The Minnesota Caucuses are about to begin!
How will the tea leaves be read tomorrow?
Tonight (Feb. 2) is precinct caucus night in Minnesota. Caucuses are weird, I hear, and tonight will be my first one.
This is the long-awaited first step on the path in choosing the next Governor, who will have the un-enviable task of cleaning up the budgetary mess that is being left by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Gov. Tim “Cut and Run” Pawlenty, who is not-quite pulling a Palin and resigning after one term. The thing to remember about Tim “Cut and Run” Pawlenty when he starts running for 2012, is that there is no way in a cold Hell that he would be re-elected in this state. I mean, the people HATE him, so running for President is, oddly, his only option.
Interesting to watch from tonight's caucuses: three strong DFL [Democratic] candidates:
Minneapolis Mayor (and very early and public supporter of Obama, and sort of the “Obama” candidate) Mayor R.T. Rybak;
Minneapolis House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher;
Former U.S. Senator (and Target heir) Mark Dayton. So far, Dayton has spent primarily his own money, like when he spent nearly $12 million to win his Senate seat in 2000. Dayton is running on a “I’m not beholden to corporate interests and will fight against corporate money in politics” platform.
There’s also a dark horse candidate in State Senator Matt Entenza. There are many more candidates, but those are the front-runners.
The main dynamic here to look out for here is that the choices have somewhat shaped up amongst local DFL’ers to be a Obama surrogate versus a Hillary Clinton surrogate vs a campaign finance reform candidate.
Or maybe the DFL goes a another way.