The headline is from here.
Like everyone else, I cannot get into Ciresi's mind to measure real against stated motivations.
What can be done, and might be interesting, is to see whether the headline observation shows up in any other outlet's reporting.
Emmer losing Durenberger and Arne Carlson endorsements to Horner does not have any history of Emmer bumping heads with either, so the dimension is missing there, which is not the DFL situation where there's been opposition history between Dayton and Ciresi. And the headline, (within the item and not prominently featured, again see here), gives an indication of a direct question-answer, or of a Ciresi intent to face the question even if it were not asked. How the press conference went is something to try to search out from the reporting.
Strib, which has already endorsed Horner, headlines things, "Ciresi says Horner the clear choice;" this link.
Strib does say:
David Schultz, a Hamline University professor and political analyst, said Ciresi's endorsement probably won't help Horner peel away diehard DFLers.
"It's not like Walter Mondale doing the endorsement," Schultz said of the Democratic former vice president.
Ciresi had two failed bids for U.S. Senate. In 2000, Dayton crushed him in the Democratic primary and went on to win the seat. Eight years later, he dropped out of the Senate race before the convention where DFLers endorsed Al Franken.
Ciresi said the endorsement has no whiffs of revenge.
"This is not a slight against Mark Dayton," he said. "He's a decent and great Minnesotan."
Moreover, Strib revisits other history:
Ciresi said he isn't turning his back on his party. He noted he has financially backed a host of Democratic candidates for Congress in Minnesota and other states. Ciresi has given $2,000 to the Horner campaign, the maximum allowed.
Horner and Ciresi said they first got to know each other in the late 1990s, as the state and Blue Cross and Blue Shield negotiated a multibillion-dollar tobacco settlement with cigarette manufacturers. At the time, Ciresi was the lead lawyer while Horner handled Blue Cross and Blue Shield's public relations campaign.
Ciresi and his lawfirm did well out of that settlement. Overall, I would give Strib coverage a nod for touching every base and not cutting corners.
Doug Grow writes coverage for Minn Post. Here is a long excerpt from Grow's coverage, which is the most informative I have found online:
Two-time U.S. Senate candidate Mike Ciresi this afternoon endorsed Tom Horner, in the process becoming the first prominent DFLer to stand beside the Independence Party gubernatorial candidate, who has attracted considerable endorsement support from former Republican officeholders.
Ciresi, who lost to Mark Dayton in a Senate primary race in 2000 and dropped out of the Senate race prior to the DFL convention's endorsement of Al Franken in 2008, insisted today that he remains a Democrat.
"Of course I'm a Democrat," the 64-year-old attorney said at a state Capitol news conference.
He noted that his support of Horner marks only the second time in his life that he will have voted for someone other than a Democrat.
Who was the first?
He wouldn't divulge that, though he did say he supported Dayton after losing in the primary.
Ciresi, in announcing his support of Horner, tried to prove his DFL Party loyalty by noting that he and his spouse have made financial contributions to Democratic House members Betty McCollum and Tim Walz and to Tarryl Clark, who is challenging Rep. Michele Bachmann in the 6th District. Additionally, he said, they are supporting several U.S. Senate candidates outside of Minnesota.
Why Horner?
"Is it state or party — which comes first?" Ciresi said. "I think the world of Mark Dayton."
It's not ill will toward Dayton that led him to this endorsement, he said, but rather his belief that Horner is the best candidate for the times.
Horner at the news conference acknowledges that his best chance of winning depends on swinging undecideds into his corner, as well as attracting "soft" supporters of Republican Tom Emmer and Dayton. He noted that polls show a big enough pool of such voters to give him a legitimate shot.
It's hard to know how much sway Ciresi actually has among those in his own party. Though he invested heavily in his two Senate races, he was rejected soundly. He often groused about the party apparatus and its endorsement process. He likely doesn't have high name recognition outside the political insider circle.
It should be noted that of all people, Michael Brodkorb, deputy chairman of the Republican Party, does think Ciresi's is a big DFL name.
"Mike Ciresi is a household name in DFL circles and has strong liberal credentials," Brodkorb commented this afternoon on Twitter. "Dayton's campaign has to be upset today."
No matter the size of the Ciresi name, the endorsement is at least an indication that Horner is something more than the second Republican candidate in this race, which is how both the DFL and the Dayton campaign have tried to characterize him.
Horner said he first got to know Ciresi back in the early 1990s, during Minnesota's landmark case that paired Blue Cross Blue Shield and the state's attorney general, Skip Humphrey, against the tobacco industry.
Ciresi was the lead attorney representing Blue Cross Blue Shield in one of the first cases of its kind. Horner was doing public relations work for the insurance company at the time and, after the massive settlement, did public relations work for one of the resulting anti-smoking organizations that was formed.
This led Horner to speak, very briefly, of old PR clients. He received no state money for his work, he said in answer to reporters' questions. Rather, he said, his pay came through the settlement.
Horner seldom speaks of his former clients and their ties to government.
Apparently Horner and Ciresi and the firms of each did well out of that tobacco settlement.
Horner is NOT the second Republican in this race, he is the traditional actual Republican, Emmer being a creature of caucus packing by a new malignant and likely to be upended branch of the GOP. And with Ciresi going there, I could not easily support him in any political adventuring he might pursue in the future.
The Alliance for a Better Minnesota has said it best, "No matter which Tom you pick, you still end up with Tim." Agree or disagree, but I, obviously, agree. Emmer is such a buffoon that he'd surely be more transparent in motives and style if elected, than the flat-tax sales tax advocate, Horner, if elected.
Grow wrote a bit more, but the extended excerpt above is the gist of the report.
MPR and PiPress will round out my MSM review; with other outlets having coverage, per this Google, and this Bing. MPR next, here:
Longtime Democrat Mike Ciresi is endorsing Independence Party candidate Tom Horner for governor.
Ciresi ran twice as a Democrat for U.S. Senate. The first time was in 2000 when he lost in the primary to Mark Dayton. The second time was in 2008 when he dropped out of the race before the DFL state convention where Al Franken was endorsed.
Horner, a former Republican strategist and public relations executive, has attracted the support of a number of former Republican elected officials, including Gov. Arne Carlson. Ciresi is the first well known Democrat to publicly back Horner.
Some polls have suggested Horner is drawing more support from Republicans than Democrats.
Horner has been campaigning on a message that DFLer Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer represent political extremes and that he offers a middle ground approach to government.
Although Ciresi endorsed Horner for governor, Ciresi says he remains a Democrat and that he is supporting many Democrats this year. Ciresi said choosing to endorse Horner was an easy decision for him.
"The issues that I feel most passionately about education, health care and job growth are the issues that I think Tom speaks with greater clarity than Mark Dayton," Ciresi said. "This is not a slight against Mark Dayton he's a decent and great Minnesotan in my judgement, but Tom is the most qualified to lead this state."
Ciresi said he thinks Horner will win the election and that Horner will be able to bring together people from all over the political spectrum.
Ciresi seeming to think Horner "will be able to bring together people" is a contention indirectly saying Emmer is too extreme, and indirectly saying the same, in Ciresi's view, about Dayton. AGAIN - I think he's stepped on a third-rail if he has any further personal political DFL ambitions. With me he has.
PiPress had very brief coverage, here, unlike Strib's appearing to have more time or effort to form its report:
The high-profile endorsement comes after several Republican former lawmakers came out in support of Horner, an ex-Republican.
Ciresi, a prominent Minneapolis trial attorney, has run twice for the U.S. Senate. He lost to Democratic-Farmer-Labor gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton in the 2000 DFL primary and failed to win the party's endorsement in 2008 when pitted against Sen. Al Franken.
Horner, who has lagged a distant third in the polls throughout campaign season, said Tuesday that he would roll out more prominent endorsements before Election Day, Nov. 2.
--------------------------
Beyond all that, what role might Ciresi or one from his firm play, in a Horner executive, were there to be one?
Phrased differently, what's in it for Ciresi?
Where are the other two candidates, aside from Horner, on the tort reform question?
I understand such questions can be challenged as improper, but one of the reasons I strongly support Mark Dayton is that he left Washington DC after a single term saying it was a "cesspool." Besides being true it was political operatives such as Emmer and Horner that made DC what it currently is. Like or dislike the comment, think it over. Horner having represented the Vikings and Canterbury, now wanting as state policy a stadium, and Racino. After the election - which he cannot win but can influence as between Dayton and Emmer - where will Horner end up? Back in PR, again a shill for the right wing of things less than the "centrist" he claims to be? It fits his skill set. He has no legislative or executive experience. He has been on the outside fringe of government, representing clients with an interest in gaining favorable government action and wanting favorable public images. Would that make a good governor?
Again, I like Dayton for saying the obvious about DC, and for saying the rich need to be taxed if the State and nation are to regain something of what each had in the past. Since Reagan, and the rich being accorded even more favors than under Eisenhower Republicanism, things have been downhill for everyone but the rich.
Finally, do you envision Ciresi, after two failed DFL attempts to get into the Senate, as seeing an IP run for the Senate in his crystal ball? Again, we cannot get inside his mind to know. We can only read circumstances. Doug Grow put some of his Minn Post focus on the question, and upon Ciresi's statements of ongoing general DFL loyalty. So -- Go figure. It likely may be worth the time.
________UPDATE________
Hellier, Gross, and Aplikowski have nothing to say about Ciresi, as they have had little or nothing to say about Arne and Durenberger; and as if Horner were not even a candidate in their world view (except for Aplikowski's quaint and fanciful notion that Horner and Dayton are little different). As of the time of this update, Minnesota Progressive Project has not yet posted reporting or analysis of the Ciresi endorsement.
__________FURTHER UPDATE________
Gary Gross did publish, before the Ciresi thing, about Dems in the 'burbs wanting to Blue Dog it a little - not how he phrased it but how it seems to read.
Some of the Ciresi coverage seems to indicate Horner is hoping to bootstrap percentages off of other folks good names - off of endorsements - so what new shoes may drop? We wait. Will there be a real blockbuster? Or will it be like the GOP mayor Dave Kleis of St. Cloud reportedly wanting distance from Emmer?
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
It took a Google, but what Aplikowski is railing against - media attention to Emmer's outstate problems - St. Cloud's mayor, etc., is online via MPR, here. I think that's either what AAA is raging about, or representative of it. It seems the other end of Gross reporting disquiet over taxing the rich, in the richer parts of the 'burbs.
Might it be Ciresi, notably rich, feels that the Horner sales tax suggestions resonate more than what Dayton's been consistently saying? He might think that the poor and middle-class laborers and sole proprietors out here in Anoka County where I live, those proprietors with a consultancy having another employee (at most two others, one part-time) and buying expensive but needed health coverage for proprietor and employees while not seeing the business that flowed in better times and hence struggling even more than normal, could shoulder a bit more. Might he see the non-rich but middle class worker bees who've built a portfolio and seen it blown to shambles by DC failure to regulate Wall Street while eager to bail out Wall Street as okay with him and his portfolio? Might Ciresi in his inner mind view some things Horner seems comfortable with as more fair than taxing the rich? Is that why Ciresi sees Horner as more kindred to him than the DFL candidate going into the general election? Instead of being a sore head with a grudge about past DFL runs and withdrawals, might the Ciresi endorsement be little but the rich not wanting to be fairly taxed, with Ciresi one of them?
Who's to say?
Ciresi was not reported to have voiced anything that way, in his pro-Horner press show.