Starting a Senate Campaign

I filed to run for the Senate Seat being abandoned by Yvonne Prettner Solon (or is it Yvonne Prettner?) yesterday ten minutes before the closing of the filing period. On my initial candidate information worksheet I listed this blog as my campaign website. As readers know this is where Internet surfers can catch my musings on a multitude of issues. It will not be a practical campaign website.

Yvonne’s decision seems to have caught most people by surprise. A year ago she had announced she wouldn’t run but earlier this year she announced her intent to run again. She has just signed on to run as Mark Dayton’s Lt. Gov running mate a position which is generally a political dead end. There are exceptions such as Rudy Perpich. In going through some old Tribs early yesterday morning that I hadn’t had time to read while I was out of town I saw that she was angling to be Mayor Rybak’s Lt. Governor during the DFL state convention. She must want out of the Senate but not the limelight.

In signing on with the dotty Dayton she has signaled her willingness to defy the DFL endorsement process (good for her) and willingness to tie herself (as she previously did with Sam Solon) to a man with heftier political street cred.

Roger Reinert is simply part of the traditional lineup of ambitious pols on the merry go round hoping to catch the brass ring. Whether he is more than this or not remains to be seen. For my part I could easily be regarded as an eccentric politician who bucks the system and who may be little more than a bull in the china closet. I hope this blog and my other Internet work stands as testament to something more complex and promising than this assessment.

I do not intend to change my blog style. Lincolndemocrat will continue to be as eccentric, issue focused and diaristic as it has always been. Should I be elected to the Senate, something which at this point would be a considerable surprise to most political junkies, it will become a critical feature of my Senate tenure. Since I ran against Mike Jaros 34 years ago I always envisioned writing an insider’s view of St. Paul. There were no blogs back then and I had not yet found my style as a writer. Times have changed and I’ll be up to the task.

This will be a short campaign. The state has altered its campaign schedule making August the primary date. Both Roger and I will be building on our previous political experiences and network of allies.

Because of Minnesota’s open primary Republicans and Independents will be able to vote in our primary although to do so they will have to limit their voting to DFL primary candidates. If they want me on the ballot in the November General election, either to give Republican Rilla Opelt a foil or to give the insulted Duluth voting population a champion they will have to vote in the DFL primary. Frankly for the people of Duluth there aren’t any other very interesting races to weigh in on during the primary so they might as well vote in the Reinert-Welty duel.

I, of course, will be counting on many aggrieved voters to make a special point of voting in August. If I choose to campaign hard Roger can not consider this a done deal. He will have to campaign as relentlessly as he has in the past. That shouldn’t be hard for him.

This race has come out of left field for me. I’m on the doorstep of sixty and enjoying being out of the public eye and grandparenting my two grandsons. On the other hand I’ve pined to be a legislator for thirty years and have soaked up so many strong opinions about what sort of things we as a state and nation ought to be doing to remain strong and healthy that I would enjoy my four years of pushing an agenda in St. Paul.

The Red Plan is not yet quite a done deal and I have no plans to derail it. In any case by January, when I would take office, there will be little I can do to curtail it. If that is to be done it will require other local people to stop it perhaps through the latest legal challenge. As a legislator, however, I will have the heft to force an audit of our District by the state. I suspect the District has cut a lot of corners which have and continue to cause great damage in the classroom.

For my part I intend to introduce legislation to have the state retroactively pay for some portion of the expense. I believe this is justified by the state’s neglect of the laws and traditions which should have ensured a vote on the Red Plan. Roger and Yvonne are part of the gaggle of political insiders who arrogantly and wrongly insisted that the School Board had the power to make such a sweeping bonding decision. This alone justifies my attempt to topple King Roger off the mountain.

Getting payback legislation will be tough but not impossible. The legislature can tip easily off kilter when a group of legislators put their minds to it. I would help introduce legislation which would permit other School Districts to get state funding for school building and include a provision to reimburse Duluth through grandfathering. If we could get 25% of our half billion Red Plan costs reimbursed it would be over one hundred million dollars.

I’ve only known I would be a candidate for twelve hours. Claudia stuck her tongue out at me when she heard me call the City Clerk three hours before the filling closed to ask where I needed to file. We were standing in line at a garden center during my call waiting to buy five bags of cedar mulch. That will give you a good idea how hasty my decision was and how popular it will be with my family. When I got back from the St. Louis County Auditor’s office I spent two hard hours gardening instead of writing a press release.

For the duration of the campaign Votelikeitcounts.com willl act as my effective campaign website. I haven’t done anything with it for months and it now exists primarily to hawk the book I’m writing about the abuse of voters at the hand of our School board. It will be published by the end of the year and I already have many orders in. The campaign will give me a chance to advertise it. I’ll offer it as a premium for contributors, kind of like a t shirt or a campaign button.

I’ll spend a few hours this morning altering the website but it might be tomorrow before I upload the changes that will make it my official campaign website.

About the author