Mike apparently has skeltons in his closet. I’m not sure what they are, no one is telling (I know some people who know these things), but its felt that when they come out, that dog won’t hunt. Those people feel Franken’s been a public political figure for so long that his skeltons have been dug up, exposed, and he is still viable.
But I think Ceresi is still running, vote for him in the primary if you like him.
I’m not sure why I would want to get into a debate about how insular Pittsburgh is when I never advanced the proposition that Pittsburgh or Minnesota was any more or less insular than anywhere else. I’m just dealing with the dubious proposition advanced by the OP.
Take a moment to fully understand and grasp that last sentence before continuing along this line, please. I’ll repeat for you - I don’t believe that Minnesotans are especially insular. One Minnesotan appears to.
I will say that people here seem perfectly happy to accept me as a Pittsburgher, even though my family moved away when I was five, and I’ve only been back here a little over a decade.
I can also say that what we don’t like around here is when our Senator moves away in the midst of serving as our representative!
I’m with you on that one. I’ve spent more of my life (19 years vs. 25 years, with all but three in the area I now live) away from that town, and only recently began considering myself as someone who isn’t “from” Pittsburgh. It doesn’t help that my entire family still lives there (my dad in the same friggin’ house for 44 years).
Gotta nip this sort of thing in the bud, or Northern college kids will be agitating all over the place, registering Methodists to vote and upsetting the Minnesota way of life.
Gopher-nation today, Gopher-nation tomorrow, Gopher-nation forever!
KSTP News ran this as the lead story on the news last night. Of course they dolled the story up to make it a case of Hollywood liberals taking over MN. Anyone around these parts knows that KSTP is just Stanley Hubbard’s Democrat-bashing appliance, however.
Fact is, this race is one of the key races in the country. Both Coleman and Franken are going to pull in huge amounts of outside cash. Right now Coleman has about twice as much money as Franken which is not surprising for a Republican incumbent, but Franken is raising so much money that Coleman may not be able to count on the big spending advantage Republicans so often enjoy. He has been hammering away at Franken for being non-Minnesotan, but it comes off as laughable with his thick accent.
I’ll tell you what. I’ll contribute to Franken so there will be one more Minnesotan in his camp.
Ah, take your fucking Lutherans, and your fucking Lutefisk, and your Lutefucking hockey players and go back to your ice fishing and jello molds.
Who thinks you’re rubes?
You have a cite for that?
In the article I linked to, it said they were about even. The difference being that 82% came from out of state for Franken.
Mmm, jello. With shaved carrots.
I just made some tuna fish hotdish and some lemon bars for the kids. I like the grub up here ok. Iit’s a little bland for a transplanted Louisianan like me* but all in all, hotdish and bars is good comfort food. The jello salads, though…[shudder]. Jello should never have anything suspended in it – especially not shredded carrots.
Why is your state so much more special than the other 49?
Don’t get me wrong, I do support local Senate representation. I didn’t vote for Hillary in 2000 and I’m pretty sure I also voted third-party last year. I didn’t like it when Liddy Dole moved back to North Carolina to run for the Senate there, I don’t like Franken’s idea either. (And the precedent for this goes much farther back.) But Senators are very clearly national officials, so it’s not wrong for “outsiders” to get involved.
BTW, when is Minnesota’s primary?
Candidate A receives $536K from in-state supporters. Candidate B receives $700K from in-state supporters. Which candidate has more support in-state?
If you chose Candidate B, congratulations: you can count.
Of course, Candidate B is Al Franken. Let’s go on back to the article you linked:
$3.3 million - (more than) $2.5 million = (more than) $700K
$735K * 0.73 = $536.
Granted, the comparison isn’t exact, since they give actual numbers for Franken’s money, and only a figure for Ciresi’s donors. But, even using the donors figure for Franken, he still comes out with more in-state support. Note that, because it skews that way, it means that the average donation from in-state donors is greater than the average from out-of-state. Given that he’s getting some pretty hefty donations from entertainment business buddies, I’d take that to mean that he’s probably got strong political support in Minn, balanced with a few celebrities and a whole bunch of people who gave him $10 because they think it’s funny that a comedian is running for office out of state. Unfortunately, we aren’t given similar figures for the other candidates to compare.
Compared to the Republican in the race, both Franken and Ciresi fall short on in-state money. But, then, it’s still a divided race on the Democrat side. Combined, they have… about the same amount of in-state support as Coleman.
Coleman got beat this quarter, but he has been raising money for this race for a long time.
By that standard many of our troops dying in Iraq aren’t Minnesotans either. They grow up here, finish high school, go into the service, ship out, get blown up in Iraq. Spent their whole adult lives outside of Minnesota.
A pretty extreme example, but I know I considered myself a Minnesotan when I left High school and if I had gone to Harvard and gone into a career that took me elsewhere I still would be one.
You were correct up to here, then it starts to get a little fuzzy when you say:
How long were you gone? What did you do there? Where did you go? Did you become known for being a (non-Minnesotan), like, say, an actor in New York?
Did you develop any distinctly non-Minnesotan attributes? (ex: Loud, brash, in-your-face, impolite, discourteous, and anything other than being self-effacing-yet-quite-comfortable(but not cocky)-in -the-knowledge-that-we(meaning us TRUE MINNESOTANS)-really-are-all-above-average-but-are-much-too-polite-to-wave-it-in-anyone’s-face-except-in-conditions-like-this,-and-even-so-only-very-rarely?)
Huh?
Ciresi made a name for himself when his law firm sued the tobacco companies years ago. He now has more money than God and has been running unsuccessfully for public office ever since. I find it shameless ego-stroking.
First he gets the money.
Then he gets the power.
Then he gets the women.
He’s Scarface, that’s who he is.
Wow, I must be really naive. 82% of Franken’s contributions are coming from out of state? I had no idea this was even allowed. Yeah, that seems pretty sleazy. What the hell ever happened to campaign finance reform?
As a life long Minnesotan, I couldn’t pick Ciresi out of a lineup. I could pick Al Franken out though.
Last cycle I donated money to politicians from Montana, Ohio, Texas, Missouri, and of course, Minnesota.
What’s sleazy about it?
You kiddin’? Just look at the guy, greed and lust drip from his very pores!
People seem to think so, between the general downturn in the GOP’s fortunes nationally and Governor Fletcher’s upcoming spanking in the election this fall. Fletcher was pretty much McConnell’s kept boy, so it will be hard for him to avoid the blowback from Fletcher’s implosion. Mitch is the Garfield of Washington fatcats, and if the anti-GOP mood is right the Dems might finally be able to make people see that.
I think it’s a tough road, mostly for the reasons you mention. There’s no obvious Dem candidate, at least not since Ben Chandler decided against running. Anyone with much of a chance would be better of waiting until Jim Bunning totters off for pancakes one morning and doesn’t come back so they can run for his seat. A lot depends on the state Democratic leadership pulling its collective head out of its ass, which I think it actually might do.
If the planets line up just right, it could happen. I wouldn’t bet the farm, though.
Gee, I don’t know. The fact that non-residents from elsewhere are trying to influence another state’s local election, maybe?
I know who’s contributing to his campaign. Those douchebags who make picante sauce in New York City.