For anyone who care about Twin Cities politics, or believes that the ways certain political scenarios play out are universal...
From today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly could be in for the fight of his political life after receiving barely half as many votes as former City Council Member Chris Coleman in Tuesday's primary.
Coleman outdistanced Kelly by 52 percent to 27 percent, with Kelly coming perilously close to dropping behind Green Party candidate Elizabeth Dickinson, who received 19 percent.
A little background. Gladhanding, creepy, Bush-lapdog US Senator Norm Coleman was once the Mayor of St. Paul. After being elected on the DFL ticket, however, he switched parties-something that is considered a bit of a betrayal when 87% of your city's precincts vote Democrat. People in St. Paul still feel burned and pissed, so last fall when out of the blue, current "Democrat" mayor Randy Kelly endorsed George Bush for President, his constituency was up-in-arms. What seemed to him to be the perfect opportunistic move, to follow the move of his successful predecessor footsteps, ended up being political suicide, apparently. Lovely to watch him go down in flames. While I still don't fancy spending a lot of time in St. Paul, I certainly am on more amicable terms with Minneapolis' sister city these days. We urbanites need to stick together in these times.
On the Minneapolis side of things-our Mayor Rybak has been in a bit of a fight in the DFL primary. Things have been tough the last few years, but I honestly think that he's been in about as much of a no-win situation as the city has seen for the last 25 years or so. On top of the recession, our city incurred millions of dollars in Lcoal Government Aid-part of the all-out suburbanite Republican assault on core cities, that is only now beginning to be restored a bit. Not a career politician (one of his most attractive qualities), Rybak is also amazingly socially progressive, accessible to the people (as far as I know), and has made some tough decisions, fiscally, that have lost him a lot of supporters, but gained a measure of my respect. He's been in a primary fight against a guy, Peter McLaughlan, who is firey and pushes all the right buttons a lot like Howard Dean, but who has been attacking Rybak relentlessly sometimes without substance-more like a Karl Rove-orchestrated campaign. Rybak (for whom I just voted yesterday) ended up winning the primary by about 10%-and here's a funny quote by him:
"The sitting mayor is thrilled to have won by a decisive margin after an unprecedented wave of negative attacks, and I'd sure rather be up by 10 percent. Delmonico (a Police Federation president hired by McLaughlan to attack Rybak in radio ads) and his swift boat full of special interest attack dogs has sunk."
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4 comments:
Surely corruption afflicts both sides of the political fence we have constructed here in the United States, but the current batch of Republicans seem to be on some uber-hubristic tidal wave of evil. From the president appointing useless cronies, to Tom Delay's empire of evil that seems to be coming apart at the seems, all the way down to nearly every state in the union, almost everyday Republicans are under fire for questionable or outright illegal activities. Just today we learned the vice-president of the MA Republican party was arrested and charged with laundering drug money. While not overtly political, good lord, that is some bad shit.
Why don't more people sign up as independants? Screw the two major parties. I will never again allign myself with one extreme or the other. I give support to both sides on different issues and I am my own man. I will not sign up with a group unless I agree with all points or unless it is a unique opportunity or situation.
All well and good except that often the choice is a lesser of two evils, and operating within a party may allow for more influence. Party affiliation means little on the liberal side as we tend to be a more varied group. Republicans tend to vote in a rigid block and most of them seem to vote against their best interests based solely on abortion rights.
I am a registered independent, or in the case of MA, unenrolled. I tend to favor liberal or progressive causes because they try to help the people who need it most, and also think beyond the next quarter's company profits. I agree with some conservative tennets, at least so far as they have been practived in the past.
I am for a balanced budget, as long as it's not balanced on the backs of the poor and middle class.
I favor a smaller and more efficient government, but believe that without governemnt looking out for the little guy, the corporate bullies would trample us all into the ground. Keep in mind that without 'big government' there would be no child labor laws, no environmental laws, no civil rights laws, no handicap laws, and on and on and on. Business will not regulate itself for the better of society, only to maximize its profits.
Much better said than my rambling follow-up post.
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