New US Senate Candidate

I have spent the past few days in a toothache induced haze that was exasberated by my freaking 40th birthday so I apologize for the dearth of posts.

Let's see, in all the hoopla about Ford Bell announcing he is skipping the endorsement process and going to the primary I find out that we do have a new candidate for the DFL endorsement for U.S. Senate in one Darryl Stanton. Some may remember that Mr Stanton ran against Jim Ramsted in the 3rd CD in 2002 and/or that he ran for theDemocratic National Committee representative in 2004. He lost both times.

So far he has made no official announcement. The only campaign "activity" was an ad purchased by him in the DFL State Convention Program Booklet that goes to the printer.

Oh Yippee .... Mike Erlandson is Running

I understand that this is the man's dream job. I understand that if this were the type of job you got promoted into rather than elected it might make sense for someone in his position to get it. But it ain't. Life's a bitch and you don't always get your dream job.

So, now we get treated to a three month tantrum by a man who wants to be in Congress so bad he is willing to abandon the principles he expected others to operate by when he was Party Chair.

The fact is, Mike Erlandson wants to be in Congress, but that is a very different thing from wanting to represent the people of the 5th Congressional District. One of the more hilarious comments apparently ehard at a pre-convention Erlandson Campaign meeting, from the former Chair of the MY-DFL, was the statement was that this needed to be seen as a grassroots campaign. I doubt Mike Erlandson knows where the tips of the grass is in the 5th CD, much less the grassroots.

Until recently this man commuted to his job in Washington DC, leaving on Mondays and coming back on Fridays. In other words, he spent the majority of his time not in the 5th CD.

No wonder then that his campaign thinks that a good way to kick-off his primary campaign is to have a fundraiser and a private club with a former leader of the US Senate who is not only not from the 5th CD, not only not from Minnesota, but in fact, not even from the freaking region!

Finally, with all the fundraising prowess that this man is supposed to have could someone on the inside team please urge him to get rid of the extremely lame "I Like Mike" slogan. This is a race for US Congress, not Junior High Student Council.

Jeezy Creezy Mike Erlandson

Seventeen days out from the convention where he had his little meltdown and still no updates to the Erlandson for Congress website. (Part of me should not be surprised since the DFL web page under Erlandson consistently sucked too)

Before the convention we had lots of people telling us how Mike Erlandson would be a fantastic fundraiser, yet he cannot seem to pony up some change to have someone slip into the piece of crap campaignoffice.com template and update the website?

Hell, even Gary Schiff, who was gracious at the convention and is not now running for anything was able to update his website.

DFL Committee Happenings over the Weekend

This last weekend the various committees for the State DFL Convention met and attempted to resolve several issues.

Constitution Commission

• Voted to NOT seat the Beltrami County delegation as it was submitted by the county due to some dispute over who was allowed to vote on the delegates for the 8th CD. I believe that the entire county unit voted on them when it should have only been those people who actually lived in the portion of the county that is in the 8th CD. At least that was what the argument was about.
  
• Voted to make the State DFL Affirmative Action Officer an automatic member of the State DFL Nominations Committee. Prior to 1999 this would have been a clear conflict of interest but now that the officers are elected in the odd year this person can serve and actually have a perspective that is both Statewide and focused on diversity.
  
• Voted to remove the Executive Committee Alternate status of each CD's Secretary, Treasurer and Affirmative Action Officer.
  

Nominations Committee

Set the schedule of interviews for the At-large State Directors positions:

• Friday, June 2nd - 5 to 10 pm, at the DFL Office
  
• Saturday, June 3rd - 3:30 to 10:00 pm, at the DFL Office
  
• Thursday, June 8th - 4 to 9:00 pm, in Rochester
  
• Friday, June 9th - 8 to 10 am, in Rochester
  

If you want to set up an interview call the delovely and delightful Jan at the DFL office at either 651-293-1200 or 1-800-999-7457. Then go to www.dfl.org to find the questionaire.

I'll post more as I remember it or get corrected :-)

(I know, you all want to know what the Rules Committee did and I am working on finding out.)

Rant #2 - Conservatives and Pop Culture

Building off this post from Minnesota Politics blog ......

The erstwhile Katherine Kersten rips on State Senator Tarryl Clark for her comment that Michele Bachman is the "Devil With a Blue Dress On". Apparently Kersten has spent her life locked in the back room and studiously avoided any contact with that great evil Rock and Roll because anyone else her age will recognize that this is a reference to a song by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels.

Reminds me of the idiotic overreaction to NOLA Mayor Ray Nagin's remarks about NOLA being a "Chocolate City. Very few people who reacted even had a clue that it was a reference to a Parliment Tune from the 70's . In other words, it was cultural shorthand intended for the people Nagin was talking too! (Culture comes sneaking in odd ways sometimes. I once had to backtrack in a conversation with some international students and explian what I meant by "going postal")

I mean all this proves is that some people out there are just nerds who need to listen to more Rock and P-Funk (the world would be a better place in general if we all listened to more P-Funk!)

Rant #1 - Immigration

I guess I just do not understand what the problem is. All this talk about protecting and enforcing "our border" is just silly. Borders are NOT REAL. They are arbitary lines drawn up centuries ago. If you want proof of how arbitary borders are just check out the history of the Northwest Angle.

Also, what the hell is all this crapola about security and protecting our border. I might beleive it more if all the hoopla wasn't concentrated on the US/Mexican border. Let's try to follow the logic on this....our borders need to be secure to protect from terrorists so we need to put National Guard troops on the border and build a 300+ mile fence but the terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11th, 2001 got into the country via student visas? Of course we have caught terrorists trying to enter the country illegally ... FROM CANADA.

Random Thoughts

• Given the needs of crime prevention, war and all other human needs in this country I really am not comfortable with the govt spening time and money looking for Jimmy Hoffa.
  
• New cat trick in that my cat has figured out how to get either into the duct work or between floors. This morning I was sitting on my bed and suddenly heard him right above me. Went over to the furnace area, called his name and out pokes his head, between floors.
  
• No great political news, at least none that I can share at this time ;-)
  

Note to the Idiot who woke me up at 5:30 this morning ...

That was the most pathetic obscene phone call I have gotten in my life!

More Harping on Erlandson

So, for such an "imposing" candidate it seems odd that there has been no update to his website since the 5th CD Convention.

The ironic part of that is that apparently the McCollum Campaign has been trying to get the Erlandson people to take down the quote/endorsement she provided prior to the convention. Its ironic because thequote is about his "character".

Question: is this poor housekeeping or a deliberate attempt by the campaign to get people to think that McCollum still supports Erlandson? Because she doesn't. Three days after the convention she attended the district's Unity breakfast and endorsed Keith Ellison.

4th CD DFL Central Committee Report

The 4th Congressional District DFL Central Committee met last night for their first meeting since the convention. The two big items I gleaned from the meeting were:

The Annual Bruce Vento Dinner will be held Sunday, October 8th and will feature Al Franken. Tix are going to be quite reasonable at $30 for one or $50 for two. More information will be on their website soon!

The other news was in the election of their alternates to the State DFL Executive Committee. Unlike the rest of the DFL CD units the 4th CD elects their three alternates rather than having the Secretary, Treasurer and Affirmative Action Officer automatically fill those spots. Last night five fine people ran for the seats with Tim Morse, Ramona Zamora and Evan Cordes being elected. Ironically perhaps, Tim is the Secretary and Ramona is the Affirmative Action Officer so in any other DFL CD unit they would have been automatic alternates anyway.

What is Erlandson Doing?

If he is planning to run in the primary then it might be a good idea to update his website, Considering that it has quotes on it from at least two people who are now supporting Keith Ellison, the endorsed candidate. Of course, maybe the idea is to just let people believe something that's not true, like he was a good party chair.

Interesting political weekend

So, for years now I have been hearing my friends from Greater MN complain about how the people in the safe DFL, urban area don't understand the need for unity and spend too much time infighting. Yet, this past weekend the 6th CD DFL went 7 ballots with 2 candidates while the 5th CD went 3 ballots with 8 candidates! Who here understands unity now?

On the other hand, I am very pleased to see that Nancy Schumacher was elected as Chair of the 6th CD. She's a pistol of a broad who will keep those rowdy folks in line and make it a strong win for the DFL there. Contrary to what PowerLiberal thinks (http://powerliberal.blogspot.com/) my understanding is that she was actually an El supporter and was one of the votes that changed on the last ballot to try and force an endorsement.

I am also hearing the the 8th CD DFL has returned to the past with the election of Don Bye as Chair again, although that is not confirmed. Don was the chair of the CD for 25 years before leaving for health reasons four years ago.

Mike Erlandson is a Schmuck

Actually I would have stronger words but who knows if little children and the faint of heart might be reading this.

There seems to be this deliberate effort at myth-building that Mike Erlandson did anything but a faboulous job as DFL Chair. While he did manage to raise a lot of money that's really about all he did. And then he spent the money like it was his own private piggy bank to use to dispense favors. After his first year he pretty much stopped even pretending to have an open hiring process for DFL staff and just hired friends and cronies. A tactic that worked well for him since it seemed like alomst every former DFL staffer from the past six years who was hired by him was at the 5th CD DFL Convention working on his campaign (can you say patronage?).

It is also important to note that Mike Erlandson actually violated the DFL Constitution by not having the minimum required 2 meetings a year of the State DFL Central Committee. After all, those were just the party activists, people who did not matter unless they could write him checks that he could then turn around and bestow jobs and contracts on his cronies. Agree or disagree on a lot of things but when the legal documents of an organization say you have to do something and you don't that's called malfeasance.

And explain to me how someone can be said to be doing a good job as Chair when for the first time is decades, on his "watch" Minnesota becomes a Presidential battleground state in 2000 and 2004?

Yea, Erlandson raised a lot of money and looked pretty doing it. But otherwise, he barely kept the seat warm.