David Trinh

Last Monday the Douglas County DFL convention was held in Alexandria, MN.  I attended, along with seventy-something other delegates, and was elected to the state convention as an uncommitted delegate—though I am strongly leaning towards supporting Paul Thissen.  Overall, Thissen had the strongest showing.  He gave a reasonably good stump speech that drew praise from delegates (although Rukavina arguably bested him for best speaker of the evening) and three of the seven delegates elected to the State Convention currently peg him as their first choice.

The most interesting observation I have of the convention is the incredible overlap there was between Rybak and Thissen supporters.  Two of Thissens’ three delegates indicated that RT was their second choice and both of RT’s delegates said that their second pick would be Thissen.  As someone who is in the former camp, I believe that the reason for this crossover is that both men fit the Twin Cities Democrat mold without coming across as too liberal or too partisan.   The Twin Cities label is important because Iron Range candidates don’t tend to perform well in Douglas County and the moderate aura is crucial because DFLers from this area tend to be more conservative in their temperament, if not also in their politics.  Candidates like John Marty can certainly garner some support—Marty won a delegate and the first  alternate—but loud rhetoric about “making health care a right” just isn’t that compelling in this part of the state.

Ultimately, I’m supporting Thissen because I’m impressed by his work ethic, his fundraising numbers and his intelligence.  Additionally, I have to dock some points from Rybak for his decision to run for reelection as the Mayor of Minneapolis even though he was planning on running for higher office.  That said, RT also some attractive qualities—he got behind Barack Obama early in 2007 and has a strong statewide profile after expertly handling the bridge collapse—that would make me happy to vote for him at the state convention.

Perhaps the most surprising showing, or rather lack thereof, during the convention was that of Margaret Anderson-Kehlllihor.  She failed to win a single delegate despite coming in a respectable fourth in the county’s strawpoll.  It probably didn’t help that MAK failed to show last night—the only other candidate who failed to appear was Susan Gearntner—but I don’t think MAK would have earned any support even if she would have spoken to the convention.  When I pushed people about her candidacy last night, I heard again and again that she had gotten badly rolled by Governor Pawlenty during the last legislative session and many were worried she would be crushed by Republicans in the general.  I can’t say I completely agree with this assessment—messaging mistakes were made last year but they’re not entirely MAK’s fault—but I’m not seeing a lot of energy from her campaign that would indicate she’s capable of mounting a vigorous fall campaign.

The delegate count from Douglas County currently stands at:

Thissen- 3 (2^nd Choice of two, Rybak)
RT Rybak- 2 (2^nd Choice, Thissen)
John Marty- 1
Uncommitted- 1

This article from the Star Tribune provides a great example of why it’s bad to write policy into constitutions.  Essentially, Minnesota passed a “Legacy Amendment” in 2008 that dedicated a portion of the state’s sales tax revenue to projects concerning the arts and the environment.  While the amendment was certainly well meaning—what self-respecting liberal doesn’t like clean water, parks and orchestras?—it has  created a whole host of problems for lawmakers who are trying to pare down a gigantic budget deficit without slashing programs that provide things like healthcare for homeless people.

While we might all like to have more parks and art museums, I think we can all agree that it’s probably better to prioritize saving peoples’ lives over trail maintenance.  When well-meaning citizens write spending policy into the state constitution they prevent well-meaning legislators from effectively triaging during an economic downturn.  Any constitutional amendment which mandates specific levels of spending or a particular program, be it a liberal Legacy Amendment or Pawlenty’s ill-conceived budgeting amendment, should be kept off the books.

I’m generally not such a fan, but Governor Pawlenty is right about this:

Gov. Pawlenty cut $1.9 million in state ethanol producer payments. From his detailed budget proposal (emphasis mine):

This proposal reduces the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) program and grant spending by 6.7 percent. The largest reduction is a one-time decrease in ethanol producer payments ($1.931 million), with the remainder making up reductions in grants to county fairs, livestock breeders, agricultural research and education organizations and Second Harvest Heartland. Mental health grants, farm-to-school grants, livestock investment grants and MDA’s dairy development and profitability enhancement program are also reduced.

Hear, hear.  These programs deserve much more than a one-time decrease but this cut is better than nothing.  Polinaut notes that this probably won’t gain Pawlenty many accolades in Iowa, but hey, if Arnie Vinick can win the Republican nomination after taking a strong stance against such a foolish policy, I’m sure Pawlenty has a fighting chance to do so as well.

Collin Peterson is at it again, via the Wonkroom:

Speaking before a gathering of coal-powered executives, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) announced Tuesday that he, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) were introducing yet another piece of legislation to roll back Clean Air Act action on global warming pollution. Skelton’s Dirty Air Act comes on the heels of similar legislation by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND). At the Missouri Rural Electric Cooperative State Legislative Conference, Skelton argued that because Congressional action on climate has “stalled” in the Senate, he “cannot tolerate turning over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to unelected bureaucrats” at the Environmental Protection Agency:

It goes without saying that this is terrible policy; real environmental damage is going to occur because Peterson has decided once again to sell out to the energy industry.  The puzzling thing about this deal though, is that it’s largely unclear what Collin Peterson stands to gain by helping out the coal industry.  The 7^th isn’t exactly coal country, so I can only assume that there’s some sort of backroom deal here between Peterson and coal lobby.  I wouldn’t be surprised if next time there’s some sort of movement to make the true environmental consequences of ethanol known that big coal and their allies in Congress will step in to block this change.

On a different note, I have to say that Skelton is actually right on one thing: the institutional failures in the Senate have begun devolving a bit too much power to unelected portions of our government.  I’m all for more stringent environmental regulations but it really would be nice if they were codified into law instead of being subject to the whim of bureaucrats inside the EPA.  Everything’s all well and good now, but when the Republicans eventually take power, these will undoubtedly be some of the first rules to go.  Sure would be nice if we could entrench them with some sort of statute and provide some stable rules that businesses could plan around.

Fresh off of new polling that Rep. Mark Kirk is leading Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in the race for President Obama’s former Senate seat comes even more devastating news for Illinois Democrats:

Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) has now declared that the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, businessman Scott Lee Cohen, should consider withdrawing from the race in the wake of publicity surrounding a 2005 arrest for domestic violence…

The big problem Quinn has here is that while Cohen is technically his “running mate,” in the sense that they will be listed together on the general election ballot in the same way that we vote for president and vice president, Quinn did not pick him. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in Illinois are nominated in separate primaries, but then run together as a ticket.

I have to say, the system that Illinois uses to select lieutenant governors is completely insane.  It’s one thing to expect people to actually pay attention to a down-ballot race for an office that has little-to-no real power, but if you’re going to insist that the people select the candidates individually in the primary, you should probably let them make the same choice during the general election.  These sort of mandated shotgun political weddings are a disaster in governance waiting to happen.

On a broader note, I think this story only emphasizes an element of American democracy that Matt Yglesias is rightly fond of harping on—namely the fact that our electoral system forces voters to select way too many candidates.  The fact that Scott Cohen was able to slip through the scrutiny of the media and the voters to earn a spot on the ballot line of a major party to potentially become the Lt. Governor of the nation’s fifth most populace state is absolutely astounding.

It’s not like Illinois voters are particularly inept either.  This sort of miscarriage of democracy happens all the time.  My favorite example from Minnesotan politics is the 1994 Attorney General’s race when Sharon Anderson, a very crazy self-proclaimed witch and pagan worshipper, managed to win the Republican primary.  Republicans ended up having to endorse the Democratic nominee; I’m a pretty partisan Democrat, but I’ll concede that the process was hurt by a lack of real electoral competition for the office.

Voters don’t want to make these types of terrible choices but when they’re forced to choose candidates for upwards of sixteen different offices, they prioritize some races and vote solely on the basis of Scandinavian last names in others.   This is a bad way to run a democracy and until we fix it we’re going to keep seeing more Scott Cohens and Sharon Andersons.

I’ve secretly been an admirer of Tim Pawlenty for a long time.  Not because any of his politics resonate with my own beliefs, far from it in fact, but because I was under the impression that he belonged to the ‘grownup wing’ of the Republican Party.  As a strong proponent of a competitive two-party system, I thought our good ‘ol boy from Minnesota was poised to become a leading figure in the effort to remake the Republican Party.  Oh boy, was I wrong.  Recently Governor Pawlenty sat down for an interview with the Washington Post and gave some pretty devastating answers on a wide variety of questions:

After starting off with a pretty weak self-deprecating joke, Pawlenty tried to pivot to typical conservative budget fluff:

FINEMAN: How would you propose to balance the federal budget?

PAWLENTY: Rather than looking to raise taxes, we should pass an amendment to require a balanced budget with exceptions for war, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Congress should reduce discretionary spending, with exceptions for key programs such as the military, veterans, and public safety. (Bold mine, DT)

Err, nevermind the fact that outside of such ‘key programs,’ there isn’t really much discretionary spending left to cut.  Few things annoy me more than when politicians treat defense spending as if it belongs in some magical realm where dollars for extravagant weapons programs materialize out of thin air.  Contrary to this line of reasoning, a dollar spent on an unnecessary plane is a dollar that can’t be spent in some other portion of the budget.  What’s more, there’s plenty of fat to cut in the defense budget!

FINEMAN: How do we pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

PAWLENTY: We have to push for more fiscal responsibility elsewhere. Congress should cut current domestic spending and reject costly new proposals like a government takeover of health care. (Bold mine, DT)

Said ‘government takeover of health care’ reduces the deficit– ’nuff said.

FINEMAN: Was the TARP a good idea?

PAWLENTY: No. I had numerous problems with it. The goal was to ensure that we didn’t have a lending freeze. [But] there was no requirement that lending would occur, and it hasn’t. No. 2, there were no criteria for who would get the money and under what circumstances and for what. I also thought it was too large. (Bold mine, DT)

Excessively generous lending by financial institutions is what caused the financial crisis!  Pawlenty would have preferred a recovery plan that required banks to make the same risky investments which precipitated the crisis to begin with– really?  The key objective of TARP was to provide the banking system with enough capital to restore balance sheets back to relatively sane levels– not to permit the same kind of foolhardy lending to continue unabated.

FINEMAN: Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?

PAWLENTY: I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class. (Bold mine, DT)

Uh… that’s actually not how the Minnesota school system operates.  I dunno what state Pawlenty has been running for the past seven years but I am reasonably confident that evolution is mandated at the state level and that teachers don’t have the power to teach intelligent design.  After all, if they did have this flexibility, I would have learned nothing but intelligent design in my hometown.

Tim, what happened?  You’re turning into a joke.

I have to say that the most underrated political story in Minnesota this week is Paul Thissen’s massive fundraising haul in the governor’s race.  Honestly, a little-known State Rep. who is able to bank as much as the Speaker of the MN State House should be taken very seriously.  Money is, of course, an imperfect metric to measure political success but, as it’s one of the only indicators that DFL delegates have to go off of, it’s an incredibly important one.  Thissen’s impressive warchest and his tireless campaign swings through greater Minnesota are going to make him a top-tier competitor at the state convention April.

Glad to see that some grownups are getting real about nuclear energy:

Ramping up the pressure to repeal a 15-year-old ban on building more nuclear power plants in Minnesota, union officials, business leaders and politicians — including U.S. Reps. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and Erik Paulsen, a Republican — urged the Legislature on Tuesday to lift the moratorium.

“Everything must be on the table,” Walz said.

Hear hear.  Honestly, one of the most nonsensical positions taken by the environmentalist crowd has been their rigid opposition to any expansion of nuclear energy in Minnesota.  It’s all well and good to talk about harnessing wind power (a la Matt Entenza) but if we’re actually going to take real measures to curb global warming—without knocking our standard of living down a few decades in the process—nuclear power is really our only option.  I’m not a huge fan of Erik Paulsen for obvious reasons, but I have to commend both Representative Walz and him for taking this sound policy position.

I’m getting sort of sick of Tim Pawlenty’s new-found affinity for stupid gimmicks:

The state’s general fund budget would be frozen in line with revenue received during the previous budget period under a constitutional amendment proposed today by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The amendment, if placed on next year’s ballot by legislators and approved by voters, would limit government spending and force legislators to set firmer priorities, Pawlenty said.

This is really stupid idea.  For one, any sort of policy that forces the government to slash spending during an economic downturn is necessarily going to lead to some pretty perverse cyclical consequences. Further, on a more philosophical note, I’m extremely uncomfortable with putting checks in the State Constitution that are not needed to ensure a functioning democracy.  What I mean by this is that Pawlenty’s proposal, while debatable on its meager merits, is a policy proposal, not a constitutional matter.  It’s important to constrain the powers of the legislature when it comes to issues like freedom of speech and other fundamental rights which are necessarily to ensure a healthy democracy; it is very dangerous, and frankly a little bizarre, to limit the power of legislature when it comes to policy measures.

Policy should be debated and voted on by the state legislature, not by the voters.  Let too many referendums pass and too many constitutional constraints slip into place and you’re looking at the prospect of Minnesota devolving into a Californiaesque quagmire.  I think that’s something we would all like to avoid.  Pawlenty’s silly constitutional amendment should fall on that point alone.

Kevin Drum, writing in Mother Jones, has a good article on the unique power of big ag to force through incredibly damaging environmental legislation.  In particular, the legislative language in Waxman-Markey concerning ethanol is especially galling:

But that still wasn’t enough for the ag lobby. Next on their hit list was protection for ethanol. For years corn farmers have argued that ethanol has a lower carbon footprint than gasoline. It turns out that this isn’t true if you take into account the land-use changes that accompany ethanol production: The corn grown for ethanol displaces feed corn, which displaces soybean crops, which causes Brazilian farmers 6,000 miles away to make up the difference by growing more soybeans on their pastureland. This in turn displaces their cattle to new pastures created by clearcutting the rainforest, thus wiping out all of ethanol’s carbon benefits. The net effect, the EPA’s scientists have concluded, is that ethanol’s real carbon footprint is about the same as gasoline’s—or even worse.

The ag lobby’s response was simple and direct: They insisted that Waxman-Markey be changed to forbid federal agencies from considering indirect land-use changes when assessing the greenhouse gas footprint of ethanol. End of discussion.

The experts were agog. “This is not a close scientific call,” wrote Michael O’Hare, a public policy professor at UC-Berkeley who’s studied land-use issues extensively for the California Air Resources Board. “If we are willing to make stuff up and stifle the science with legislation like this, countries like India and China and the Europeans have no reason to get on board…It will be a catastrophe.”

Too true.  And while Drum doesn’t go out of his way to mention names, I’d like to note that Minnesota’s own Collin Peterson is the number one reason why these terrible agriculture policies make their way into critical pieces of environmental legislation.  But hey, Representative Peterson is just voting in the best interests of the people who sign his paychecks, the voters in MN-07 big ag PACs.  After all, these particular constituents are responsible for more than three-quarters of his campaign donations, a higher proportion—by a factor of one half—than any other Minnesotan representative.