by Tony Petrangelo

Jun 8, 2014, 10:00 AM

The Weekly Wrap 6-8

The filing deadline has now passed and I will be posting a list of all the primary races, with analysis, next week. Until then, the Wrap™ will keep you company on this beautiful weekend day.

♣ Former DFL state legislator Andy Dawkins announced that he will be running for Attorney General under the Green Party’s banner in the fall election.

Former legislator and St. Paul mayoral candidate Andy Dawkins is expected to announce on Tuesday that he will run as a Green Party candidate for attorney general.

Dawkins, a longtime DFLer and longtime spouse of former DFL state senator and Public Utilities Commission chair Ellen Anderson, said the decision to get back into campaign mode has been influenced by several factors:

Those factors are 1) his wife, Ellen Anderson, no longer works in the Dayton administration, 2) he’s retired and an empty nester and 3) he wants to get the Green party major party status by getting 5% of the vote.

Also, he’s a bit delusional:

Deep down, Dawkins has an even higher target. “We can win this thing,’’ he says.

I suppose if you’re going to run a campaign you need to at least be deluded enough to think you can win, so maybe that’s a feature, not a bug.

If this is a thing you want to do, get major party status for the Greens, the Attorney Generals race is probably the one that you can feel the best about running in if you would still prefer the DFLer to win over the Republican (which I assume Dawkins does, but who knows). In the last three elections for Attorney General in the state the DFL candidate has received between 54% and 52% of the vote, while the Republican has received between 40% and 41%.

The margin’s of victory for the DFL range from 11 points to 14 points.

For Secretary of State the DFL’s percent of the vote has been between 44% and 49% and the Republicans share has been between 47% and 44%. In 2002 the Republican candidate, one Mary Kiffmeyer, actually won, something that GOP hasn’t done in an Attorney Generals race since Douglas Head won a four year term in 1966.

State Auditor has a similar recent past to that of the Secretary of State races, in 2002 the GOPer, Pat Anderson, won the race for Auditor 44%-43%. And while the DFL has won the Auditors race in the last two elections the margins have been 10% and 1%.

In the last three election cycles the DFLs smallest margin of victory in an Attorney Generals race is still larger than their largest margin of victory in either of the other two constitutional offices, Secretary of State and Auditor. This is why the Greens picked this race to run in, because it’s the one race where they can conceivably get their 5% and still not affect the outcome.

If you’re wondering why the Green party would care who won if it wasn’t their candidate, it’s because they will likely be targeting DFLers to vote for their candidate, and if voting for the Green causes the Republican candidate to win, there will likely be much less willingness for DFLers to vote Green again in the future.

♣ The filing deadline for people to run for office in Minnesota this year has now passed, so we know who is in and who is out. One person who was in but has not filed, so is now out, is Phil Krinkie who was running for the sixth congressional district seat being vacated by Michele Bachmann.

It has been a spirited contest and I greatly appreciate all of the support and encouragement I have received from family, friends and conservatives across the country.

But given the momentum of the Republican endorsement process, matched with the realities of a three-way primary, it has become clear that the responsible decision is to exit the contest and return my focus to advancing the conservative agenda in Minnesota.

Given that most of his fundraising had come from himself, and the fact that Tom Emmer seems to have this race totally locked down, this isn’t that surprising of a move. Not dropping out of the race is Anoka County Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah.

♣ Ads!

Stewart Mills is out with another spot, this one touting his “hunting camp doctrine,” which, if you turn it on its head means that as long as you don’t complain about things, you don’t have to do anything about them. Or something. I don’t hunt, so maybe I’m just missing what would otherwise be a very sage point, but somehow I doubt it.

♣ The Mining Industry Times (actually called the Mesabi Daily News, but whatever) said this in regards to Rebecca Otto:

…she’s sparked a major uprising in the traditional DFL Iron Range stronghold. A lot of DFLers in the region are quite upset — and for very good reason — over her anti-copper/nickel/precious metals position.

This is total BS. Recently there was a thing called the DFL convention. It was held in Duluth, very close to “the traditional DFL Iron Range stronghold.” And at that convention, in Duluth, near “the traditional DFL Iron Range stronghold” Rebecca Otto was endorsed by acclimation. There was no one, not a single person, who bothered to object to her endorsement.

There are no doubt people on the Iron Range who don’t like Otto’s Executive Council vote against mining exploration, but they are few, not DFLers, and not well organized. If the Mining Industry Times’ story was correct, there would have been a fight over Otto’s endorsement at the DFL convention. But there wasn’t. Not only that, the pro-mining DFLers and the anti-mining DFLers came together to oppose the platform resolution about mining.

The Mining Industry Times is just trolling, not at all unexpected behavior from a rag whose sole purpose is to reprint press releases from the mining industry about how awesome mining is.