Here is Elwyn Tinklenberg's screenshot part of Strib's online homepage election results.
To know him is to disfavor him. What an indictment of the boneheads in MN 6 DFL leadership positions who foisted this flawed, unlikeable, revolving door lobbyist on us as our "choice" against the likes of crazy Michele Bachmann.
Well, you poke that stick in the eye of progressives, you run a Republican because of your disdain for the judgment of voters in the district to support an attractive, aggressive, progressive candidate instead [remember how Klobuchar Republicans flocked to her in the district against Mark Kennedy who had represented the district], and progressives will vote for a Republican, but not one dressed as if a DFL person.
You party bosses needed that lesson. Run dreck, get a defeat. You pushed the same sorry candidate in 2004, then when the party progressives said no and endorsed Wetterling instead, almost all of you took a hike giving Wetterling lukewarm comfort at best, and even with one from your lobbyist camp followers serving to discredit Wetterling greatly on the eve of the election via an awkward amateurish surely to be discovered attempt to "infiltrate" the Bachmann campaign, (something that really torpedoed Wetterling's credibility, indirectly), and lo, Wetterling lost.
Based on that, you trotted out the same awful blue dog with fleas, the unlikeable career politician - lobbyist Elwyn Tinklenberg, and lost about as badly as with Wetterling but this time with all of you pushing as hard as you could (even largely ignoring Al Franken's more important candidacy in the process) and without John Binkowski siphoning votes from Wetterling (but instead Bob Anderson siphoning votes from Bachmann, the votes of those who could not stand Tinklenberg but did not wish to vote for Bachmann).
Bob Anderson was a hero for bucking his Independence Party bosses, but not as strong a candidate as Binkowski, nor as recognized a one since Binkowski joined Dean Barkley and the other IP bosses in a shabby attempt to bias the party voters toward Tinklenberg by endorsing him instead of Anderson, the IP member saying he wanted to and would run. Luckily it was a trash move that failed. Luckily, there was a Bob Anderson to stand up and say, "No. That is wrong." He has all the respect in the world from me for having the courage to do what he did. To see wrong, and oppose it.
BOTTOM LINE: The numbers do not lie. Tinklenberg did worse where known best, not vice versa, and if that does not speak loudly to the Sixth District DFL bosses, they are fully beyond all hope of salvation and good sense visiting upon them. Here again are the districtwide numbers, via Strib:
Here, in contrast are the results in Anoka County, where Elwyn Tinklenber had been mayor of Blaine and a public contracting administrator for Anoka County - where his ways and means were best known:
(update note: decimal point error, the Immelman result should be 0.095%, otherwise things add up wrongly. Make it a tenth of a percent write-in, by rounding up, take each to the tenth of a percent, Tinklenberg 42.6, Bachmann 47.0, Anderson 10.2 -- the differences from district wide numbers truly are not great, but worse for Tinklenberg in the county knowing him best, that is undeniable)
MESSAGE TO SIXTH DISTRICT DFL BOSSES: Show something other than an elitist, disdainful flat learning curve NEXT TIME, eh?