A national momentum toward the acceptance of gay marriage is changing the tactics of Minnesota opponents.

With the imminent introduction of bills legalizing gay marriage, some Republicans are saying privately that they may counter with a call for less-sweeping legislation, such as recognition of civil unions or reciprocal benefits for couples.

Republican legislators are said to be considering the change in tactics, partly from personal conviction and partly as a response to the party’s drubbing for its support of the marriage amendment.

“I think there would be some people, Republicans, interested in some alternatives,” said Tom Prichard, executive director of the Minnesota Family Council, which opposes gay marriage and took part in unsuccessful efforts last year to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as an union between a man and woman.

Prichard said the Family Council would continue to oppose legislation that, in his words, is “marriage by another name.” He said legislation creating the status of civil unions is problematic, “depending on how you define things.”

He contends that a law allowing reciprocal benefits to partners who cannot marry under the law — gay couples and siblings, for example — is a fairer way to address the issue.

“It would cover any two people who cannot marry but who care for each other,” he said.  Prichard described a package of benefits, offered in other states, that protects inheritance, property, and visitation rights.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, eight states, including Wisconsin, give non-married couples the right of reciprocal benefits, to varying degrees.  The most expansive benefits are offered in California and Hawaii.

In Wisconsin, which has a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a male-female union, registered domestic partners have inheritance and survivor protections, family and medical leave, and medical and hospital visitation rights.  

A Republican senior adviser to Minnesotans United for All Families, who prefers to remain unnamed, said a counter-offer of civil unions would be a non-starter for the gay marriage movement, which now sees a sea change in attitude.

National Conference of State LegislaturesState Laws: Civil Unions, Domestic Partnerships and Same-Sex Marriage

“Five or 10 years ago, that would have been extraordinarily welcome,” said the adviser, who nonetheless appreciates the politics.  “The genius of that kind of move would be to allow more moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats to say we support it.”

DFL leadership in the House and Senate and Gov. Mark Dayton had indicated they wanted the gay marriage debate to take place later in the session, after substantial work on the 2014-2015 state budget. 

The go-slow approach, though, has found no traction among gay marriage supporters.

Jake Loesch, communications director for Minnesota United for All Families, the lobbying group for the bill, confirmed that two DFL legislators from Minneapolis — Sen. Scott Dibble and Rep. Karen Clark — will introduce the legislation, which would go to the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and the Civil Law Committee in the House.

Republicans were active on the gay marriage issue Wednesday, with one GOP senator elaborating on his role as a co-author supporting legalization and a  spokesman for the GOP Senate caucus confirming members are considering alternative legislation.

 “I think limited-government conservatives are interested in engaging on this issue,” said Sen. Branden Petersen.

 Peterson elaborated in a statement he released late Wednesday afternoon. “As a strong proponent of limited government, conservative principles and individual liberty, I’m proud to support legislation that would extend the freedom to marry to same-sex couples in the state of Minnesota … I strongly believe that true freedom means freedom for everyone.”

 In an interview, Petersen said the general tone of his fellow caucus members is one of openness. “Not all are supportive of my ideas [but] I think there are people who are starting to come to terms on the issue.”

Senate GOP Communications Director Brad Biers said Minority Leader David Hann had no comment on Petersen’s position but said there was a “casual discussion” of whether Republicans would counter with more limited legislation that would legalize civil unions or domestic partnership status for gay couples.

Petersen said he’s already had “a lot of feedback” from people in his district in Andover. “It spans the whole spectrum. People are vehemently opposed and elated and everything in between,” he said.

In his own case, Petersen said he believes that people in his district are more sophisticated and will consider the principles behind his decision.

MinnPost file photo by Jay Weiner

Pat Anderson

Another prominent Minnesota Republican has endorsed gay marriage, this one a former statewide office-holder.

Pat Anderson, former state auditor and Republican national committeewoman and current chair of the 4th Congressional District Republicans, states her support for same-sex marriage in a just-published opinion article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

She joins Republican Sen. Branden Petersen,who last week announced that he would co-sponsor legislation legalizing gay marriage. Such a measure is to be introduced Wednesday by DFL Sen. Scott Dibble and Rep. Karen Clark.

In an interview with MinnPost, she explained her reasons. Here's an edited transcript of the conversation: 

MinnPost: You not only personally support gay marriage, but you urge other Republicans to join you. Why?

Pat Anderson: As conservatives, our goal should be to encourage marriage, encourage two-parent families. Right now we have a situation where gay couples are bringing up children without protection, and that’s anti- family. The fact is, gay couples have children who should be brought up with two parents.

Small-government conservatives, such as myself, generally believe that government should not be dictating these sorts of issues. We need to recognize that as conservatives our goal should be to limit government.

MP: How many Republicans will be persuaded by this argument?

PA: This is part of the battle between the liberty wing of the party and the traditional conservatives. Half to a third of Republican activists support gay marriage, although the ideal position is that government has no role in marriage.

At a minimum, I know there are many Republicans and Republican legislators who feel the same as I do, but it’s a matter of sticking your neck out.

MP: Why did you stick yours out?

PA: The way the statutes are written is discriminatory based on gender and sexual orientation. We need to recognize that.

There are special benefits to married couples that are not given to gay couples. Government is providing a set of benefits to one group of people, but another group does not qualify.

MP: Still, this is not a subject where Republican activists will agree to disagree.  Can the two sides be brought together?

PA: The gist of my message is that the Republican Party is divided on this issue. There are social conservatives very much opposed to gay marriage. But, there are also a lot of Republican activists who, if you ask them, say they don’t care about the issue. So, my answer is if you don’t care, why are you limiting freedom?

MP: You advocate that Republicans drop opposition to gay marriage. Should this extend to the party’s opposition to abortion?

PA: The abortion issue is certainly a social issue, but it is also about when you believe life begins. Most Republicans are pro-life and frankly, as modern medicine gets better and better, babies are surviving at younger and younger ages. The abortion issue if very different from other issues.

MP: Is there a political argument to be made to support gay marriage?

PA: I think gay marriage is inevitable because of the position of the younger generation, and it’s just a matter of when. And the longer we as party fight the issue, the smaller we are going to become.

Keith Downey

Four months after the November elections, Minnesota Republican activists and leaders are no closer to identifying a strategy to turn around the party’s fortunes, but they are nearer to choosing a new party chair — the person who may determine if the party has a future.

From a one-time field of six candidates who wanted to replace Chair Pat Shortridge, the list has distilled to two front runners: former state Rep. Keith Downey from Edina and Bill Paulsen, a Ron Paul supporter from Rice County who was a delegate to last year’s national Republican convention. Bonn Clayton from Carver County and Don Allen from Minneapolis have also mounted campaigns.

The party's grass-roots political groups known as BPOUs (basic political organizing units) have concluded their local conventions and selected the roughly 340 delegates to the Republican Party’s State Central Committee, which meets April 6 to elect the new chair.

The meeting has the earmarks of another showdown between the party’s “liberty” or libertarian wing and traditional activists, many of whom are staunch social conservatives.

But there are also indications that the factions that formed after the party revealed its $2 million debt two years ago are ready for a pragmatic approach to ensure that Republicans have a hand to play in the 2014 elections. The positioning of Downey and Paulsen, both of whom are running credible statewide campaigns, shows them playing toward a middle.

“They are concerned about the party finances, can the party win elections, and concerns that we have a grass roots party,” said Paulsen of the delegates he has met around the state.

Grass roots and states’ rights

Paulsen pitches directly to the Ron Paul activists who support him. Grass roots and states’ rights are the first points he makes on his campaign website. Paulsen says he and his supporters fear the party will abandon its current caucus system and go to a primary system for electing Republican nominees.

Bill Paulsen

Downey carries his plan for the party on his iPad. He calls for redesign of the state party operations and improving fundraising and messaging. New coalitions are important for Downey, who supports moving state primary elections to June.

“I think people are ready to put November behind them and look forward,” Downey said of last year’s election drubbing of GOP candidates in Minnesota. “People are ready to believe in the party again and have confidence in what we stand for.”

When delegates meet on April 6, Paulsen will have an edge if Ron Paul activists made good on their promise to participate in local caucuses. Still, Downey’s strength is outstate and, as a supporter of Kurt Bills' U.S. Senate candidacy, he does have some support in the liberty wing of the party.

Pat Anderson doesn’t want the job

Pat Anderson , former Republican national committeewoman and former state auditor, wonders why anyone would even want the job. “The party chair’s job is going to be all about raising money,” she said. “And that assumes the party is still functioning.”

Anderson’s name continues to bob up as a possible candidate for the post.  In the conspiracy-theory world of inside political players, some activists suggest Paulsen is a stalking horse who will drop out if Anderson agrees to step in.

Anderson laid the theory to rest. “Zero chance,” she said. “I’ve said no to everybody.”

The fundraising task that Anderson deems nearly insurmountable doesn’t appear to daunt Paulsen or Downey.

“The situation doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Paulsen said. “We have other states that faced this and have been able to turn the situation around.”

And even though their party earned headlines like “The disastrous Minnesota GOP” in Politico and “Minnesota GOP even worse than we thought” from the Daily Kos, Paulsen and Downey say they believe their own brand of leadership will lead to a turnaround.

According to Downey, “There isn’t a single political entity that doesn’t have to reinvent itself.”

A friend of mine, an occasional Republican, was amused by laments from Minnesota Republican activists that the GOP lost the November elections because the party failed to connect with voters via social media. “That’s like saying there was static on the line, so all they need to do is change the color of the telephone,” he said.

What many Republicans fail to grasp is that, during the 2012 election cycle, their message of smaller government and fiscal responsibility was eclipsed by a message of exclusion. In Minnesota, the marriage and voter ID amendments, coupled with ill-timed national comments about “legitimate” rape, indicated that, far from wanting to connect, the Republican Party wanted to shut out certain groups of voters.

In other words, Mark Zuckerberg himself could not have created a social media strategy that would have helped Republicans last November.

If, however, Republicans had approached social media and data mining the way many businesses do today, they might have learned that connecting on line goes both ways. If Republicans had held that virtual conversation, they would have learned a thing or two about the mood of the voters they wanted to attract.                                   

“What we have in the social media phenomena is hundreds of millions of people of interest to political parties, people who are doing what they like to do in an online locale – expressing what they care about, what issues matter to them,” said Ravi Bapna, director of the University of Minnesota’s Social Media and Business Analytics Collaborative (SOBACO), a new program that crosses multiple disciplines.

Data mining

Business people enroll in SOBACO’s executive program to learn not just how to push their message or brand or product to an online audience. First, they learn how to pull -- to find out what their audience is thinking and saying. Call it data-mining 101.

In the SOBACO program, students learn how to use social media, in all its permutations, as a giant sandbox where insight into consumer – or voter – preferences is there for the sifting. Bapna says the goals are the same for a political campaign or a cereal company.

“The challenge is to truly understand who these people are.  It’s not about whether you are signed up as a Republican or registered as Democrat,” Bapna said. “It’s a finer level of familiarity. I may be a liberal but I do care about abortion or I may be conservative but I am socially liberal.”

In forums where Minnesota Republicans have gathered to identify ways to move the party forward, participants nodded in agreement at the importance of social media, but they defined it as a tactic, a digital megaphone, not a tool for developing strategy. Just a few more tweets, and we would have won two more seats, seemed to be their conclusion. 

But at SOBACO and at consulting companies that specialize in digital marketing, learning how to use social media doesn’t start with establishing a Twitter account.

Bapna believes that social media is predictive, that it gives the data-miner insight into the fundamentals of human behavior.

“Are you altruistic? Are you visually-oriented? The smarter organization learns about these people,” before it starts selling, he said. “Social media really should be a very important data point that goes into your product funnel.”

Out of kilter

Social listening is the key to finding out which part of the product is out of kilter, according to Bapna. “I think a politician or a party would be well served if they had this ability to get this sense,” he said.

Then, he counsels, the next step is to use the network in a targeted way: finding who is connected to whom, finding the influencers, and getting the voter engaged. 

This is the social graph that Republicans needed to overlay on their voter lists. This is their weakness in using social media.

When the party does decide to improve its social media skills, they will find it’s a two-way street. They will learn they need to listen before they talk.

The man who many believe had the most thankless job in the state will have a proper sendoff.

Pat Shortridge, chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota, leaves the position April 6. On Monday, March 18, conservative blogger and activist John Gilmore will host a thank-you event at the Seven Sushi and Steak Ultralounge in Minneapolis.

“He stopped the bleeding and he made us believe that we would live to fight another day if we stopped fighting among ourselves,” Gilmore said in explaining why he decided to organize the party.

Shortridge, who took no salary, replaced Tony Sutton. Under Sutton's management, the party accumulated a $2 million dollar debt and fines from the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board. Shortridge is credited for reducing the debt by about $300,000.

Gilmore is rounding up Republican notables to headline the evening.  A Facebook event page extends the invitation to all politicos.

The election of the new chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota has taken on some aspects of a broader campaign, one designed to communicate to voters and not just party activists.

The latest indication is a candidate forum sponsored by Republicans in the second congressional district. The district's chair, Bill Jungbauer, said he expects all four candidates for the seat -- Keith Downey, Bill Paulsen, Don Allen and Bonn Clayton -- to participate in the forum moderated by activists Walter Hudson and Chris Andryski March 21 at 7 p.m at the Eagan Community Center.

To amp up the participation, the forum features a Facebook page, social hour and cash bar. Downey and Paulsen are running aggressive campaigns to reach out to the 250 delegates who will meet April 6 to make their choice. 

The new chair has a giant task, ahead including retiring $1.6 million in debt, creating new structures to help candidates in 2014 and, most importantly, telling Minnesota voters why they should return Republicans to a majority status by winning the governor’s office, the Minnesota House and U.S. Senate and Congressional seats.

The forum will be more than and inside-politics event.  "I would hope that delegates, activists, and voters see that we are vetting our officers and that we have a great field of candidates, " Jungbauer said. 

From their cell phones to their emails to their Capitol hangouts, the men and women who are lobbying Republican legislators to support gay marriage are shouting, “Let freedom ring.”

With gay marriage legislation headed for a full House and Senate vote, Minnesotans United for All Families, the umbrella group for legalizing gay marriage, has put its Republican team into high gear. 

The team consists of Connolly Kuhl Group for grass-roots outreach, and Messerli & Kramer and Hill Capitol Strategies for direct lobbying.

They're working to round up enough Republican votes to offset DFLers who oppose gay marriage and to give passage some semblance of bipartisan support.

The message to Republicans runs strong on the theme of liberty.

The argument is that prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples directly contradicts the Republican principle of personal freedom and is another example of unwanted and unnecessary government interference.

“Everybody who has signed on has had pretty decent response, not a ton of pushback,” said Carl Kuhl, Republican communications consultant.

Still, the freedom argument swings both ways.

Even though the legislation (SF 925, HF 1054) allows churches and religious organizations to have control over whom they choose to marry, gay marriage opponents counter it will impinge upon religious freedom, beliefs and teachings.

That requires Republican lobbyists and messengers to perform a delicate dance of words.

"We are not talking about the religious sense of marriage," said Kuhl. "It is the civil sense of marriage."

He said that when voters are told the legislation protects religious freedom and refers to civil marriage, the positive response to gay marriage increases.

Minnesotans United has just completed an internal poll with a similar question. According to its communications director, Jake Loesch, the poll showed 49 percent supporting gay marriage and 44 percent opposing it.

"There is not going to be overwhelming support right now for freedom to marry," he said.  "But this is a conservative values issue."

Loesch and others involved in the Republican lobbying effort acknowledge that most GOP legislators are conflicted.

"They worry this may be too fast too soon. [But] a lot of folks understand this is an evolving issue," said the 30-something Kuhl. "The world is changing."

Lobbyists understand the internal turmoil. They are talking to legislators, who in turn must talk to their constituents — the people who will decide whether to return them to office.

To counter concerns about re-election, Freedom to Marry, a national gay marriage group, analyzed election results [PDF] in 2012 in New York, Washington state, New Jersey, and Maryland.  Only two of the 13 Republicans who supported gay marriage in those states lost their seats because of their vote, according to the study.

Minnesotans United promises there will be tangible support for Minnesota Republicans who may face a primary challenge if they support gay marriage.

That support, political and financial, is likely to emerge from a new group, Republicans United for Freedom, whose steering committee features such notable Minnesota Republicans as Richard Painter, a member of the George W. Bush administration; Dale Carpenter, head of the civil law division of the University of Minnesota College of Law; and Susan Kimberly, who was deputy mayor of St. Paul under former Mayor Norm Coleman.

MinnPost photo by James Nord

University of Minnesota law professor Dale Carpenter serves on the steering committee of Republicans United for Freedom.

Defending individual liberty is the Republicans United mission. Not coincidentally, a group of prominent national Republicans used similar language in an amicus brief filed in support of overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Minnesota United's Loesch believes these Republican groups eventually will coalesce and morph into political action committees for the 2014 elections.

For the moment, though, the focus is on the handful of Republicans in the Minnesota House and Senate who may vote in favor of gay marriage when the bill comes to the floor, likely toward the end of the legislative session.

Under the best of conditions, even with the siren call of liberty, it will be a tough vote. The job of the Republican lobbying team is to convince legislators that it’s time to take the tough vote and make it count for a stand on Republican principle.

Norm Coleman is stepping up his presence in the Twin Cities. Starting next month, the former U.S. senator and chairman of the Minnesota Action Network, a think tank that advocates for conservative causes, will have an office at the new Minneapolis branch of Hogan Lovells, the law firm he joined in 2011.

Coleman will also take part in the Minnesota Action Network’s grassroots activities in the state, leading up to the 2014 elections. But, in an interview, Coleman, a Republican, made it clear that more visibility is not part of another run for office. Here are edited excerpts from that interview:

MinnPost: Why did you say now you're not running in 2014?

Norm Coleman: I wanted it to be very clear that the work I’m doing at the Action Network is not for my own political ambitions. I think if you care about center right positions, we have to be out there now, to improve the terrible position the center right is in in the state. We have to be doing grassroots. I didn’t want there to be any question; this is not about personal ambition.

MP: Minnesota Action Network did a poll last month of 1,660 Minnesotans. What were the findings?

NC: It showed that Minnesotans supported limited government but they are not anti-government. People define themselves as economically conservative and socially liberal. They do believe government has gotten too fat, wasteful and inefficient. The quality that most cite as admirable is the ability to compromise and get things done. So, it is not enough for Republicans to be anti-government. 

The top quality that people associate with Republicans is that they are negative about everything, not being in touch with voters. Now, I find that particularly troubling -- when Minnesotans define themselves as center right, but what Republicans are talking about is not resonating with them.

That’s the bad news. Ultimately the center right has to do a better job at connecting with Minnesotans.

MP: What can Minnesota Republicans do besides criticize Gov. Mark Dayton's budget?

NC: One opportunity is the health care exchange. Minnesotans are not looking for bigger government. You’ve got the exchange, but the Democrats are making sure the private side is cut out.

Republicans have tried to amend this to bring in more private-sector perspective.  What you’ve got to say is, “Use the power of the private sector, the power of the market.”  

Health care costs are going to go through the roof. Republicans have a great opportunity here. They are not in the position to have a platform, so it’s challenging, but the bottom line: They’ve got to be articulating “here is what we believe. Here is the way we should be doing it.”

Also, the biggest issue is jobs. Last year so much of the debate got caught up on the referendums. Leaders should be talking about jobs. One of the reasons I'm not running for governor is because I really worry about the impact on this state if the governor and the Legislature go ahead with the plan on raising taxes. We will see businesses making decisions about where they are not going to grow.

The reality is you don’t grow jobs by higher taxes and more government. Minnesotans understand we have a spending problem. Taxes on the top couple percent are politically popular…. Balance, that’s what people are looking for -- cutting spending and increasing revenues.

It goes to what we are seeing at the federal level. The president got the taxes, but instead of seeing any effort to cut spending, rein in some of the entitlements, he keeps talking about more revenue. When the president talks about balance, he’s not talking about spending cuts and tax increases. Folks are looking for balance. I look at the national level, and in many ways I worry that we are replaying it at the state level.

MP: You believe President Obama misjudged the politics of sequestration. Why?

NC: First, credibility in this business is really critical. If you’re out there saying the sky is going to fall and it doesn’t, you have a credibility problem. And if you do petty things, like closing the White House. I think [Obama] oversold the impact. He hurt himself in that regard. People still blame Republicans more than the president, but he overplayed the impact and exacerbated it by his own pettiness.

There is a better way to do cuts than 2.5 percent across the board. Sequestration is not a good thing, but we reached a point and it became easy for Republicans to say: If you’re not going to make [the cuts], we will. The only way it’s going to be resolved is if people work together.

MP: If Obama oversold on sequestration, did the GOP gain anything?

NC: I don’t know if there’s a winner here. It’s a question of who’s the biggest loser. One thing has been gained: It’s caused a refocus on spending and debt, a refocus on issues that Republicans talk about. Americans understand there’s a spending problem. It’s given strength to that message. There is some benefit with the focus on spending, debt and deficits.

MP: What can Republicans do in Washington to move the ball?

NC: Are people serious about the grand bargain? I think we are going to get there. This stalemate will not hold forever. We are in position to discuss the changes with Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. I think we are in a better position to make some progress there. The grand bargain may include some revenue, but will include a heavy, heavy dose of spending cuts. 

MP: When do you see the grand bargain happening?

NC: Maybe I’m too much of an optimist. I’m talking months. I think in the short term rather than longer term. But Republicans are not going to yield on spending cuts and  Democrats are not going to address Social Security without some pressure.

I know some folks in the Senate who are having private conversations about solutions: clear and specific cuts in spending; adjusting to entitlements; clarity on what we do on revenue. We've got to get beyond the political talking points.

MP: What do you think of Sen. Rob Portman’s statement of support for gay marriage?

NC: He’s a great man, great intellect, I respect his decision, and I just have a different opinion. I have a different opinion on this issue than his. He’s had different life experiences that have led him to a different conclusion.  

If you look at young people on this issue, they see themselves as socially liberal. There’s clearly a huge gap here. [But], I think the Democrats are falling in the same trap the Republicans did. Democrats are going to spend all this time focusing on gay marriage.

I don’t think there’s a crashing tide on this issue. Certainly young people are more socially liberal, but where that goes, I can’t tell. 

People can have different opinions, but still be respectful. I think what people are looking for is a more reasonable debate and less vitriol. Portman is a friend. On this issue I disagree with him, but he’s still a friend.

MP: Do you have a preference for chair of the Minnesota Republican Party?

NC: I know Keith Downey. I supported him. I think he'd make an excellent party chair.

It was less of a roast than a serving of humble pie Monday night, when guests gathered to honor Pat Shortridge, outgoing chair of the Minnesota Republican Party.

There was plenty of agreement, too, with the harsh critique and recommendations for the party’s future contained in the report issued Monday by the Republican National Committee. 

In his remarks, Shortridge echoed the report’s main theme.

“We’ve got to start bringing our message where people live,” he said. “It’s not what were against, it’s what we’re for — welcoming people that don’t think they’d ever be Republicans.  Any movement that is not welcoming is losing.”

In the "Growth and Opportunity Project" [PDF], the RNC said its aim was to “provide an honest review of the 2012 election cycle.”

 The 45 recommendations focused more on tactical changes, rather than policy ones — for example, fundraising, campaign mechanics and debates. 

But that’s OK, said Bill Walsh, former legislative director at the Minnesota House.

“The party’s job is nuts-and-bolts, and that’s good for us.  We’re not going to get into the issues. Let the people define the issues,” he said.

Shortridge’s handling of the nuts and bolts was duly noted and praised by a group of activists and elected officials, including Jeff Johnson, Hennepin County commissioner and RNC committeeman, and Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek.

“Our party was very close to collapse,” said Johnson. “He righted the ship.”

The weight of a job that Shortridge described as “a unique volunteer experience” was underscored with a rare form of tribute, an appearance by the opposition, DFL Party Chair Ken Martin.

  He gently ribbed the Republican crowd of 60 — “Senator Klobuchar wanted me to send her regards for helping her win.” He presented Shortridge with a Marco Rubio water bottle, the novelty item that spun off from Rubio’s awkward sip of bottled water during his State of the Union rebuttal.

Then, Martin tipped his hat to political operatives, such as Shortridge, who believe in the system.

“Pat stepped in knowing it as going to be a long year.  Like me, he believes that parties represent the heart and soul of politics,” he said. “It’s not good to have one party weak and the other strong. We need to see a re-emergence of the Republican Party in this state.”

Shortridge followed with words that suggested that DFLers should enjoy thier success while they have it.

“Our party has been a buffer for 23 years,” he said. “Now voters will get the full effect [of DFL dominance].”

And he ended with tart advice about the party’s infighting.: “We have to think of one fundamental thing. We have to get over our minority party mindset.”

Shortridge leaves his post April 6, when delegates elect a new party chair. It’s likely that his warning and the RNC dissection of the party’s problems will be part of his legacy.

At a debate Thursday night in Eagan, the four candidates for chair of the Minnesota Republican Party were in solid agreement on one issue: Their party is in a sorry state.

To reverse the course, each offered a different answer to the overriding question of the night: How to pay off the party’s $1 million-plus debt and make it a force in the 2014 elections.

Former Edina legislator Keith Downey insisted that the next chair needs to implement a new plan on day one. “It’s critical we have a plan,” he said. “I was the number one fundraiser when I ran for the House and Senate and I will spend over half my time fundraising.”

Don Allen, a Minneapolis activist and owner of the on-line Independent Business News Network, suggested that donors won’t give until they see Republicans offer new ideas. “There’s a need to change the attraction to the party,” he said.

Bill Paulsen, an engineer at Seagate Technology, rejected the need for big dollar donors. “We’ve got to strengthen the party and energize and empower the grass roots,” he said.

Bonn Clayton, a Carver County activist who has just been fined $1,200 for misrepresenting the party’s position on judicial endorsements (he supports them, the party does not), maintained the state GOP should return to the fundraising strategies of the ‘70s and ‘80s. “We need a grass roots fundraising plan,” he said, “like the Century Club and neighbor-to-neighbor.”

On other issues like retaining the caucus system, streamlining the party’s platform and accepting candidates who differ with the party’s policies, only Allen advocated reform.  “You will continue to take traumatic losses until you change,” he told the crowd of nearly 100 who packed a room at the Eagan Community Center.

This weekend, the candidates continue their ground campaign of wooing delegates who will be part of the party’s state central committee, the group that will elect the new chair. The first, third, fourth, and fifth Congressional districts hold their conventions on Saturday. The state central committee meets April 6 in Bloomington.

Dale Carpenter, professor of civil rights and civil liberties law at the University of Minnesota law school, attended today’s oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging California’s Prop. 8, which recognizes as valid only marriages between a man and a woman. 

Carpenter has studied and written about the first major Supreme Court decision on gay rights, as the author of "Flagrant Conduct," the story of Lawrence v. Texas, the case that banned laws against sodomy. He is a member of Republicans United for Freedom, a group advocating for gay marriage in Minnesota.

Although lawyers for both sides said after the arguments that the justices did not reveal much about how they would decide the case, Carpenter said he believes that, based on the arguments he heard today, the high court may avoid deciding the issue on its merits based on the legal principle of  “standing.” That, he said, would buy the court more time – which, he added, may be a victory for gay marriage advocates.

MinnPost: How did you get a ticket for today’s arguments?

Dale Carpenter: I got there at 3:15 this morning. I waited in line for six hours in the cold. I got there early enough so I just barely got in. I was in the lawyers’ line. Lawyers get kind of preferential seating if you are a member of the Supreme Court bar. The public line was much longer and much harder to get into.

MP: What were your impressions of the arguments?

DC: I thought the justices were struggling with a couple of very important questions.  One was an issue that only a lawyer could love, and that is whether the Prop. 8 proponents have standing. The question is whether they even have the power to bring their lawsuit. It looked to me like Chief Justice Roberts had serious questions about their power to bring this lawsuit because they had not suffered any injury. The court doesn’t like it when parties just come in and say, well, we don’t like this law, so we want it rescinded. 

If you put him together with four other justices, you might have a majority of the court just willing to say we’re not going to deal with this issue. We’re not going to decide right now the questions of same-sex marriage.

MP: Where would that leave the law in California then?

DC: There are a couple of possibilities. One of them is that it would leave in place the decision of the judge in San Francisco to strike down Prop. 8, but his decision might only apply to the particular parties that filed the lawsuit, meaning that those four or five couples could get married but there’s not a right for anybody else to get married unless they bring their own lawsuit.

MinnPost photo by James Nord

Dale Carpenter testifying on gay marriage before the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month.

It might also mean that his ruling applies to the northern district of California, which is the district in which he sat. In other words, this issue could, conceivably, end up again in front of the Supreme Court in another probably two to three years.

MP: How likely is it that the justices will say they don’t want to hear this case? 

DC: I think, based on what I heard in the oral argument today, a majority of the justices were uncomfortable declaring a right to gay marriage, but they were also uncomfortable ruling that there’s not a right to gay marriage. So I think this is a way they can kind of kick the can down the road for a while. It buys them a little time. It lets the dust settle a little bit. 

MP: Was there any indication of another direction the case could go?

DC: I think the next most likely outcome would be, “We don’t think there’s a right to same sex marriage and we’re not going to do that and just reject the claim.” That’s always a real possibility.

I think it has to be cause for some concern among same sex-marriage advocates that Justice [Anthony] Kennedy, who is perceived to be a swing vote on the court, seemed skeptical. He seemed to think that it’s too early. We don’t have enough evidence yet of the effect of recognition, we need more conclusive evidence. That is what I picked up from the tone of his questions.

MP: Was there anything leading or telling from any of the other justices?

DC: I think it was very interesting that Chief Justice Roberts, especially, seemed to be willing to throw the case on standing grounds. At least, he didn’t want to jump in to the issue right away. I thought that was the most hopeful sign of the day, quite frankly.

In fact, he seemed more willing than Justice Kennedy to throw the case out on standing grounds. So you could have the result like you had in the health care case [challenges to the Affordable Care Act] where Justice Roberts sides with the four more liberal justices.

MP: How effective were the proponent of Proposition 8 in their arguments?

DC: I think they were effective in the sense that they sowed the seeds of doubt. When they were asked, what harm will it do to recognize these couples, they didn’t really have an answer to that but they said well, “We don’t know what it will do.” That seemed enough to get at least Justice Kennedy concerned.  

The advocate in the case was not effective in showing what the harm would be. In fact, I thought he made major concession today when he was asked by Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor, “Could you think of any other way that government could discriminate against gays and lesbians that would be rational besides marriage?” And he said,” I can’t think of one.”

I thought that was a very significant concession because it means that even the staunch defender of marriage between a man and a woman can’t think of any other example in which the government ought to be able to discriminate against gay people. It’s the only one left, according to him.

MP: What were the strengths and weaknesses of the challengers to Prop. 8?

DC: Ted Olson [lead attorney for the challenge to Prop. 8] is a very effective, authoritative advocate. The justices know him on a personal level. He has an ease in front of the justices that lent his argument a degree of credibility that it might not have had otherwise. 

If I had a criticism of him, it was that he did not seem to have an answer to what seemed to me was the obvious question from Justice [Antonin] Scalia, which was: “When did same-sex marriage become a constitutional right?” He wasn’t really prepared with an answer for that.   

MP: How would you have answered that question?

DC: I would have said, it became unconstitutional when we passed the 14th Amendment that declared that every person is entitled to the equal protection of the laws, but that it’s taken us a lot of years to figure that out. Just like it took us a lot of years to figure out that black people shouldn’t be discriminated against in schools and interracial marriages shouldn’t be banned and women shouldn’t be banned from being lawyers, and lots of other stuff. It was unconstitutional the day we committed ourselves to equality, but it’s taken a while to figure out what that means.

MP: Was there anything else that impressed you in a negative or positive sense?

DC: Something else that stuck out: Some people thought maybe the court would kind of compromise between no gay marriage and 50 state gay marriage and they’ll just settle on ordering nine states in the country to have gay marriage. 

I think the court just shut the door on those kinds of compromises today. None of the justices seemed very impressed by that.

MP: Will you be present for the arguments tomorrow for and against the Defense of Marriage Act?

DC: I will be there for that.

MP: Does the ticket you procured today give you a seat for tomorrow’s proceedings as well?

DC: No, I’m going to be getting in line again at 3:15 and be ready to go.

Dale Carpenter, professor of civil rights and civil liberties law at the University of Minnesota law school, attended today’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on arguments to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Carpenter, frequently consulted on issues of civil and constitutional rights, said that based on the arguments he heard today, he believes the high court will reject DOMA, but not on the merits of the right to gay marriage.

MinnPost: What are your conclusions following today’s arguments?

Dale Carpenter

Dale Carpenter: I think there are two primary things to take away from today. First of all, it’s quite possible the justices will try to avoid the merits on this issue just as they tried to avoid the merits on the Prop. 8 case because of the complication that arises as the result of the Obama administration taking the position that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional but nevertheless still enforcing the act. 

There are some questions about whether Congress has standing to challenge on its own the president’s position, the question on whether the president can maintain any kind of action in the courts when, in fact, it isn’t even defending the constitutionality of the law. Those are very complicated questions. Several justices expressed the view today that this case may be inappropriate for decision on the merits. So that is one possibility.

The second, though, is potentially momentous news, and that is that it appeared to me that there were five justices on the court today, including Justice [Anthony] Kennedy, prepared to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and probably on federalism-based grounds. 

Justice Kennedy was very strong in his concern about having the federal government intrude on the area of traditional state prerogative and the other justices, some of the more liberal justices, also agreed with that view. So if the court decides to rule on the substantive issue, I think there’s a fairly good chance, based on what they said in the oral argument, that they’ll strike down the Defense of Marriage Act on federalism grounds. 

MP: Wouldn’t same-sex marriage advocates prefer a ruling on the merits?

DC: It wouldn’t be a hollow victory at all because it would mean that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that Congress had no power to enact it and if that’s true, then same-sex couples would be entitled to all 1,100-plus federal benefits if they’re married in their home states. It’s a huge victory for the rights of same-sex couples who are married.

Now, could it be an even bigger victory if the court decided that sexual orientation is a subset classification, sure. And there were some justices that seemed somewhat sympathetic to that view. But simply the result of striking down the Defense of Marriage Act by itself would be monumental.

MP: What would be effect on what states are doing right now?

DC: I think it would make it more likely that they would [adopt same-sex marriage] because there wouldn’t be the complications that arise now because of a conflict between federal law and state law.

I think it could actually give momentum, significant momentum, to same-sex marriage advocates to have the Defense of Marriage Act struck down because then you have a whole lot more at stake in these determinations.

It means that more is at stake for same-sex couples in same-sex marriage debates legislatively. It means that not only do they have state level benefits at stake, they will have federal benefits, rights and privileges at stake -- things like immigration and inheritance-tax treatment, and veterans’ benefits, and health benefits and just all kinds of things will be at stake for these couples. So it really intensifies the cause and the need for same-sex marriages if the court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act.

MP: What was your interpretation of comments about the Obama administration’s failure to support DOMA?

DC: I think there was consternation that the Obama administration was taking a position that they would defend [enforce] an unconstitutional law without explaining why. The Obama administration has not been very forthcoming about that and that’s something many of the justices thought was problematic.

MP: Did any of the conservative justices indicate they too might be inclined to strike down DOMA on any grounds?

DC: Kennedy, I think, was very strong on the federalism concern today and to the extent that the oral argument tells you anything -- he’s a moderate conservative -- it tells you that he may be leaning in that direction. I think that’s what he did say. I didn’t get many hints from the other four conservatives, though, about what they would do.

I got plenty of suggestions that Justices [Antonin] Scalia, [Samuel] Alito and probably Chief Justice [John] Roberts would uphold it if it reached the merits. I say probably. Justice [Clarence] Thomas didn’t say anything in the oral argument, but that’s his practice. 

MP: Was there a comment that stood out?

DC: What we have is a very funny phrase used by Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsberg today. She said that gay marriages are like skim milk marriages because they are not solely recognized. They don’t give you all the nutrition you need.

State Rep. Kurt Zellers sends out news releases, independent of his caucus, criticizing the DFL’s tax and spending proposals.

State Sen. Dave Thompson appears at three congressional district conventions last weekend. 

Wayzata businessman Scott Honour speaks at last week’s fundraiser in Edina for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

All three have joined the list of Republicans who are considering a run for governor in 2014.

Sen. Dave Thompson

Thompson is the most direct about his intentions. “Yes” is his answer when asked if he’s looking at the governor’s race. “I believe that the current governor is taking the state in the wrong direction and we need to move in a fiscally prudent direction, which we are not now,” he said. 

Besides fiscal issues, Thompson explains that his priority is education. “I would identify underperforming schools and give parents an alternative — school funding should follow the student not a school building,” he said. “The situation we have right now allows people with means to find alternatives. But people who don’t have discretionary income — their children are stuck and that is anathema.”

Zellers, former House speaker, is less specific about his plans but more pointed in criticism of DFL control of state government, which it gained after defeating Republicans in 2012.

'Tax assault'

“Democrats in the Minnesota House proposed a massive new increase in government spending…,” he stated in a news release. “This all out ‘tax assault’ on middle class Minnesotans grows government but does nothing to grow the jobs people need.”

In an interview, he labeled the state’s new health care exchange “a wish and prayer. A $190 million bet that we can save money and help more people get health care.”

MinnPost/James Nord

Rep. Kurt Zellers

Those sound like fighting words from a candidate-to-be, but Zellers isn’t ready to commit, yet. “I’m definitely not closing any doors,” he said, adding, “There are very few places that I haven’t held a press conference or raised money for a Republican cause.” 

Like Zellers and Thompson, other Republicans in the mix as gubernatorial prospects – state Sen. David Hann, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, House Minority Leader Matt Dean, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson — are elected officials familiar to Republican activists. 

The outlier and outsider is 44-year-old Honour, who recently retired from the Gores Group venture capital firm. In a news release, the firm said Honour was leaving to “focus on public service and charitable activities.” In an email, Honour said he was not yet giving any interviews.

Honour raised money for Tim Pawlenty’s presidential run, then joined the Romney team, where Minnesotans involved in the Romney effort say he more than exceeded expectations. He’s considered politically astute if not experienced and well connected and respected. At the Chris Christie fundraiser last week at the Edina Country Club, political guru Vin Weber concluded the event by calling on Honour to give the last speech.  

All the leading potential candidates have the ability to make it through the Republican gauntlet into a general election battle with Mark Dayton.  And they have weaknesses.

Pros and cons

Blois Olson, political commentator and public relations consultant, views Zeller’s frequent media outreach as a move to a bigger political stage. “He is the prototypical suburban dad and viewed as a conservative, a softer line conservative,” Olson said.

But, Olson said, Zellers may be too much the retail politician. “The media and others picked up that he was being particularly calculating on issues,” like the stadium and the right-to-work amendment.

Thompson doesn’t have that problem. He is a red-meat conservative with a gift for communication that he is using to flesh out the conservative message with inclusive issues like education. But Thompson, noted one Republican consultant, has weak support in the business community and a limited fund-raising base — factors that demand that he get the Republican endorsement.

Scott Honour

Honour would have the fewest problems with fund-raising and the most with getting a Republican endorsement. He and Zellers are seen as candidates who might even challenge an endorsed candidate in a primary, especially if the 2014 primary is moved to a date in June.

Ben Golnik, former executive director of the Minnesota Republican Party and a supporter of an earlier primary, believes a primary is the best path to a win in November.  “I would advise anyone right now to look at the primary,” he said.  “The endorsement is as weak as it’s ever been because of the debt the party is in.”

No one doubts that a Republican gubernatorial candidate is going to need that momentum.  “Dayton is going to be tough to beat,” according to Olson. “The Democrats are going to be so energized in the battle to hold on to the Legislature and the governor’s office.”

So Republicans are promoting a come-one, come-all approach to a list of candidates. Are they ideal?  Golnik laughed. “The ideal candidate — a female from the suburbs — she’s not out there,” he said.

But he and other Republicans say they are encouraged that their list of prospects offers the kind of scope and variety from which a viable Dayton challenger will emerge.

Michael Brodkorb

Michael Brodkorb’s wrongful termination case against the Minnesota Senate is heading toward the deposition phase — and potentially awkward moments for some legislators.

Federal Magistrate Arthur Boylan has set May 2 for a pre-trial conference to include the names both sides want to depose. 

Brodkorb has promised to identify legislators and staff members who had personal relationships similar to the one he had with former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch to prove that his firing was handles differently from earlier cases, amounting to unfair treatment. 

Prior to the pre-trial meeting, Boylan has ordered Brodkorb and the Senate into private settlement talks to take place on or before April 11. 

If a settlement is not reached, and that is seen as unlikely, both sides must report to the court on April 25.

The court has dismissed Brodkorb’s libel claims against the Senate but has allowed the wrongful termination case to proceed. The Senate has maintained that Brodkorb was an at-will employee who could be fired without cause.

Residents in Edina received 11-by-6 inch glossy mailers claimimh their legislator wants to raise taxes “even more than Mark Dayton.”

A new round of political mailers is arriving in selected mailboxes around the state.

Americans for Prosperity Minnesota, the conservative political advocacy group affiliated with the Koch brothers, has targeted legislators who have proposed tax increases that the group claims exceed the tax hikes proposed by Gov. Mark Dayton.

Residents in Edina (represented by DFL state Reps. Paul Rosenthal and Ron Erhardt) and in Rochester (represented by GOP state Sen. Carla Nelson) recently received 11-by-6 inch glossy mailers. The mailers claim that their legislator wants to raise taxes “even more than Mark Dayton.”

“We are trying to educate citizens and urging them to contact legislators,” said John Cooney, APM’s state director.

The mailers are vague about which taxes the legislators are proposing to increase, but a visit to the APM website provides details. It says Rosenthal is proposing an increase in the metro-area transit tax, Erhardt a gas-tax increase and Nelson an increase in the cigarette tax. The website also lists more than three dozen other tax bills and authors.

Nelson is livid about the mailer. “It’s blatantly false, it’s just wrong,” she said. “The cigarette tax is revenue neutral because all of the increased revenue is used to buy down the business property tax.”

Her justification doesn’t impress Cooney. “Her tax on cigarettes exceeds by 40 percent the governor’s proposal,” he said.

Cooney said that three more legislative districts will receive similar mailers by the end of the week. Furthermore, he said, APM will push out email alerts to its members about tax and regulatory issues that are the group’s core concerns.

To aid in this effort, Cooney said, APM gathers activists every Tuesday at the Kelly Inn in St. Paul, just across from the Capitol complex. They discuss and flag legislation that they consider exceeds Dayton’s tax increases.

While APM defends this approach, Nelson finds it absurd. “This is a case where they either didn’t read the bill or just saw the three-letter word ‘tax,’” she said.  “My proposal is tax reform.” And, she adds, given her conservative credentials, “my district isn’t buying”  the attack in the mailer.

Rosenthal also contends that APM doesn’t understand the legislation for which he’s criticized.  Rosenthal has authored legislation to provide bonding money for a southwest light-rail line and said he co-authored a bill to raise the sales for transit as a back-up. “This is just another way of going about to fund projects if the bonding is not approved,” he said.

Rosenthal chuckled when told that both Republicans and DFLers are targets of the APM mailers. “Well, good for them on that,” he said.

Political affiliation and reputation don’t figure into an APM decision to go after a piece of legislation and its author, according to Cooney. “We don’t engage in personalities; we are not trying to prop them up or defeat them in an election,” he said.  “We want to educate citizens on how they voted.”

Cooney promised that the mail would keep coming. “I’m sure we will be active well beyond the next election,” he said. “We are not going to give up.”

When Keith Downey takes over today as the chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota, he will be several steps ahead of where his predecessor, Pat Shortridge, started when he volunteered for the job in 2011. 

Based on the convention of the party’s state central committee over the weekend in Bloomington, it appears that the party has made a few strides in regaining its self-esteem. Downey, in optics and verbiage, tried to convey the message that this is not your father’s GOP.

Before the delegates took the vote, Downey referred to the perception that Republicans care little for the needy. “We will link arms with them and we will walk out of [poverty] with them,” he said in a speech to delegates.

His team of nominators included a student, a stay-at-home mom who said she was "sitting in the middle," an African-American delegate from 6th congressional district and the chair of the Hispanic GOP assembly.

But while offering those individuals as witnesses to his inclusiveness, Downey insisted labels do not matter to him. “I'm pretty done with factions. I’m not really into hyphenated Americans and I'm not really into hyphenated Republicans,” he told the crowd and then invoked the names of Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.

Downey won 228 of the possible 344 delegate votes.

Delegates were in no mood to be reflective about stunning election losses or the party’s precarious financial position. They picked only a few nits about party rules. Ron Paul’s name was not uttered publicly. With Downey, they chose the shortest path to party unity.

State Rep. Kurt Zellers, the former speaker of the House who lost the majority in 2012, suggested that DFL dominance sparked pragmatism among party activists.

“One of the best things that has united us as a group, whether it’s first-time delegates or long-time delegates, is total DFL control,” he said at the GOP’s state central committee meeting, where he was an observer, not a delegate.  

Downey agreed. “There’s nothing like losing an election and seeing the results of that to steel your resolve and get you excited.”

Still, there remain divisions that may become more pronounced as the Republican Party moves to endorse candidates for four statewide offices and the U.S. Senate. Downey said he expects those races to draw primary challengers. And although he supports moving the primary to June, as do many DFLers, he said the party would fully support candidates who receive the party endorsement at local and state conventions.

MinnPost photo by Brian HallidaySupporters of Keith Downey cheering their candidate during Saturday's state central committee convention.

There is also that pesky seven-figure debt. Shortridge pared the debt from $1.9 million accrued under the chairmanship of Tony Sutton to $1.6 million. Downey won’t predict he will eradicate the rest of the debt, but said he has a plan of attack. He said he would start by “partnering” with political action committees and independent-expenditure groups in terms of funding candidates and races. As for the party itself, he said, “there are a lot of people, major donors and minor donors, who’ve been sitting on the sidelines and I hope that with the positive momentum that we got, we can go out and execute a plan across all levels and restore giving to the party.”

Downey gave Shortridge an appreciative parting shot for putting the party on surer footing.  “We’re no longer in the ICU; we’re ready for the rehab,” he said.

Shortridge gave Downey a veiled prediction of what he’s about to face: “The two happiest words in the English language are ‘former chairman.’”

An hour after the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra announced a tentative contract settlement with its locked-out musicians on Wednesday, Michael Henson, president of the Minnesota Orchestra, expressed cautious hope his orchestra’s locked-out musicians would respond in kind, with an offer to start negotiating a new contract.

The Minnesota Orchestra locked out 95 musicians Oct. 1 after their union rejected a proposal to reduce base salaries by 32 percent. The orchestra management has said that the cuts are necessary to offset ongoing deficits. Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra currently make an average $135,000 a year, not including benefits.

In an interview with MinnPost, Henson noted that the St. Paul Chamber musicians have agreed to accept comparable cuts in salary and orchestra size. Here are excerpts from the interview:

MinnPost: Will the settlement of the St. Paul Chamber lockout have an effect on the Minnesota Orchestra musicians?

Michael Henson: We very much hope what’s happened in St. Paul will actually bring impetus to our discussions and impetus to get our musicians and the union to the negotiating table to begin to have substantive conversations.  One orchestra has quite clearly agreed to an 18.6 percent change which, as I said, like for like, is considerably higher than the change of rate to our orchestra with the pay raises that they’ve had. So this is very much indicative that our players need to actually partner with us sooner rather than later and accept those challenges. Why has one orchestra accepted those challenges, why has one set of musicians accepted that they need to find a settlement and then why this group has not agreed to do that, is indeed puzzling.

MP: You’ve asked the musicians to meet with the board later this month. Is that going to happen?

MH: We have been trying to remove the barriers that musicians have said have stopped them putting forward a counter proposal in order to move this process forward in the most reasonable way possible. 

We hope very much that we can announce successfully the financial analysis this week. [The musicians have asked for an outside audit of the orchestra’s finance, but the two sides cannot agree on the audit guidelines.] We hope our musicians will come and speak to the board. But what we really want is substantive negotiations to take place, an acknowledgement of the very serious financial challenges that we face and to actually negotiate a contract that is actually sustainable for this community and respects the musicians’ skill levels.

MP: Are you hearing donors or board members express frustration about the duration of the lockout?

MH: I think the board and the management have wanted to move this forward as quickly as possible. I think our donors want to see their money used responsibly and to insure that we have sustainability. I’m sensing a growing frustration with the fact that our musicians have not put in a counter-proposal and have not actually negotiated. I certainly know from the board and management perspective, we’re puzzled and we’re frustrated as to why we haven’t been able to get the musicians to move this further forward. 

It’s important to remember that our board are volunteer donors. They all give over $10,000 to be on the board and they do it because they believe in the music. They believe in this community and they believe we have a great art form. So this is not a commercial board that is extracting returns. It is a board that is doing this out of the goodness of what they believe should be occurring in this community. 

In the end, you can only scope the size of an organization to the generosity of a community, and this community is very, very generous. But the reality is, if you generate one dollar, you can only spend one dollar. 

I think the good news is, looking at all aspects, we can generate $26 million a year. That is a substantial amount of money in order to create a great orchestra. The bad news is that the current expenditure, with the contracts we have at the moment, is roughly between $32 [million], $33 million a year. We have to bridge that gap both through cost reductions but also, critically, through new income schemes.

So our new business plan has looked at substantive change within the organization. Already, we’ve laid off, unfortunately, 20 percent of our administration. The new business plan has required us to look at more flexible working practices within the management and the administration. It also requires us to try and generate another $4.2 million of income, which is a very aggressive target to try and reach.

It is now time, and we’ve said this for the last two years, for our musicians to partner with us in terms of being part of that solution.

Those changes are substantial but we are still offering at the moment, without any further negotiations, a package that, on average, works out at $120,000, including benefits of pension and health care.

MP: Are artistic differences fundamental to this dispute?

MH: I think it’s always possible to come with excuses as to why you don’t want to have a conversation, but the reality is, we have a great orchestra here and we will continue to have a great orchestra. We will continue to evolve and change. Classical music is critical and central to our mission. We’re not aiming to increase the number of pops concerts that the orchestra does.

You can only scope the size of an organization to the demand that exists out there, and all orchestras, all organizations, whether you’re for-profit, not-for-profit, have changed during their history.

Change will continue to occur. If you just look to the past, you won’t thrive or survive. We need to look not just to the next two years of any contract or three years of a contract, we need to look at how our great art form becomes and remains vibrant over the next five years, the next 10 years, and the next 15 years. 

MP: To ensure this future, does the Minnesota Orchestra have a responsibility to cultivate music and musicians?

MH: Yes, we want to make sure we want to retain the best in terms of the orchestra. At the same point, we actually have to address an art form that has to remain competitive. I think we an incredibly exciting art form so we have to think about how we put on concerts, how we attract new audiences going into the future, how we reverse the declining trend of audiences. 

You have to retain and attract talent, but you also have to retain, attract and develop audiences.

MP: Some say that art, such as classical music, is priceless, yet it’s your responsibility to put a price on it. How do you do that? 

MH: The first thing to emphasize is that the art is at the center of what we’re doing. This is why the board volunteers, why the board donates money. They want to have a great orchestra based in a community. That is the driving force. The reality is, you’ve actually got to scope the best art, the best terms and conditions that you can with the available resources. 

You have an extraordinary board here who have been working extraordinarily hard to generate money, to help develop strategy -- a plan to look after the best interests of balancing the art for the community, but making sure it is here for the long term.

MP: Is the MOA prepared to counter a counter offer?

MH: We have always been prepared to negotiate appropriately within parameters. So, we have been willing to negotiate. There are number of parameters that we can agree to negotiate — the size of the orchestra, amount of remuneration, health-care benefits. So there obviously is some flexibility with what we’ve proposed so we can negotiate. Substantial change is required and we will be prepared to move and negotiate. But substantial change is still required. 

MP: The MOA states it has reduced costs by 6 percent over the last 10 years, but you are asking the musicians for a 32 percent cut. Is this fair?

MH: I would look back to the last five years. Our musicians have received a 19.6 percent increase. Effectively, our staff  have been frozen over that period, so yes.

MP: The union has also taken exception to the renovation of Orchestra Hall. But donors have been generous to this $50 million project. Why do your donors prefer to give to capital rather than salaries?

MH: I quote a story that I have from one of the donors. He made a very substantial donation to this project, and what he said was, “You came and asked me for a capital donation and I gave you this much money. [Henson indicated a foot in length with his hands.] If you came and asked me for the annual fund, you’ve got that much money.” [Henson indicated an inch between his thumb and forefinger.] We have very sophisticated donors who understand long-term and understand the importance of a hall.

MinnPost photo by Brian Halliday

Construction continues on Orchestra Hall.

Yes, we’ve raised nearly $50 million for the Hall project, but it’s part of a $110 million campaign — $30 million for artistic initiatives, $30 million for the endowment with the object of that actually helping underpin our musicians’ salaries. 

The project itself was part of a 30-year vision. It was the time to do it. We’ve re-scoped the project so it was more fiscally responsible.

 The project is way beyond the lobby. It’s a project that goes across the entire hall. A musician was in on the selection process. We had numerous meetings with musicians, probably 25, 30 meetings with a committee in terms of how we move this forward. The musicians actually were very integral in how this project was set up and moved forward.

It’s on time and on schedule and we’re expecting it to open at some point in the late summer.

MP: What do you do if you don’t have musicians to play in that hall?

MH: I think that what we firstly want to do is to get our musicians back to the table to negotiate. There is a long way to go before we actually get there, and I’m hopeful that our musicians will actually come forward and put forward a substantial proposal. I hopeful that’s going to happen. That’s our expectation because that’s what they’ve been saying.

Randy Gilbert is trying again for the office of state auditor. Gilbert is an auditor in his day job at Assurance Consulting in Minneapolis and the former mayor of Long Lake.  He has formed a campaign committee and activated a website in advance of a likely endorsement battle in 2014.

Gilbert is trying to win an office that has bee occupied equally by DFLers and Republicans, most notably Arne Carlson, who, as state auditor in the 1980s, was the Republicans’ largest statewide vote-getter and who used the office as platform to run successfully for governor.

Gilbert tried for the GOP endorsement for auditor in 2010 but lost to Pat Anderson, who was state auditor from 2002 to 2006.  Anderson lost in 2006 and in 2010 to current state auditor, DFLer Rebecca Otto.

Otto maintains a campaign website. Her campaign manager, Shawn Otto, says she hasn’t announced yet whether she is running for re-election in 2014 but that he expects her to announce her plans in the next few weeks.

The chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota, Keith Downey, started his first week on the job with some retooling efforts that he says are meant to turn the party into an organization with a “customer focus.”

He began by rewriting jobs descriptions for the party’s staff positions and telling the current staff that they need to reapply for their jobs under the restructuring.

Those moves, plus Downey’s announcement of a new finance team, are what he defines as the first critical steps in making the party a credible political force.

Here are edited excerpts from an interview with MinnPost in which he elaborates on his priorities.

MinnPost: You’ve already started restructuring. What are you looking for?

Keith Downey: We’ve got roughly the same job responsibilities and positions at the state party that we’ve had for a long time.  I think working for the future — and thinking about how the state party works with and for the caucuses and the candidates and the local Senate districts and congressional districts and the outside groups that are now such a part of the political mix — I think the state party should rethink what it does and how it performs.

The first and most important piece of that is ... that we are customer service organizations.  We have a set of tools and capabilities and systems and the like that all support the caucuses, the candidates and the local district officials. And so focusing on those elements first, those customer-service elements, I think, is Job One for the party.  It’s really the basic blocking and tackling, and that’s what we need to perform better on in the next election.  

MP: You’ve named finance team. Any news on that front?

KD: I think the fact that we’ve got the team in place and that we’re off and running is probably the extent to which I’ll go on that.

MP: Any feedback from potential donors?

KD: All very positive, and equally positive is the response that I’m getting when people understand that we have a business plan and a political plan and a structured approach to it and that we will be running a little bit more like a business down here. People are very receptive to that. 

MP: How does running the party differ from running a campaign?

KD: I always understood that a campaign is very much about serving the local district, the people of your district, representing them and doing that from a policy standpoint. And it has always been apparent to me that the party job in terms of a platform and having policy positions is important. But our primary job, our first job, and the one we have to focus on right out of the block in my term, is: How do we support the candidates and how do we support the local districts?

 So, I am more focused on not the political parts of it right now. Eventually we’ll be full blown in a campaign in the election of 2014 and so obviously the party has more of a political role then.

MP: What must you absolutely do before the caucuses in 2014?

KD: I would say the No. 1 job is to restore confidence in what we’re doing and to restore credibility in the state party, not just within the activists and the candidates and the political types but also with the pubic in general. That can't wait until the caucuses.

I’m hopeful that we will have shown enough evidence that we are running things well, that there’s going to be an execution plan and a strategy and we are going to do things in an excellent fashion. And I hope that is obvious very, very soon to people because restoring credibility is really Job One.

MP: What have you learned are the party’s strongest assets?

 KD: We have obviously spent the last five months, six months since the election thinking about and examining all the things that went wrong. And there were plenty of them, and that’s an important thing to do.

But when you think about our strengths — No. 1 — I think we are right on the issues. You look at what’s happening here in St. Paul — literally 10, 12 percent spending increases and raising taxes to accomplish that at a time when our economic recovery is very fragile still — I think our biggest strength is that we’re right on these issues — our reform ideas and our policies for education and taxes and the business climate and the budget and health care. We’ve got solutions for the future, so that’s No. 1.

No. 2 is ... based on traveling around the state these last three months, that when you look at the basic values of Minnesotans and how they live their lives and how they run their businesses and their affairs and their communities, I think they are fundamentally aligned with Republicans.

The third strength we have is the grass-roots base of the Republican Party. We are still a party of the people, and we had a good, strong discussion in this campaign about how we remain a party of the grass roots and that we don’t become a top-down small group of people dictating everything to everybody. We have a lot of debate. We have a lot of activists with a lot of ideas.

MP: What are the challenges that you face?

KD: Challenge No. 1, at the state party level, is positioning ourselves for the future and finding a way to get our finances back under control and on solid footing.

Challenge No. 2 — and the bigger one, I think — is making sure that we come together as a united Republican Party, working together, taking our respective strengths and the differences that we do have and seeing those as a positive. Directing all the energy that we have, getting those back out in front of the people of Minnesota, as compared to talking with each other about who’s right about those things. Let's get back out in front of the voters, directing everyone’s attention to the people of Minnesota, instead of inward to the Republican Party.

MP: How do you plan on getting back in the consciousness of the general electorate?

KD: Some of it is just setting the tone at the top. As the chair, I have the ability to continue to stress that and emphasize that and appreciate that and reward that.  

The second thing — I’ll say it’s a process.  The fact that we have our precinct caucuses, then our endorsing conventions, then our primaries — that needs to be run well and be a fair process and give everybody a complete, full chance to have their ideas vetted, their candidates put forward and voted on.  I think just having that fair process goes a long way toward getting people to be on board with those candidates and those policies ideas after those primaries as we start running in the general election.

MP: What qualities would you look for in a candidate to oppose Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Al Franken?

KD: When you look at the challenges we face, for the long term, the unsustainable spending growth trends, I think we need somebody who’s focused on the fiscal issues and credible and competent on those issues. 

I think we need somebody who is credible and competent on what actually makes our private-sector economy work and what actually produces the revenue for government to perform its necessary functions. So somebody who has those two kind of dimensions in a really strong and credible way before the people of Minnesota, I think will do really well.

MP: You responded to the Jim Graves announcement as a congressional candidate for the 6th district with a strong defense of Michele Bachmann. Are you unequivocal in your support for her?

KD: Michele Bachmann has been an extremely strong representative. I think even the folks who might disagree with her on various fronts believe that she’s played an important role, drawing attention to the fiscal situation in Washington. She was credible enough in the Republican Party to take a run at the presidency.  As she now gets back to full-time legislating off of the campaign, she’ll be that strong voice for her district and represent her district really well.

MP: In the 2nd Congressional District, Congressman John Kline may face a primary challenger, probably from the right. Do you have a position as party chair?

KD: It will be important for me as a chair to protect a fair process and give everybody a chance to participate through the channels that exist.  But John Kline is such a strong congressman for Minnesota — his background, his experience, the quality of individual that he is, the way that he represents his district, the fact that he’s the chair of a power committee, an important committee as we go forward when you think about the educational reform challenges we have. I think John is just such a strong person. If he runs again, John Kline is going to represent the 2nd Congressional District again. 

MP: Will you change the tone of the party’s messages? Will they be more positive?

KD: To say that it will be more or less positive than the others, I’ll leave that to you folks to opine on. My perspective in general, and one that I will bring to this position as well, is that I think we are right on the policy formulations and the budget proposals that we would put forward, and I just wont be shy about putting those out there. 

I know that there's a political tactic of parrying against the opponents’ ideas. I just think the public is really looking for strong leadership. And whether they agree with you on everything or not, the fact that you have ideas, you defend them, you’re willing to listen to the other person but you’re going to put your ideas out there and push hard for them, I think that's what people are looking for. And that’s the kind of communication that I hope you’ll see coming from me as the chair.