Greater Minnesota

Red Lake has a knack for mattering in recount-tight races

Braublog notes that the purgers at President Bush’s U.S. Department of Justice may have been onto something when they targeted former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger for working to advance voting rights for Native Americans; turnout continues to climb to new heights at the Red Lake Indian Reservation, running 95 percent in favor of Democrat Al [...]

MnIndy video: Karl Rove’s ‘funny stamps,’ meet Greg Rhodes’ ‘nature photographs’

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried a quizzical interview by Deborah Solomon with President George W. Bush’s former senior adviser, Karl Rove. Across 21 questions, Rove and Solomon covered a lot of political and even emotional territory, with an often-combative Rove laying claim to having had his feelings hurt by Solomon on an earlier occasion.
The highlight, though, [...]

MnIndy video: Franken sues for voters’ names on rejected absentee ballots

The Al Franken for Senate campaign announced today it is suing Ramsey County in hopes that a favorable court ruling will compel all Minnesota counties to release the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in last week’s election. Attorney Marc Elias said the campaign may present cases of wrongly rejected absentee ballots to the newly-formed canvassing board that will oversee the recount in the U.S. Senate race between Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Video and more after the jump.

University of Minnesota imposes hiring freeze

The U of M puts the brakes on hiring.

On an afternoon already ruined by the worst kind of freezing sleet, University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks announced a system-wide hiring freeze for all non-essential positions. Bruininks told university faculty and staff by e-mail that the “pause” in hiring is in anticipation of poor state budget [...]

Liveblog: Bachmann/Tinklenberg debate

Today at 11 am MPR’s Midday is broadcasting the final candidates’ debate between Republican Michele Bachmann and Democrat El Tinklenberg for Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District seat. MnIndy’s Andy Birkey and Steve Perry are liveblogging the event here.

Be careful where you ‘video your vote’ on Tuesday

Having Election Day jitters? Problems with touch-screen voting have already been reported in West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas, and a video (after the jump) of an election official in West Virginia demonstrating a machine that just so happens to be seriously malfunctioning and flipping votes while he’s trying to showcase its validity is circling the web today. Now voters want to take action by documenting their own experiences at the voter booth, and a joint project with PBS and YouTube called “Video Your Vote” is starting to gain serious attention.

But can you film at the polls here in Minnesota? Sort of.

‘Nonsense’: New anti-Bachmann mailers quote Colin Powell

A new mailer sent out by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota accuses Republicans Michele Bachmann and Norm Coleman of being distracted from the work of “finding solutions to the most difficult economic crisis facing America since the Great Depression.” But Bachmann gets the sharpest jab: Instead of dealing with the financial meltdown she’s “questioning people’s patriotism.” The flyer prominently features a quote and image of Gen. Colin Powell who, referring to Bachmann’s infamous comments on “Hardball,” said, “We have got to stop this kind of nonsense and remember that our great strength is in our unity and our diversity.”

As newspapers endorse for Congress, top dailies tap Coleman — sans issues

Newspaper election endorsements are out — some packing a wallop as bracing as a stiff winter wind in October, others playing it as safe as pre-Halloween trick-or-treating at a local strip mall. Here’s a roundup of candidate preferences for the U.S. Senate and House that Minnesota papers have so far put in print. The recession sees the major dailies’ editorialists cutting back on costly opinions — either picking favorites without naming the issues they like them for, as both the PiPress and Star Tribune have done in the U.S. Senate race, or beating a wholesale retreat from making a pick at all, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press has done in the presidential contest.

Electoral “tsunami”: Ramstad says GOP is “looking at a disaster in November”

“We’re looking at a disaster in November… I can only conclude it’s going to be a tsunami.” So says retiring GOP Rep. Jim Ramstad at the conservative National Review Online today. But what must the Republicans do to rebuild should such a trouncing occur Nov. 4? NRO’s Sean J. Miller suggests a move, Ramstad-style, to the center, where social conservatism takes a back seat to economics. But Ramstad’s call for the GOP to “get away from the addiction to base politics” could be construed as fodder in the race to replace him in the 3rd Congressional District. There, former Republican Ashwin Madia is facing off with GOPer Erik Paulsen, who as a state legislator has consistently earned high marks from ultra-conservative groups like the Minnesota Family Council and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life.

MnIndy video: The Wellstone Memorial and Historic Site

Last week, on a trip to northern Minnesota, I shot this two-minute video of a visit to the Wellstone Memorial and Historic Site outside Eveleth, and today, on the sixth anniversary of the crash that took the lives of Paul Wellstone and six others, we present it.