Utah’s Bob Bennett nabbed the Homeland Security post. Jim Inhofe of land-locked Oklahoma picked up Coleman’s seat on Foreign Relations. Idaho Sen. Jim Risch will take over the vacant seat on the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

All were being held for Coleman, should he prevail in court and win re-election over Al Franken.

With Coleman gone, Minnesota won’t have representation on Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs or Small Business, since Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken aren’t members.

Klobuchar does sit on Agriculture, and Franken was assigned to the Special Committee on Aging, where Coleman’s seat fell to Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss, who unlike Coleman triumphed in a post-election showdown.

But even Klobuchar, sporting approval ratings among the highest in Minnesota, tip-toes by Bachmann when speaking to Minnesotans about filling out their Census forms.

He couldn’t find out quite everything about her: whether she is selling agricultural products in her home, the state of her mental health, how much she is spending on fuel, or her ancestry.

Bachmann’s office disputed the accuracy of some of Third Coast’s answers, but wouldn’t say which information was wrong. 

See Third Coast’s handiwork for yourself at this pdf.

house.gov

WASHINGTON — Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has spent several months trying to draw attention to the issue of whether the census will be fair — that is, whether it will exclude sampling and whether it will be conducted by the Department of Commerce. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent and repeated claims that she will not participate in part of the census have been overshadowing those issues. So today, McHenry and two other members of the Census Oversight Subcommittee, Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) and John Mica (R-Fla.), are asking Bachmann to back down.

From their statement:

We share Ms. Bachmann’s concerns about ACORN’s involvement in the 2010 Census and will continue pressuring the Bureau to follow their own guidelines for partnering organizations and dump ACORN. However, we can not emphasize enough how important it is for every individual to fill out their census forms.

Every elected representative in this country should feel a responsibility to encourage full participation in the census. To do otherwise is to advocate for a smaller share of federal funding for our constituents. Boycotting the constitutionally-mandated census is illogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country.

The unfortunate irony is that Ms. Bachmann’s boycott only increases the likelihood that ACORN-recruited census takers will be dispatched to her constituents’ homes. Anyone who completes and returns their census form will remove any need for a census taker to visit their residence.

Furthermore, a boycott opens the door for partisans to statistically adjust census results. The partisan manipulation of census data would irreparably transform the census from being the baseline of our entire statistical system into a tool used to wield political power in Washington.

You don’t usually hear Republicans criticizing a fellow member in such a public and official capacity.

State Sen. Geoff Michel and state Republican party chair Ron Carey took the mic after a Madia press conference.

Is the Republican Party of Minnesota unaware of current demographics in the West Metro congressional district it has held for 50 years? U.S. Census data suggests that the suburban-identity politics that Republicans advanced last week writes off a third or more of the 3rd District’s residents.

Republican officials claim the 3rd District’s demographic makeup makes their candidate — state Rep. Erik Paulsen, a married-with-children homeowner — better suited to replace retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad than DFLer Ashwin Madia, a single, childless renter.

Yet an examination of the latest demographics from the U.S. Census — released on Sept. 23, a week before the Republicans launched their demographic attacks — shows that the Republican concept of the suburban norm leaves out a significant minority of the 3rd District’s population.

Here’s what the U.S. Census says about how many people own a home or pay a mortgage in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District:

Total households: 252,410
Renter occupied: 23 percent (56,999 households)
Owner occupied: 77 percent (195,411)

Of owner-occupied housing units, those with a mortgage: 78 percent (151,571)
Of owner-occupied housing units, those without a mortgage: 22 percent (43,840)

Of total households, renters and owners without a mortgage, combined: 40 percent (100,839)

And here’s what the U.S. Census says about how many people in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District are raising children:

Family households: 70.5 percent (177,994)
Nonfamily households: 29.5 percent (74,416)

Married-couple family with own children under 18 years old: 26.8 percent (67,588)

Now married (except separated): 60.1 percent (152,151)
Never married: 30.5 percent (77,318)
Separated/Widowed/Divorced: 9.3 percent (23,745)

After Republicans made their demographics case last week — particularly state party chair Ron Carey’s statement that 3rd District voters should like Paulsen best because he’s “one of them” — reporters pressed questions about a racial or ethnic undercurrent to the argument. The topic is too hot to touch — Madia, the son of immigrants from India, said he didn’t hear it, while Paulsen’s allies denied it — but for what it’s worth, the candidates’ racial backgrounds are shared across the 3rd District’s population to starkly different extents, as reflected in U.S. Census figures:

Total population (one race and more than one race): 664,769
White: 83 percent (553,342)
Asian Indian: 1.3 percent (8,350)