The Weekly Wrap 5-26
♣ Kory Kath announced his retirement on Monday.
His announcement lead to some twitter chatter about the competitiveness of his seat, which I discussed in a post on Tuesday. While I don’t get to the issue of the seats actual competitiveness in that post, it’s clear that this seat is now one of the GOP’s top pickup opportunities.
♣ Over the weekend DFLers in Senate district 6 had their convention and failed to endorse a candidate to replace the retiring Tom Rukavina. Jason Metsa came one vote short of the 60% needed for endorsement, so an August primary looks likely in 6B.
♣ I managed to miss this when it first came out, but DFL Representative Sandra Peterson has decided to call it quits.
Peterson represents House District 45A and filed to run in her newly-drawn district when campaign filings opened on Tuesday. But by Wednesday afternoon she issued a statement saying she intended to retire, citing “recent, unexpected health concerns.” Peterson’s current district covers the cities of Crystal, New Hope and Plymouth.
We wish Rep. Peterson well.
♣ Regarding that now open 45A seat, Blois Olson has a take:
Golden Valley city councilor Mike Freiberg is seriously considering a run for Rep Sandra Peterson’s seat. From 1999 to 2001, Freiberg worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar. Mike has been a staff attorney for the Public Heath Law Center in St. Paul. He has also served as an adjunct professor of Legislation at William Mitchell College of Law.
♣ Mound City Councilor David Osmek won the GOP endorsement for state Senate in district 33 over Representative Connie Doepke.
On the B side of the district the co-founder of the Southwest Metro Tea Party, Cindy Pugh won the endorsement over incumbent Representative Steve Smith. While on the A side St. Bonifacius City Councilor and short lived US Senate candidate Joe Arwood was not able to seal the deal against Greenfield Mayor Jerry Hertaus. They will likely face each other in an August primary.
♣ Senator Al DeKruif now says he won’t run against apostate Senator Julie Rosen in the new Senate district 23.
“I stand proudly with Republican activists who believe elected officials must stick true to our conservative principles … Unfortunately, this legislative session Republicans shied away from putting the Freedom-to-Work amendment on the ballot, and some Republicans chose to support the plan for the Vikings stadium, which was not in the best interest of taxpayers of Minnesota.”
Now I’m confused, those all seem like reasons to run.
♣ John Kline is sending out fundraising emails for his race this year that don’t sound anything like those he’s sent out in the past, it sounds like he might actually have to *gasp*, campaign this year! Oh noes!
As Joe says, stop by Mike Obermueller’s ActBlue page to help him out.
♣ Eagan Mayor Mike Maguire has decided against starting a civil war in Senate district 51 after losing his challenge of the endorsement results. While I’m no fan of the endorsement process, this is certainly a better outcome than an acrimonious primary battle where both sides supporters feel somehow cheated.
If Mike Maquire wanted to run in a primary, he should have just said so instead of trying to play this stupid “I’ll abide by the endorsement, as long as it goes my way,” game.
I’d like it if more candidates did what Mark Dayton did and declare right from the start that they won’t participate in the stupid endorsement process and will instead participate in the actual primary election, where actual voters get to cast actual votes, just like an actual election.
But if Maguire had done that DFLers in SD51 would probably have let Ole Savior speak at their district convention instead of him. I mean, that’s the protocol right?
This actually happened. Seriously.
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