A training video by the National Association of Personnel Services, a trade organization for employment recruiters, asks a group of recruiters how many believe the resumes they handle contain false statements. Everyone raised their hands.

State Sen. Julianne Ortman, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, is far from alone when it comes to statements on her website and Facebook page that pad some of her accomplishments.

“The practice of boosting one’s resume is pretty rampant and widespread,” said long-time executive recruiter Dave Dodge of Headwaters Search, a personnel consulting service. “Background checks and resume checks are much more stringent these days than they used to be, [but] it’s not going to catch everything that people might put on a resume.”

Ortman’s website states that she—in partnership with her husband, Ray, an attorney—argued “several very high profile and ground-breaking cases in state and federal court, and in the United States Supreme Court.”

Her Facebook page implies she had direct involvement in the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, stating she “was one of many from across the nation who argued in the Supreme Court that the plan violated the limits of the Commerce Clause; ultimately the Court agreed, but upheld the mandates in Obamacare as a constitutional use of Congress’s power to tax.”

Brodkorb checks claims

Michael Brodkorb, a political consultant respected for his skills in opposition research, says he checked the Ortman claims in response to a media inquiry.

According to Brodkorb, an official with the U.S. Supreme Court says Ortrman has never been admitted to the high court bar and has never argued a case before the justices.

As for the Ortman’s statement about her role in opposing the Affordable Care Act, Brodkorb says Ortman was in session at the Minnesota Legislature in March, 2012, when the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing the arguments. She was, he acknowledged, a signer to an amicus brief, as was state representative and GOP candidate for governor Kurt Zellers.

Ortman’s campaign manager, Andy Parrish, maintains the resume claims are accurate, that a brief is part of a Supreme Court case and that Ortman’s husband did argue before the justices as part of a legal team with a firm where he once worked.

Gray area

Tangential involvement in a project can be a resume gray area, said Dodge. “It’s inherent in anybody’s work that it’s not 100 percent [theirs],” he said. “We encourage people to say what were the results of those facts you put down.”

Few resumes contain outright lies, according to Dodge’s experience, although he did recount a job search for a client who held a position with Boeing managing aerospace engineers. A background check revealed no record of the degrees from the schools the client claimed he attended. “It would lead you to believe he had falsified all that information, and yet he was working to help build the planes that you and I fly in,” Dodge said.

Ortman’s resume inflation doesn’t affect life and death situations. In fact, stretching claims as a political candidate isn’t even a violation of campaign laws.

But, Brodkorb wondered, why should Ortman pad her resume at all? Her resume is respectable to begin with, he said, adding: “There’s no need or necessity to manufacture legal work when the legal work she’s done was respectable and her political resume is incredibly qualified.”

Opposition researchers are often used in high-profile campaigns, looking for claims that raise red flags.

Brodkorb, for example, was part of the Republican team that researched Mark Dayton in the 2010 governor’s race. During the campaign, Dayton made frequent references to his experiences as a public school teacher in New York City, statements that drew the attention of GOP researchers. “Completely accurate,” he said. “We got records from the New York public schools. You’re just pulling independent verification of facts. It’s not that you doubt or disbelieve, it’s a matter of building a documented case file.”

Ortman’s claims could make her vulnerable to her opponents for the Republican endorsement and nomination—Mike McFadden and Jim Abeler—or ultimately to Sen. Al Franken.

“It can really trip you up,” Brodkorb said. “The smartest the thing the campaign could do is take it down, rework it and put it back up.”

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty is a acting like he's on the campaign trail again with a recent surge of videos, media interviews and Twitter posts.

But Pawlenty isn't selling himself. As president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable — an association for banks, insurers and credit companies — he's working on a rebranding of the association prior to a new era of  financial regulation that's expected following the selection of a new chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

"We understand the Fed will engage in more regulation," he told me Thursday. "But our members want these regulations to be common-sense, without strangulation of capital investment."

Pawlenty recognizes his member companies will face skeptics in their request for regulatory leniency. As a GOP presidential candidate, Pawlenty himself decried the excesses of Wall Street. He maintains he holds that view today.

"I still believe there is no such thing as ‘too big to fail.’ There was an era of bad judgment, including in companies outside of Wall Street," he said. "We need to regain that trust, and we are doing so."

Pawlenty said the FSR has no official position on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's replacement. President Obama is expected to announce a new Fed chair this fall. "Some of our members like [Fed vice chair] Janet Yellen, some like [former Secretary of the Treasury] Larry Summers," he said. "We won't weigh in beforehand."

The FSR member list includes what Pawlenty calls a "wide swath" of financial companies, including those involved in asset management, risk management (specifically cyber security), lending and leasing and credit services.  Rebranding the group, according to Pawlenty, will aim at "boiling down" the core of membership to better communicate to a primary audience of lawmakers, regulators, policymakers and academics.

FSR is also reorganizing as Pawlenty completes 10 months on the job. On Thursday, he named Minnesota native Eric Hoplin the group's executive director. Hoplin, originally from Detroit Lakes, has an extensive business background and a long association with Pawlenty, for whom he volunteered on several campaigns.

But there's no political campaign in Pawlenty's future. "I've been down that path," he said. “It was a great experience. But now I'm concentrating on this job."

The University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs is sponsoring what would seem a must-attend event at the Minnesota State Fair for the four Republican candidates for governor — but it will be minus one voice.

Scott Honour has a scheduling conflict for the noon Sunday event, billed as a “Conversation with Republican Candidates for Governor.” The discussion will be moderated by Larry Jacobs, director of the U of the M political studies department.

Valentina Weis, deputy campaign manager, said that Honour will have an independent booth at the fair and that the campaign is looking for volunteers to help staff the operation.

State Rep. Kurt Zellers, state Sen. Dave Thompson, and Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson have confirmed they will attend the event.

Like Honour, Johnson has a booth at the fair.  Johnson spokesman Greg Peppin says Johnson will be at the booth on Underwood Avenue on Friday and Sunday, and still-to-be-determined times the second week of the fair.

Thompson will use the Republican Senate booth as a base of operations and says he’ll be there both weekends of the fair.

Zellers’ spokesman, Noah Rouen, says the candidate will be on hand at the state Republican Party booth both Fridays of the fair.

A Hibbing, Minn., teacher has joined the race for the Republican endorsement for governor.

Robert Farnsworth announced in a news release that he is running because “I have three children under the age of five. Under the current leadership, we are going to leave them a state that provides less opportunity than the Minnesota that I grew up in. We can truly reform education to teach kids what they will actually use and have them ready for life.”

Farnsworth said former U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack, a Republican from the 8th District, was an inspiration to his candidacy. “As a former union member, he was able to bring conservative union members into the Republican coalition,” Farnsworth said.

Farnsworth, a special education teacher in the Hibbing school district, said he plans to have a booth at the State Fair, where he wants to “meet and talk to as many Minnesotans as possible.”

Farnsworth registered his campaign committee Monday with the state Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.

Gov. Mark Dayton should be prepared for a bill to repeal the new warehousing tax during the upcoming special legislative session.

Republican candidate for governor and state Rep. Kurt Zellers promised the bill during Sunday’s candidate forum at the Minnesota State Fair.

Zellers, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson and state Sen. Dave Thompson, three of the five candidates who appeared at the University of Minnesota event, all said they intend to tackle Dayton on his business record.

“This governor demonstrates his lack of understanding of how business works,” Thompson replied to a question from Larry Jacobs, U of M political science professor who moderated the event.

“Governor Dayton’s job strategy is singular,” said Johnson. “It provides subsidies to businesses to try to lure them here…. but we have created such an uninviting environment for people to start or expand a business here, that’s all he’s got left.”

Only three of the announced GOP candidates for governor made it to the stage on Dan Patch Avenue. Scott Honour declined, citing a scheduling conflict. The newest candidate, Hibbing schoolteacher Rob Farnsworth, listened but did not speak. He said he didn’t register for the event in time to participate.

Small crowd

Neither Honour nor Farnsworth missed much of an opportunity to persuade voters. It appeared that aside from campaign volunteers, fewer than a dozen people showed up to listen to the candidates on a steamy Sunday afternoon.

“Sounds political to me,” remarked one flushed fairgoer who walked on by.

But the candidates soldiered on, agreeing that the state’s health-care exchange should be dismantled—while acknowledging the unlikelihood of that—and pushing aside the issues of abortion and gay marriage as not relevant to their campaigns.

In responses to the questions of whether factions within the Republican Party led to losses in 2012 and the value of the party endorsement, all three concluded it was time for the GOP to try to achieve a bigger political tent.

“I think the key to us winning an election is that we don’t spend too much time talking to ourselves. And that’s what the endorsement process, unfortunately, engenders,” said Johnson who, like Thompson, said he will abide by the endorsement and not challenge the winner in a primary.

Zellers and the primary

Zellers explained why he intends to seek the endorsement, but will go on to a primary if necessary. “One of it is a function of whether the party has the resources to help us out. It’s no great secret that we are substantially and woefully in debt,” he said. “I actually don’t know if we will have an endorsement.”

Thompson said: “Let’s be clear. To be the governor of this state you have to speak to all Minnesotans; and certainly to be a credible candidate for the Republican Party, you have to speak to all Republicans during that process.

“I’m a believer that new blood in a political party, disagreements within the party, different perspectives within the party—that’s all good,” he added.

Zellers recounted his own experience with tent stretching. “After the last election, some Republicans, longtime Republicans, endorsed Tom Horner—the party kicked them out,” he said. “A week after that, I called some of the people to say you’re welcome in the House Republican Party if the Minnesota Republican Party doesn’t want you.”

Johnson added: “There are still moderate Republicans out there.We need them to win elections.”

MinnPost file photo by Bill KelleyJohn Gilmore

"I just broke the top 10 in political books on Amazon,” John Gilmore, co-author of the just-released and insider depiction of Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, told me today.

The book, “Bachmannistan: Behind the Lines,” was written with Peter Waldron, a consultant who worked with the Bachmann campaign in Iowa to win over evangelical voters during the Iowa caucuses in January, 2012. It breaks no new ground, and Waldron has given numerous interviews, to MinnPost and other news organizations, about concerns he had during the campaign.

But Gilmore says he hopes the book will serve as a primer on how the campaign disintegrated following missteps by the candidate and consultants who, he says, were more interested in hefty fees than winning.

“There was no reason in the world she should not have been one of the top three in the Iowa caucus,” he says. “She lost the evangelical vote to a Roman Catholic [Rick Santorum].”

James Pollack, finance chairman for the Bachmann for President campaign, called the book “a reprehensible piece of fiction.”

In statement, Pollack said:

“This former staffer [Peter Waldron] with an ax to grind has been peddling these same reckless falsehoods, half-truths, and innuendos for well over a year in his attempt to maliciously smear Congresswoman Bachmann's name. Doing this to someone of her immense character is despicable. Whether his motivation is an attempt to selfishly get 15 minutes of fame, or reap an economic benefit on this e-book, it is unconscionable.  

“Congresswoman Bachmann always complied with all laws and regulations during her Presidential Campaign. To the extent this e-book claims otherwise, it lacks credibility, and is thus a reprehensible piece of fiction." 

The book not only reveals no surprises, it contains no scandals, although Gilmore says he was privy to information that he described as “salacious.” He says he chose not publish the information  “because I was a decent human being.”

Gilmore, a lawyer, says he became interested in working on a Bachmann book through his friendship with Andy Parrish, Bachmann’s former chief of staff and campaign aide, who later became his legal client when the Office of Congressional Ethics interviewed Parrish about the campaign’s finances.

Parrish backed out of working with him the book, for reasons that Gilmore says he cannot specify, so he turned to Waldron, who had been contemplating writing about his campaign experiences. Parrish, Gilmore says, supplied about 10 percent of the information in the book and Waldron, the rest.

“Peter Waldron gave me the iceberg below the water line,” he says.

The book reveals that Gilmore is not a Bachmann fan. “Bachmann’s office would become legendary for its lousy constituent services,” he writes.

“Is it possible to be AWOL in your own campaign? Michele Bachmann for President would suggest as much,” is a line from Gilmore’s description of Bachmann’s over-dependence on her consultants, “the grasping class.”

While Waldron, in interviews, has suggested that Bachmann was a victim of poor choices, manipulation and plain exhaustion, the book portrays her as a diva. “I think at some point she believed her handlers’ hype that she needed to look presidential and that was the gloss that made her into a diva,” he says. “Being your own worst enemy doesn’t make you a victim.”

The book is available in an e-edition through Amazon.

MinnPost file photo by Brian HallidayPat Shortridge

The Republican Party has become a “hunt for heretics,” a game for people playing, “I’m the most conservative,” a breeder of “craziest sound bites.”

The author of those quotes is not Arne Carlson or Wheelock Whitney.  It’s former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party Pat Shortridge, the former Enron lobbyist who’s worked for Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and manages Scott Honour’s campaign for Minnesota governor.   

When Shortridge took on the chairmanship of the Minnesota Republican Party in January, 2012, his main task was whittling down the party’s $2 million debt.  But he also expressed hope that the party could rebuild through the strength of its ideas and principles. When he left in March of this year, the debt was pared but Republicans had lost a governorship and control of the Legislature. Republicans were branded as the party of no: no gay marriage, no expansion of voting rights, no unions, no taxes and, most harmfully, no new ideas.

Today, in additional to political clients, Shortridge is working for his old boss, former U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy at George Washington University, establishing an executive education program.

He sat down with MinnPost and gave some blunt advice to conservatives and Republicans. Here are excerpts from that interview:

MinnPost: What did you learn about Republicans from your experience as party chair?

Pat Shortridge: I think my main takeaway [is that] Republicans have to get to being solutions oriented, focused on solving problems that people face. Not with more government, not with higher taxes, not with more control in St. Paul and Washington, D.C., but in actually talking about how market-based ideas, based on empowering individuals, how they actually work.

We’ve sort of gone away from actually trying to persuade people. Here’s how our ideas, here’s how our solutions are going to make your life better—easier to buy a house, find a job, save your money, educate your kids, buy health care, all the things people do. How are we going to make it easier and how is the other side going to make it harder?  

If we don’t get back to being a solutions-oriented party that is addressing the day-to-date concerns of most Minnesotans and most Americans, we’re not going to be successful.   

MP: What caused the Republican Party to drift into negative focused campaigns?

P.S.: I think it’s easier to just say no. It takes less work. Look, Ronald Reagan was a successful president not because everyone agreed with him but because he could go out and convince the country to beat Washington, D.C. He went out there and said: “Look.  Here’s what I campaigned on, here’s what I ran on, here's what I'm trying to do it, and yet these guys are standing in my way.” And he did that repeatedly. And he did it with great success and more times than not got his way from Congress, especially in passing his economic plan, passing his budget, passing a tax plan, passing the defense build up that ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union. He went out and did the hard work of persuading.

It’s much easier, I’ve noticed, for people on our side to just say no. Or to just say I'm against this or “I'm going to pretend like I'm the most conservative. I want to set up a game.” You see this going on right now in Washington with this whole defund-it thing with Obamacare. It’s a game of a bunch people playing, “I'm the most conservative.” It’s not a serious effort to actually stop Obamacare. If you really wanted to stop Obama care right now on a national basis, you’d be out trying to find six or eight Democratic votes in the Senate so you could actually put a bill on Barack Obama’s desk and actually make this more than an academic exercise.

Some of these things are great for people who are doing direct-mail fundraising. They're great for people who want to see [to] sort of establish their bona fides, but it's not great if you're actually trying to do things that are going to save the country and save Minnesota from decline.

MP: Is this a problem caused by the influence of the Tea Party?

P.S.: I don't think it's necessarily the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party movement is a collection of people who’d not been involved in politics, people who really were fed up with both parties, who really didn't see much difference, who got fed up and frustrated at some of the stuff that happened. The stimulus and Obamacare in 2009, you know, really energized and motivated them. The Tea Party, I’d say they’re more engaged activated citizens. They’re not trying to become a political party. They’re an important part of the conservative coalition or the Republican coalition. The Tea Party, like other parts of the Republican coalition, they’re looking for leaders  And, look, if they’re not given a better alternative, they’re going to pick the man or the woman who’s most effective, the most eloquent at saying no.

MP: How do you counter what's happening, for example, to incumbent Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander—senators who have worked for consensus and who are facing primary challenges from activists who don’t think they’re conservative enough?

P.S.: These things aren’t hereditary titles, nobody’s entitled to them. People certainly have an opportunity, and frankly a right and a duty, to run if they think they’re being governed poorly, if they think their senator, their congressman, their governor, their president is not doing a good job.  

I will say, I think the Republican Party, in some respects, and the conservative movement, have taken a very self-destructive approach, where as I describe it, it's the hunt for heretics. It’s almost this game of—if somebody is against us on one issue, we’ve get to kick them out of the party, kick them out of the movement.

It’s Pat Toomey on the gun issue. It's Marco Rubio on immigration. It's, depending on your perspective, Rand Paul on national security stuff. You can go down the line. It's like, look, everybody's gonna have a wart or blemish from your perspective, but, look, these things are coalitions. Political parties are coalitions.  There is no uniformity. We’re not like Europe. We have big coalitions that unify the great big parties, and you can't all of a sudden start weeding people who are good conservatives out the movement because all of a sudden you think they might be bad on one issue. It is this self-destructive personality attack. And, again, it’s the, “I’m-more-conservative-that-you-are” game. It’s incredibly self-defeating for a political movement if you’re trying to accomplish something.

MP: Is there room for a moderate Republican in today’s party?

P.S.: Of course. Sure. You know it's gradations. Some people are moderate on sets of issues. You want as broad a coalition as possible. You want conservative Republicans. You want moderate Republicans.

MP: To win elections?

P.S.: To win elections and to govern. You’ve got to get the votes to pass things.

MP: What frustrated you most during your chairmanship of the party?

P.S.: Lots of things. Sometimes it’s the refusal to see the bigger picture and, again, it’s the notion of coalitions. In 2008 we had a coalition of conservatives  who were so,  quote unquote, principled that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Norm Coleman and they gave us Al Franken by a couple of hundred votes.

In 2010 we had moderates that were so principled that they could not vote for Tom Emmer and they gave us Mark Dayton and basically this whole last legislative session.   

It goes beyond even just being able to work with people but questioning their integrity and willingness to work in good faith. People couldn’t just come to different conclusion.  They had to be somehow morally inferior or, quote, they sold out. It’s going to kill us if everyone’s is so damn sanctimonious that they’re purer than Caesar’s wife and the rest are all just a bunch of people down in the muck.

And I think that’s a very unattractive quality for a political movement, especially one that’s trying to attract new people. Because, you know what, the new people you attract surely are not going to agree with you on 100 out of 100 things. And if they watch how you treat your own—it’s like, wait a minute, that guy agrees with them 95 percent of the time and you treat him like dirt. I agree with them 80 percent of the time, why in God’s name would I want to join that?

You have to be willing to build coalitions to save this country or you’re going to fail. I appreciate people’s passion, I appreciate their intensity, but they have to understand that this isn’t a game. This is about getting some really serious work done. And you have to willing to do it.

You have to be effective. Effective conservatives, that’s my mantra. I want effective conservatives. I do not want people who are the loudest or who can throw out the craziest sound bite or who are on talk radio or Fox News the most. I want people who can actually get things done. And I think many of my brethren on the right—here and around the country—are becoming sort of similarly acclimated. They look around and go, “I don’t recognize this anymore.”  We better get our act together before it’s too late.

MinnPost photo by Brian HallidayMarty Seifert

There was only one unknown in the gubernatorial straw ballot taken at the Minnesota Republican party’s state central committee Saturday in Blaine. How strong a showing would former state Rep. Marty Seifert make as a write-in candidate?

The answer was very strong, a result that seemed to surprise even Seifert himself.

Of the 409 delegates that cast votes, 35 percent voted for Hennepin County commissioner Jeff Johnson, 27 percent voted for state Sen. Dave Thompson, 18 percent voted for Seifert, 7.6 percent voted for state Rep. Kurt Zellers, 6 percent voted for Hibbing school teach Rob Farnsworth, and 4 percent voted for businessman Scott Honour.

Johnson, a national committeeman well known among this small group of activists, was expected to win. Both he and Thompson said they would abide by the endorsement process, so Thompson’s close second was also anticipated.  Honour and Zellers have said they will battle the endorsed candidate in a primary, a big factor in their poor showings.

But Seifert, a candidate for governor in 2010 who lost the Republican endorsement to Tom Emmer, was a write-in. There were no Seifert signs, no Seifert handlers. As a state central committee member, he sat quietly with his Marshall delegation, making no overt attempt to politic.  

“Certainly, I didn’t spend a penny; I don’t have a campaign committee,” he said shortly after the poll was taken.  “It’s very humbling, to be honest, and a bit surprising. I usually think of these things as an organized effort.”

By contrast, front-runner Johnson acknowledged, “I’ve been making calls to Republicans since I got in the race.”

Seifert still has friends and supporters in the inner circle of state GOP activists. And many of those supporters still maintain that had Seifert been the Republican nominee in 2010, he, not Mark Dayton, would be governor today.

Seifert said he would make a decision whether to enter the race by Thanksgiving. He gave a small hint as to where the scale was tipping, at least for now. 

“Is it too late for me?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”

Overshadowed at the state Republican Party’s central committee meeting last weekend was the report on the party’s finances.

Just before the straw poll of delegates that placed Jeff Johnson and Julianne Ortman as early frontrunners for party endorsement for governor and U.S. Senate, GOP treasurer Bron Scherer gave some good news for a change.

The literal bottom line of Scherer's report shows that the party’s debt has shrunk from $1.9 million to $1.28 million. In a statement, Scherer attributed the development to “financial support of both our large and smaller donors as well as cooperation with many RPM vendors in terms of structuring our obligations.” Read: some donors have come back to the fold and vendors were more willing to cut a deal.

Ironically, Scherer credited the return of what is called the “contribution refund program” for an uptick in donations. Republican legislators have opposed the program and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty led the dismantling of the program four years ago.

Scherer expects the state party will have $300,000 in the bank by April of next year, with the possibility that the party will double that amount for use in the 2014 election season.

But the party will still have substantial obligations of the 2010 election cycle on the books. Scherer noted that much of the party’s debt is under a long-term payment plan, meaning getting the debt wiped out is years and several election cycles in the future.

The Jeff Johnson campaign for governor could take it as a compliment.  

Just 48 hours after the Hennepin County commissioner won a straw poll of Republicans at the party’s central committee meeting, Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM), the aggressive DFL-support group, mined social media and found a couple of questionable posts by campaign aide Craig Westover.

The group pulled out two “extremely sexist and offensive remarks” from Facebook posts that Westover had sent almost a year ago and put them on its website with the headline “Meet Jeff Johnson’s Sexist Staffer.”  

Post one, Nov. 16, 2012: “Poor Susan Rice. She’s the first woman in Washington to get in more trouble opening her mouth for a president than Monica Lewinsky.”

Post two, Nov. 18, 2012: “I keep hearing about this fantasy football thing. My idea of fantasy football is where I am the quarterback and Angeline Jolie is the center.”

Westover composed the posts long before he joined the Johnson campaign, in fact, before Johnson had a campaign at all.

Westover did not apologize. “There’s no expectation of privacy on the Internet, there’s also no expectation of not being offended,” he said.  “What I put there is what people volunteer to follow. If they don’t like it, they can un-follow me.”

Opposition research, like searching social media, is usually aimed at candidates, not staff members. Johnson might find some comfort that research so far has turned up little from his past. Furthermore, that Westover is a target suggests Johnson has become enough of a threat in the contest to unseat Mark Dayton that ABM decided to dig for a speck of dirt.

With his new job as executive director of an education group, outgoing Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has muzzled any suggestion he would be Gov. Mark Dayton's new running mate next year.

Rybak announced Wednesday he has taken a post as executive director of Generation Next, a group whose goal is to narrow the racial achievement gap in the state’s K-12 school system.  

But in a brief interview at a business event Monday, Rybak made it clear he has designs on the governor’s office, although he doesn’t plan to get the job running as lieutenant governor. "I certainly would like to run for governor," he said. "But I wouldn't do it that way."

Rybak ran for the DFL endorsement for governor in 2010, which he lost to Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who then lost to Dayton in the primary.

As MinnPost first reported, Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon has suggested she might not be part of the Dayton ticket next year. Her hesitance has produced a guessing game of top political names as possible replacements. DFL party Chair Ken Martin, who would likely be part of a vetting committee, said Prettner Solon is still in, as far as he's concerned.

“At this point we have a lieutenant governor candidate, Yvonne,” Martin said.  “I think the governor made it very clear if Yvonne wants to run again on the ticket, that would great. They are going to sit down and talk before the end of the year.”

As for Rybak’s political future, working for Generation Next will give him ample opportunity to network with power players.  University of Minnesota president Eric Kaler and General Mills Foundation President Kim Nelson are co-chairs of the board that includes prominent education and business leaders.

At a meeting of the Republican Party of Minnesota’s state central committee in October, party leadership promised a new brand and a new attitude.  Implementing that agenda also involves a new location.

Chair Keith Downey said the party is finalizing a lease agreement for new office space outside of the capitol complex.  He told a group of 400 activists: “The goal is to reduce our monthly office costs by 30 percent and very importantly to move out … to an area where the state party will be closer to the people — as a visible and tangible sign that the Republican Party is focused on everyday Minnesotans and immersed in their circumstances.”

The party’s current office occupies 7,340 square feet in a building on 525 Park St. in St. Paul, from where the party was threatened with eviction in 2012 for failing to pay its rent.

Downey would not confirm the location of the new space because the final agreement is still being executed.  But it’s likely to be substantially smaller and technologically much more up to date

The new GOP digs may still not match the relative grandeur of DFL headquarters at 255 Plato Blvd. in St. Paul — a state-of-the art, million-dollar-plus property purchased by the party in 2002.

Downey said the state GOP will announced the new location and be ready to move by the end of the month.

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s chief of staff, David Gaither, took part in a major Capitol Hill lobbying effort in Washington last week to push for immigration-reform legislation.

Gaither is executive director of the International Education Center in Minneapolis, which last year helped 1,000 immigrants from 89 countries develop language and work skills.  Recruited by FWD.US— the Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates pro-immigration reform group — Gaither joined representatives from Cargill, Ecolab, Hormel and several religious organizations and met with Reps. Tim Walz, Erik Paulsen and Collin Peterson.  

“Immigration reform should not be a partisan issue,” Gaither said.  “For moral, legal and business reasons, we need reform.”

He said that Republican Paulsen and Walz, a Democrat, in particular seemed eager to see a bill pass the U.S. House.  The GOP-controlled House plan most likely to pass would not provide a “special” path to citizenship for the country’s estimated 11 million illegal residents.  “That’s the one thing that gives them the most heartburn,” Gaither said.

But Gaither said that Walz, Paulsen and Peterson, a Democrat, appreciated the needs outlined by Minnesota business: modifying the system to allow more highly skilled workers to enter the country and fixing glitches in the “e-verify” system that can misidentify immigrants and countries of origin.

“I work with immigrants every day, and have so for the past six years.  I see what happens at one end of a bad immigration policy,” Gaither said.

He predicted that with the united pressure of business and religious groups, House Republicans will pass reform legislation this session.  “It’s a question of when not if,” he said.

UnileverJames A. Lawrence

A possible Democratic challenger to Third District Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen has surfaced. He is Minneapolis and New York businessman James A. Lawrence.

In a poll conducted by Kalamata Research, a Florida-based company, Lawrence was identified as a Democrat and a former executive with Northwest Airlines and General Mills. The pollster has been calling residents in the Third District with a 10-minute survey that asks general questions about party identification and opinions about President Obama and Congress. Then the poll zeroes in with specific questions about Paulsen and his votes on the government shutdown and budget cuts.

The poll also appears to be testing messages that Lawrence’s team may be considering.

When contacted, Lawrence was cordial but offered only “no comment” on his political future.

Lawrence, 60, holds an impressive resume. He is listed as CEO of Global Investment Banking of Rothschild North America in New York. With business degrees from Yale and Harvard, he served as General Mills’ chief financial officer from 1998 to 2007. Prior to that he held the same post at Northwest Airlines. He was also a partner at Bain and Company, the consulting company where Mitt Romney was CEO.

Lawrence is a member of multiple corporate boards, including Apple, a trustee of the University of Minnesota Foundation, and a member of the board of directors at the Minnesota Orchestra.

Democratic recruiters have said the government shutdown gave them an opportunity to field credible candidates in swing districts like Minnesota’s Third. Lawrence could be that kind of candidate. A preliminary poll would show whether he has a reasonable path to take on Paulsen in 2014.

At a meeting of the Republican Party's State Central Committee last month, party leadership pledged more aggressive outreach to the state’s minority population.

There was tangible proof of that outreach Sunday as Republican businessman Dennis Nguyen, 43, announced his candidacy for the secretary of state, becoming the first Asian-American to run for statewide office in Minnesota.  

Nguyen owns two Minneapolis financial services firms.  Last year, he was part of Gov. Mark Dayton’s trade mission to China.  With his parents, he immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 1975.

Nguyen acknowledged the party’s image problems before a diverse group of supporters, including former speaker of the House Steve Sviggum, state Sen. Dave Senjem and political consultant Peter Hong.

“The America of 2013 is not the America of 1953,” Nguyen said. “ Whether this perception is true or not, too many people today…believe that the Republican party does not represent them or their ideals. I am here to say today that perception is a misconception.”

Nguyen said he supports online voter registration, started by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and the subject of a Republican lawsuit.  But, he said, the website  implementation is problematic.  “I’m for any tool that increases voter participation, [but] I think the current secretary of state should have gone through the legislative process. I would go through the process,” he said.

Nguyen is the first Republican to announce as candidate in next year’s election for secretary of state,  an open office in 2014 with the retirement of Ritchie.

Nguyen may not remain the only Republican in the race.  Former secretary of state and current state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer is considering a candidacy.

On the DFL side, Reps. Debra Hilstrom and Steve Simon have announced their candidacies.

MinnPost photo by Brian HallidayMarty Seifert

Marty Seifert, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010, will give it another try:  He plans to announce Nov. 21 that will seek the GOP endorsement for governor, sources confirm.

Seifert’s entry into the race will make five Republicans — Hennepin County commissioner Jeff Johnson, state Sen. Dave Thompson, state Rep. Kurt Zellers and businessman Scott Honour — who want to unseat DFLer Gov. Mark Dayton in 2014.

In a straw poll last month among GOP activists, Seifert came in third as a write-in candidate.  Johnson won the poll but Seifert carried enough momentum to persuade him to try again for the Republican nomination.

Seifert lost a tight race for endorsement in 2010 to then-state Rep. Tom Emmer, who went on to lose a close contest to Dayton.  Seifert, 41, is a popular former minority leader from Marshall who represents the more moderate, pragmatic wing of the party. He still has a base of support among the activists who will determine which candidate gets endorsed.

The endorsement may hold less power in 2014, however. Zellers and Honour have said they will go to a primary if they do not get the endorsement.  Seifert may well follow that route, given that the doors to a primary are now wide open.

In 2010, prior to the endorsement, Seifert held a significant fundraising advantage over other GOP candidates — and there were several.  He was the only candidate to reach the limit on maximum donations of $2,000 per individual.  The limit in 2014 will be $4,000.

Given his late entry into the race, Seifert will not have that distinction when the first campaign-finance reports are due at the end of the year.

Seifert has some organizational business to finish up before the Nov. 21 announcement, including selecting a general chairman for his campaign. He will weave his political activities around his day job as executive director of the Avera Marshall Foundation, a nonprofit that helps support the Avera health-care system.

The 140,000 Minnesotans who’ve been told their health insurance policies have been discontinued for failing to meet new standards of coverage required by the Affordable Care Act shouldn’t expect relief from the Legislature.

“The law has complicated insurance requirements that are not easily undone,” said Republican state Sen. David Hann, an insurance consultant. “This is like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube.”

That hasn’t stopped some Republican legislators from running an online campaign against MNsure, the state implementation of the ACA. The Minnesota House Republican caucus Facebook page is demanding that Gov. Mark Dayton and state Democrats “fix MNsure & let Minnesotans keep their health insurance plans.”

But that can’t happen, according to GOP state Sen. Dave Thompson and the three other GOP candidates for governor because MNsure is complying with a federal law.

“I don’t know that there is a legislative remedy… other than getting rid of MNsure and putting back in place Medicaid and MinnesotaCare,” Thompson said.  “As far as people who have lost their insurance, unless the federal government is willing to come in and allow people to buy insurance in free markets, it’s going to be nearly impossible for the state to take care of those people who have loss of coverage and now don’t have an affordable alternative.”

News organizations Thursday morning are reporting President Obama will soon propose an administrative fix to the health care law, allowing Americans who are losing their health insurance coverage to retain it.

A controversy over the use of social media has broken out and helped prompt the state GOP to draft social-media best-practices guidelines.

“It is important for Republicans to realize the power and risk of online social media,” said GOP Chair Keith Downey. “They are carrying the Republican message and brand with everything they put out there.”

Downey was referring to a Facebook post by the Chisago County Republican Party that included the line “Pro-choice: Against slavery? Don’t buy one” and another Facebook post by Winona County Republicans depicting a toothless President Obama with a racially stereotyping grin and a doctored photo of Michelle Obama with gold grills. The post —  that  included the headline “If you like your teeth…”— apparently was intended to suggest this is what you would look like if you used Obamacare to get dental insurance.

The posts prompted a Twitter exchange between Downey and DFL Party Chair Ken Martin. Martin tweeted: “Are you serious?Once again the #MNGOP proves that racism is alive and well in their party.This is unacceptable.” DFL Executive Director Corey Day also issued a statement attacking the state GOP for not criticizing the posts more strongly.

Michael Brodkorb's politics.mn has a good summary of the tense back-and-forth over the posts.

The DFL, meanwhile, had its own taste of tastelessness with a post on the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s website that compared gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson to the gruesome serial killer Patrick Bateman in the film “American Psycho.”

“When we realized what the image actually meant we took it down…within 10 minutes,” said ABM Executive Director Carrier Lucking, who noted the DFL Party has had social-media guidelines in place for several years.

Downey said the Republican Party is updating all of its policies —  “We are building this organization from the ground up” — but that its social-media policy is particularly important. “So many of our local groups are new to this and they need to be aware of things they may not have worried about in the past,” he said.

The guidelines offer basic do’s and don’ts for groups that are in the public eye, such as: “Do present intelligent, responsible, trustworthy information. Don’t be obnoxious, petty juvenile, demeaning.”

Downey said the guidelines are still in draft form. He expects them to be approved by the party’s executive committee this week and then sent out to local Republican units.

Marty Seifert, the sixth Republican to announce that he’s running for governor in 2014, holds his own on conservative principles. In response to questions at his formal announcement Thursday, the self-described “practicing Roman Catholic” reiterated his opposition to public funding for late-term abortion, gay marriage, and noted he actively opposed Obamacare as early as 2010.

But Seifert arouses suspicion among some of the GOP activists who will endorse a candidate next spring and who failed to endorse him when he ran for governor in 2010. He is not a purist and he is open to compromise.  

He indicated as much in elaborating on one of the proposals he offered as the cornerstone of his campaign. Seifert wants to stop “any attempt to release dangerous sex offenders into our community,” a response to the furor over a scheduled release of a sex offender that was halted by Gov. Mark Dayton.

When asked how he would accomplish that, he said: “It’s an excellent opportunity for bipartisanship. I’m going to work with [Attorney General] Lori Swanson, who agrees with me and I agree with her.”

The 41-year-old former state House minority leader from Marshall was known as a budget-slasher during his 10 years at the Legislature.   According to Seifert, that budget legislation often passed with DFL votes.  “Sometimes it’s how you put things together and how you explain it,” he said.

Seifert made no promise that he would abide by the party endorsement and not go into a primary battle, but said he does intend to aggressively pursue the GOP endorsement.

Seifert said he believes that electability ultimately will determine who will win the Republican endorsement and primary. “They’re tired of losing statewide elections,” he said of Republicans, and that puts him in stronger position than the other GOP candidates: Jeff Johnson, Dave Thompson, Kurt Zellers, Rob Farnsworth and Scott Honour.

“I have a proven record of having the ability to get non-Republican votes,” he said. “For seven terms I was the top Republican vote-getter in my district.”

And he couldn’t have done that without bipartisan support, Seifert said, ending his formal remarks with “a message to the Republican Party: You cannot win the state of Minnesota unless you have non-Republicans vote for you. At some point we need to understand that we need to ask every Minnesotan to join our cause.”

The state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage has offered a marriage of convenience for DFL state representatives and Minnesotans United for All Families, the group that lobbied for the law’s passage.

Under the Minnesotans United banner, House Speaker Paul Thissen and Majority Leader Erin Murphy have sent emails requesting a donation to the Minnesotans United political action committee to protect DFL legislators for whom “casting that historic vote was not the simplest thing to do.”

Thissen said that a well-funded PAC will ensure that the new law “doesn’t go backward,” an event he considers unlikely. He acknowledged that efforts to protect certain legislators will serve another purpose. “They are in districts where the margins were close [in 2012],” he said. “When you have close races, you want to make sure that folks have all the help they can get.”

One such race took place in House District 48A in Minnetonka and Eden Prairie, now represented by DFL state Rep. Yvonne Selcer. In 2012, the district voted overwhelmingly against a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage. But at the same time, Selcer beat Republican Kirk Stensrud by only 202 votes.

Selcer is planning for a battle in 2014. “It's going to be a difficult race and I am very honored that Minnesotans United has chosen to support me knowing what a difficult reelection campaign I am going to have,” she said.

The Minnesotans United email also names DFL Reps. Barb Yarusso, Will Morgan and Joe Radinovich as “legislators around the state who need our support.”

Not coincidentally, Yarusso, Morgan and Selcer represent suburban districts that Republicans lost in 2012 and which are at the core of the GOP plan to regain the majority in 2014.