The Uptake

A Democrat hasn’t been elected governor in Minnesota since 1986. If that trend continues in 2010 it certainly won’t be for a lack of qualified candidates. Currently nine DFLers have announced their intention to seek the state’s top office, with a few others still mulling a run. On Tuesday seven of the challengers showed up [...]

Jon Stewart’s monocular endorsement of the Utne Reader has inspired a new video promoting the magazine. Chuck Olsen of The UpTake and MNStories has outfitted Utne staffers, including High Times-reading editor David Schimke and Paranoia-perusing Jeff Severns Guntzel with the single lens spectacles… all in reference to a Daily Show gag in which a similarly [...]

The end is near: The U.S. Senate contest trial moves into one of its final phases today — closing arguments by both Al Franken’s and Norm Coleman’s legal teams begin at 9 a.m. Both sides will take approximately an hour to make final arguments, then the three-judge panel will deliberate. The issue may not be [...]

A group of online media outlets — including Checks & Balances, Radio Free Nation, the Minnesota Independent, The UpTake, Twin Cities Daily Planet and others — have been pressing the Minnesota House of Representatives to change rules that limit who gets to cover their proceedings. Now that the Sergeant-at-Arms proposed (now-ditched) restrictions on all media [...]

Within hours of a Monday meeting at the state Capitol at which reporters heard that proposed restrictions on media wouldn’t go into force, state troopers descended on a reporter for taking a photo of a legislator who was offering a bill to a state House of Representatives committee.

Testimony from a witness for Norm Coleman was stricken from the court record today when the three judges in Minnesota’s election contest trial agreed with Al Franken’s side that Coleman lawyers should not have shared notes with her during a break. As seen and reported on The UpTake, it was a dramatic blow for Coleman’s [...]

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 Coleman press conferences; his colleagues have been refused access to campaign “media availabilities”; and the state GOP chair 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.

Beginning at 1 p.m. CST we’ll be carrying The UpTake’s live feed from day one of the election contest in the fight for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat. Watch it after the jump.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman — who on Nov. 5 said he’d “step back” if he had fewer votes than Al Franken, but later backtracked, calling the utterance “a mistake” — is running a web video calling out what he sees as a contradiction by Franken. Using quotes from Franken campaign advocates and footage from an [...]

During the 2007 State of the State address (pdf), Gov. Tim Pawlenty referenced the quadriga, a gold statue on the capitol exterior called “The Progress of the State.” The sculpture’s “golden guy in the chariot is not [Twins catcher] Joe Mauer,” Pawlenty said, “he’s called ‘Prosperity.’” At this year’s address, to be held at noon [...]