This is an excerpt from Minneapolis Star Tribune article by Nick Coleman on 11/4
Kerry carries Edina - and pigs fly, right? ; Today's Republican Party may be alienating traditional supporters
A Republican has won the White House again, but there were no signs of apocalypse here on the prairie.
Except one.
More below the fold
Hell didn't freeze over, the sun didn't rise in the West and the Vikings remain unlikely to win a Super Bowl in our lifetimes. Still, the reelection of George W. Bush was accompanied by something equally as astonishing:
Edina turned blue.
Edina voted for a Democrat, giving John Kerry the nod over Bush. If the city that was incorporated in 1888 and started by Irish and Scottish farmers still had pigs, they would have been spotted in the skies over Southdale.
A city of cake-eaters, hockey golden boys, fashionistas, brokers and the first enclosed mall in the nation did something it hasn't done since it had more sheep than salesmen: Gave thumbs down to a Republican candidate for president -
16,090 for Kerry to 15,277 for Bush.
Records that go back to the Eisenhower era show no Democrats winning in the leafy precincts. None.
Not Kennedy (who lost by a 4-1 margin to Nixon); not favorite son Hubert Humphrey (who lost by 9,000 votes to Nixon), not Fritz Mondale (Edina gave Ronald Reagan a giant margin of 11,000 votes in 1984).
And Barry Goldwater, who I think said, "Extremism in the defense of shopping is no vice," held off the Democratic landslide in 1964, beating
Lyndon Johnson by 7,000 votes in Edina.
Edina going for a Democratic presidential candidate is like hearing that your Lutheran pastor left his wife and ran off with a Catholic catechism teacher. You knew it could happen in theory, but it didn't seem likely. Edina was never seduced by Bill Clinton, and went for Bush over Gore by 2,400 votes just four years ago.
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Article ends with...
Minnesota stayed blue in the election of 2004, and Edina voted for the Democratic candidate for president. If I were planning the Republican strategy for 2008, I would try very hard to understand what is going on in Edina.
Edina is always ahead of the curve.
FROM http://www.startribune.com/
Hope this went well, it's my first diary!