This link.
This excerpt, not in the leading report paragraphs, but naming recipient names:
One of those donors was Ted Grindal, a lobbyist for the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa, which owns Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley. Since 1998, Grindal has contributed $140,000 himself to candidates and political causes, including a political action committee (PAC) run by his law firm, Lockridge Grindal Nauen of Minneapolis.
Besides Grindal's political contributions, his firm's PAC has given about $550,000 to candidates and causes, including many Republicans.
The Mille Lacs band's own political committee gave slightly more than $1 million in political contributions from 1998 through 2008, more than 80 percent to Democrats.
The Shakopee Mdewakan-ton Dakota Community, owners of Mystic Lake Casino, made nearly $1.4 million in political contributions during the same period, more than 85 percent to DFLers.
Three of the remaining nine Indian bands spent another $1.5 million together. They are the Prairie Island Dakota, owners of Treasure Island Casino; the Lower Sioux, owners of Jackpot Junction, and the Fond du Lac Band of Chippewa, owners of Black Bear Casino.
Rival DFL gubernatorial candidate Tom Rukavina, a legislator from Virginia, Minn., said Kelliher gained an unfair advantage with the financing arrangement. The DFL has since scrapped the arrangement and the state campaign finance board is considering a GOP request for an investigation.
[...] Because he's spread so much money around, it wasn't certain that Grindal would side with Kelliher. In 2008, he gave $500 each to the gubernatorial campaigns of Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook; Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, and former Sen. Steve Kelley, DFL-Hopkins. Grindal said he also contributed money this year to Bakk, Rukavina, DFLer Matt Entenza and Kelliher.
"I'm a Democrat -- I don't try to hide that," Grindal said.
[...] "I don't plan on donating to any other candidates than Kelliher from this point going forward," Grindal said.
Rukavina finds himself at odds with the tribes because he wants slot machines in taverns, although he does line up with them in opposing metro-area racinos.
[...] Thissen isn't taking Grindal's decision hard.
"There are a lot of other contributors of Ted's stature and they are giving to other candidates," Thissen said, adding that he's gotten financial support from other members of Grindal's law firm.
Will Strib be on this early and often? Or is it early and not news later? And when will they do a comparable thing on money to the GOP field, and money from the health insurance cabal - who gets that taint, etc.
So far, it is one-sided reporting, which is editorial in nature, because it only looks at dirty laundry of a few, and on one side of the contest.
The editorial dimension of this is not hitting both parties equally hard over questionable money. Perhaps the GOP camp just is not getting much cash, good or bad? If so, report that.
Report about it ALL, across the spectrum, please. Anything less biases voter information.
And the IP? What about the forgotten folks, this cycle?
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Bakk, Kelly, and Entenza are mentioned only once. Is that exoneration of sorts, or simply fitting the reporting online to that on paper where the reporting has to be squeezed into spaces constrained by and conformed to purchased advertising space.
Final thought - I have not tried web search for an answer, but will PiPress and the online outlets of the TV news providers also jump this train, or is it Strib's thing, alone? Time alone will tell how far this might go in anyone's decision making.
Yet it is interesting. It seems perhaps the casinos and racetrack take money away from Lottery gambling, and since the cash from that goes to the State and provides funding outside of taxation and fees, it should be favored gambling, if gambling of any kind is to be favored, (and banks, insurance companies, land developers, and business entrepreneurs all "gamble" in a sense, as do stock investors, but that kind of gambling has long been recognized as having more social worth than casino lounge lizard forms).