this time the booty Rybak will be due in the event of a second Vikings victory will include All-American beef steaks instead of hamburger. Disease-bearing burgers made in Wisconsin and eaten in Minnesota were the subject of a major investigative article on the front of the Sunday New York Times since the last mayoral bet was made.

Rybak’s pledge, should the Vikes lose, is to send to Schmitt sausage made in Minneapolis, beer brewed in St. Paul, and fudge from Lindstrom, Minn. — possibly a subtle bid for non-metro support for his unannounced gubernatorial run in 2010.

Photo: Johnny Northside

Minneapolis mayoral candidate Al Flowers heckled Mayor R.T. Rybak at length yesterday as Rybak delivered a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for new KMOJ-FM studios in North Minneapolis.

In videos from the event, Flowers demands that Rybak debate his challengers, Rybak carries on with his rousing address, and James Everett, another mayoral candidate, stands by attentively.

The Independent Business News Network’s video has all that, as well as City Council Member Don Samuels speaking to the crowd about progress on the North Side as a kind of exorcism.

This shorter video clip, from a different angle, is from the Johnny Northside blog:

Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

ST. PAUL: A man, a plan, a root canal … Pawlenty! Guv asks his 49 peers to join a “health compact.” [ECM Publishers]

MINNEAPOLIS: Mayor loves police chief like a brother. But, er, not like that brother. [Star Tribune; WCCO-TV]

ST. PAUL: Don’t jump off a bridge. You might fall, says the nanny state. [Star Tribune]

OAKDALE: Or the bridge might fall. And some suburb will get to keep the best pieces. [KARE-TV]

SOUTH HAVEN: Get a broom. Unlike bridges, they never fall. [St. Cloud Times]

DULUTH: DWI in chair-car crash. It’s getting so you can’t have eight or nine beers and drive your La-Z-Boy around anymore. [Duluth News-Tribune]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news today …

MINNEAPOLIS: Mayor Rybak met with people seeking jobs. Just not his. [KSTP-TV; Star Tribune]

STATEWIDE: Senators too. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar echoed Rybak’s call for extending jobless benefits about to expire — unless Rybak was echoing them. [Hot Dish Politics]

STATEWIDE: Minnesota a national model on renewable energy. The country is playing catchup, says Klobuchar. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Minnesota not a national model on elections. The Center of the American Experiment’s first recommendation: a photo-ID mandate that stymied reform this year. [Politics in Minnesota]

INDIAN COUNTRY: The first shall be healthiest. Minnesota’s senators also back a bill “to make America’s native people the healthiest people in the world.” [Bemidji Pioneer]

ST. PAUL: Breakfast was served. Were the people of Minnesota? That’ll take more bacon and pancakes. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Paid for, done that. Mayor Rybak reneged a long time ago on pledges to reform how he and other city candidates finance their campaigns. [Star Tribune]

ST. PAUL: Governor, Dems break their fast. By the time you read this, Gov. Pawlenty and top DFLers will have shared a morning meal and decided how to unmake the hash that is the state budget. [ECM Publishers]

STATEWIDE: An uncrowded gubernatorial field. Slim pickings so far for the Independence Party. [Minnesota Public Radio]

ST. PAUL: Abe Lincoln in Minnesota. He never was, but a panel explores his legacy here today. [Associated Press]

MAHTOMEDI: Kelley might try primary. DFL Party endorsement is not the be-all, end-all this time around for former state Sen. Steve Kelley in the governor’s race. [Associated Press]

ST. PAUL: Al Franken behind on recount bills. Numbers don’t yet add up for the Harvard math major turned U.S. Senator. [MinnPost]

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