Former state Rep. Steve Kelley. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

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 for a debate at the Minnesota State Fair: Steve Kelley, Paul Thissen, Tom Bakk, Mark Dayton, Tom Rukavina, Susan Gaertner and Matt Entenza. Notable absences included announced candidates Margaret Anderson Kelliher and John Marty, as well as likely challengers Chris Coleman and R.T. Rybak.

The nearly two-hour debate, put together by The Uptake and KTNF (AM 950) touched on health-care policies, instant-runoff voting and police tactics during last year’s Republican National Convention. Gaertner touted her executive experience heading the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office for the last 15 years. Entenza, the former House minority leader, invoked his humble origins growing up in a poor, fatherless household in Worthington. Everyone bashed the current governor, Tim Pawlenty, particularly for his fiscal policies.

Here’s the entire debate:

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 soon resolved, however; the losing candidate will likely take the case to the state Supreme Court.

Watch closing arguments via The UpTake’s live stream after the jump.

• WCCO’s Pat Kessler raised the “who’s a journalist question” Monday night, noting that the access battle is a bipartisan issue. He interviews The UpTake’s Jason Barnett and Minnesota Democrats Exposed’s Michael Brodkorb about their disappointment that the DFL majority seems opposed to “more transparency, more bloggers in, more access to the process,” as Brodkorb put it.

• WCCO’s Esme Murphy strikes the same chord, then posts the Society of Professional Journalists’ statement on yesterday’s proceedings:

“It’s our understanding the first three of the proposed rules are already tossed out, which is a good thing since they triggered the strongest response. However, SPJ is concerned about the rules that continue to try to narrow the definition of what a journalist is and who should be allowed to document the workings of state government.

The Minnesota Legislature does the people’s work during committee meetings and formal House and Senate floor sessions. Minnesota SPJ understands the difficulty in maintaining decorum and a productive environment in such open, public forums. However, this is precisely the job legislators were elected to do. Public scrutiny comes with the office. SPJ takes the position that transparency is the only way elected representatives can maintain credibility with their constituents. As such, the best approach is one that adheres to the most noble aspects of the First Amendment that recognizes the need for openness and accountability from government.

It’s difficult to understand why the proposed rules place conditions on what should be a simple process of access. SPJ prefers to define ‘journalist’ in the broadest of terms and we believe it’s time for the legislature to do the same. The public loses whenever elected officials choose to exclude people who wish to document what happens in a public meeting, working on public policy in a public space. If there is an issue of decorum, safety or logistical space, elected leaders have appropriate methods in place. Rather than create additional rules that imply a person’s credentials will be issued based on where a person works or how long a person will be reporting at the Capitol, SPJ would encourage legislative leaders to lessen the rules to allow more people to report in new and innovative ways to reach more of the public. The Legislature should establish equitable rules for all media, with no bias awarded anyone based on medium, method or viewpoint. If this proposal reflects the Legislature’s attempt to do that, they have missed the mark.”

• TPT’s Mary Lahammer expresssed “great outrage” over the House rules that limit “where, when and what [the media] could record in a public building involving publically elected people.” She writes, “True the media landscape is changing and that makes a lot of us fearful too, but fear never leads to good decision making.”

• MPR’s Bob Collins writes of the “big chill at the Capitol,” noting that there’s “virtually no reasonable case to be made that inviting a few bloggers in to inspect the workings of elected officials would cause an undue burden on the lawmakers who, for the record, asked for the job.”

Among other issues voiced at the meeting, reporters objected to a new requirement that media carry credentials for covering House committee hearings. (”What the hell are ‘committee credentials’?” DFL Caucus communications chief Andrew Wittenborg was asked.) That was apparently the problem at a committee meeting Monday evening.

Don Davis, Capitol bureau chief for Forum Communications, tells his story at the Capitol Chatter blog:

Two hours after Wittenborg’s meeting, I was trying to take a photo of Rep. Paul Marquart of Dilworth presenting a bill to a House committee. A page approached and asked to see my credentials before she would allow me to take photos. Recalling Wittenborg’s assurances that no credentials were needed, I told her that I had just been told I did not need to present credentials (which, by the way, hung in plain sight from a lanyard around my neck) and I continued to photograph Marquart.

Soon after I returned to my seat in the back of the room, two state troopers approached me after the page had called them, apparently to kick out this photographer. Both had seen me plenty of times and knew I was legitimate, so gave me little hassle.

Not long after I returned to the office to write my story, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher called to apologize for the incident and promised it would be investigated. And Marquart called to apologize, even though he did not even know the troopers were talking to me at the time and had no knowledge of the proposed rule changes until I told him.

Davis’ account recalls an incident last week, when a House page admonished The UpTake’s Tom Elko for using a video camera in a House subcommittee meeting. Elko, who carried state Senate but not House credentials, told the Minnesota Independent he went willingly with the page to the Sergeant-at-Arms’ office to discuss the matter.

Photo via The UpTake

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 effort to upend his Democratic opponent’s 225-vote recount victory in the fight for Coleman’s old U.S. Senate seat, especially for a team still smarting from other smackdowns Tuesday.

UPDATE: The judges changed their minds and un-struck the testimony (pdf). (They all three signed the order  – does that make three un-strikes?)

Minneapolis election worker Pamela Howell, a Republican, was on the witness stand today to attest to polling place errors that could have led to double-counting of votes. She was under cross-examination by the Franken side when the court adjourned for a short break — during which Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg gave her notes she’d prepared earlier.

When court resumed, Franken attorney David Lillehaug  first demanded to know what the document was and the reason it hadn’t been shared with his team — and then demanded that the court strike Howell’s testimony from the record.

Coleman attorney Tony Trimble’s explanation of the incident as a simple mistake didn’t satisfy the judges. Instead, they had Howell leave the stand having left not an official ripple on the proceedings — though her brief appearance had crashed like an unwelcome wave across the former Republican senator’s deck.

In other court action today, Coleman attorneys argued that a St. Louis County absentee ballot envelope rife with X marks where voter information belonged should not have been counted. The two sides clashed over whether Coleman could solicit evidence from far-flung counties via e-mail. And Cindy Reichert, the Minneapolis elections manager, took the stand later in the day to be quizzed about 133 ballots that went from the city’s Ward 3, Precinct 3. She also said some absentee ballots that may contain registration forms inside remain unopened. Her testimony resumes Thursday.

On Tuesday, Coleman continued to lose ground in his effort to have some ballots counted and others not. And at the end of the day, the court issued an order (pdf) rejecting his request for an injunction to stop state officials from blotting out marks linking 933 ballots tallied in the recount, some of which Coleman now contends aren’t legal.

The interminable quality of the back-and-forth legal battle, now in its fifth week, isn’t lost on the combatants closest to the conflict. An end-of-day interview by The UpTake’s Noah Kunin with East Coast-based Franken attorney Marc Elias included this exchange, after Coleman attorney Joel Friedberg, a Minnesotan, passed the pair in a courthouse corridor:

KUNIN (relaying a question from Elias’ wife, who Elias has said is following the trial via The UpTake “religiously”): When are you coming home, or is that too speculative?

ELIAS: You should have asked Mr. Friedberg. (Turning to shout down the hall) When am I going home?

FRIEDBERG (in an off-mike remark, as relayed by Kunin): The sooner, the better.

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.

Al Franken (Photo: Aaron Landry) and Norm Coleman (Photo: WDCpix.com)

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.

An interesting note: While the Coleman campaign doesn’t consider video news outlet The UpTake “legitimate” media — the campaign has repeatedly barred the group from campaign pressers and the GOP tagged them a “partisan liberal video blog” — they will use The UpTake’s video when it serves their purposes (note UpTake logo in the image above). Nationally, left-leaning TalkingPointsMemo shares the honor: Coleman’s video includes their logo, too.

(Minnesota Historical Society)

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 today, Pawlenty will again address prosperity — or, facing a nearly $5 billion budget deficit, something well short of it. He’s expected to call for statewide spending cuts coupled with corporate tax cuts to boost the sagging economy.

After the jump: Watch Pawlenty’s seventh State of the State address at noon via The UpTake’s feed.
This live broadcast has ended. Visit our Twitter feed for speech highlights.