David Day was Mike Starr's campaign manager in Senate District 48, against Mike Jungbauer, last election cycle. The MnPublius blog link has comments by Starr and by Day, each worth reading.
Now this:
With regard to the upcoming candidate debate in Anoka this Sunday, everybody, leave that kind of rude, confrontational, and ill-mannered conduct at home. Please don't bring any disruptive or obstructionist behavior to where it would be largely out of place, unwelcomed, and an insult and a bother to everyone else.
That said, back to the MnPublius thread:
The Mike Starr Chili Fest couduct subthread digressed from the main thread there, about a Tinklenberg claim of having over sixty percent of delegates so far committed as his, locked up for endorsement.
There is a comment by Chase Golding of the Tinklenberg campaign repeating the disputed claim that the entire Minnesota DFL congressional contingent has endorsed Tinklenberg. It is as interesting for the repeat, as for backing down from the claim that Tinklenberg has been endorsed by Patty Wetterling.
Blueman has interesting history, about claims of influential personal support and/or endorsement by Tinklenberg's 2006 campaign.
For those not going to read the MnPublius post and comments, below is my thinking, as put into a comment there, and with regard to the claim of Tinklenberg's having 60% lokced-in DFL delegate support in those Senate Districts that have so far caucused:
If Tink has sixty percent of the delegates, as he claims, he knows their identity. Otherwise he does not know he has them. It is that simple.
SO — easy answer: Name them, give email addresses, then skeptics can independently fact-check the truthfulness of what Tinklenberg and his campaign people represent to be truth.
It is the same as with lobbying. Wodele says, “…” “Trust me.”
I don’t.
SO — easy answer: Open the books and show the lobbying income and activities. Allow examination of the billings. That resolves the lobbying question.
Delegate count. Same thing. Give the underlying fact-check information to the public. It beats handing out spin doctoring.
Forget the “Trust me.”
Who should? Why?
“That’s how it is , trust me,” is both insulting and dismissive.
“Trust me” has no place in a situation where a deepening credibility gap is opening and the GOP long knives have to be aware of how to exploit that kind of thing IF, a very BIG IF, Tinklenberg gets the DFL nod.
I know a strong progressive sentiment exists favoring Olson. It seems to be held by a substantial DFL contingent. I have to doubt Tinklenberg’s unsubstantiated puffery about already having 60%, with the implication being, so don’t bother showing up at the remaining Senate District Caucuses opposing me; it’s a done deal.
Yogi Berra had an answer.
Olson is long experienced in job creation in the private sector, running a bank and growing the employee pool over several branches, as I understand things, from the web about St. Stephan Bank.
I have never met Olson. I have seen Tinklenberg once on TV. I look forward to seeing each this Sunday, in Anoka.
I wonder whether the Tinklenberg Group runs itself as employees, or independent contractors; and whether they are supplied healthcare coverage or left without that, as the Bachmann Clinic staff people were reported to be uncovered last election cycle. I have the same question for Olson, about the folks working at the bank branches.
We all should hold both candidates to a test of character, that way, where the rubber meets the road - where somebody being treated right has an out-of-pocket cost to the candidate, so where’s the answer to that “character issue?”
And, finally, I do have concerns about taconite tailings used as road agregate, etc., since it seems the asbestos question has not been definitively decided, and Miles Lord, a man deserving everyone’s respect, is quite skeptical of big steel industry funded studies, or federally funded studies where the funding is due to Oberstar, who has the piles of the stuff up there in his district. Miles Lord was quoted in a City Pages article “Brave New Highway” saying big steel wants the stuff in roads all over the state so that the cancer incidence around the Iron Range is not distinctively higher than state-wide, once the stuff is spread state wide and kicked up in traffic dust.
That Tinklenberg taconite tailings advocacy thing is another thing Tinklenberg has ducked. Does any reader know how to find out whether taconite tailings, more dense than other aggregate alternatives, was ever used in resurfacing work on the I-35 bridge? I ask the question. I do not know the answer. Does anyone have definitive evidence?
It is simple:
[1] Name names, not speculative percentages.
[2] Follow the money, not the rhetoric.
With each of the two MN-6 DFL candidates a small business CEO, who grows jobs best in Minnesota, Tink or Olson, and which of the two treat their workers most fairly?
My hope is the evidence will show both are fair; unlike the way Michele Bachmann was embarassed last campaign by having it reported that staff at the Bachmann Christian mental health counseling clinic were not given an employer-funded healthcare coverage plan.
That IS a BIG character issue where facts will, or should speak louder than words.